Jan Cisek

PhD Student

Biography

Jan Cisek has been working as a feng shui consultant, trainer, mentor, researcher, and writer for over 40 years now. He specialises in holistic/integral feng shui which works in many domains: environmental or physical, emotional, intellectual or psychological, social, cultural, virtual, and spiritual, as well as evidence-based feng shui.

Jan has an MSc in Environmental Psychology from the University of Surrey. His Master’s dissertation was on “Determinants of Pavement Pattern Preference and Their Effect on Affective Appraisal, General Preference and Behavioural Intention”, or in short: what kind of shapes people like or prefer and how different shapes affect them. His findings, in short, were that people prefer round, oval shapes to rectangular, square ones (curvilinearity over angularity). Jan’s environmental passions and interests include learning and virtual (online) environments, ecology, electric cars and pollution, Sick Building Syndrome, electromagnetic radiation (dirty electricity, electro-smog, geopathic stress, etc) fractality, business, and office environments as well as homes.

His background is in art, design, interior design, and branding. Jan also teaches/coaches/mentors in speed reading and accelerated learning for over 22 years now and co-authored with Susan Norman, a book on speed reading called Spd Rdng – The Speed Reading Bible. He lives in Chelsea, London, UK.

PhD research

The aims and objectives are to broaden an indigenous feng shui approach to understanding how environments affect people into a modern evidence-based framework and generalise the findings in an applied and worthwhile way in the modern world. Jan would like to answer several questions related to feng shui and:

• Workplaces: Can introducing feng shui principles into workplaces, offices, home-offices, affect employees’ perceived work productivity, increase employees’ work satisfaction, cooperation, and reduce their work stress?
• Homes: Can arranging bedrooms according to feng shui principles enhance the quality of sleep?
• Welness: Can using feng shui enhance wellness and transpersonal/spiritual well-being?
• Public Health: Can 3000 years of feng shui knowledge and wisdom and tapping into its global popularity be used to promote certain environmental design features to enhance productivity and wellness at workplaces and homes, as well as general sustainability?

All the above core questions can be applied in the context of a wider range of settings, from workplaces to homes to students’ learning environments and accommodation, as well as social and public spaces.