A new guide gives easy-to-use tips for following feng shui.

The guide's author, Paul Darby, is known as the Feng Shui Doctor on British TV. Even if you don't get into the reasons behind feng shui, here are some ideas to try from "The Feng Shui Doctor: Ancient Skills for Modern Living" (Sterling, $14.95):

• Choose a solid front door or one with small glass panes. The front door is "mouth" to the house, he says.

• Slow down the flow of racing energy through long, narrow halls by hanging a series of mirrors on alternating walls or by placing a few rounded rugs along the floor.

• Resist seashell knickknacks and the color blue in the bath. Water symbols sap energy from this sector already prone to depletion. Counter the "downward pull of energy" with earth-tone walls, bowls of pebbles and closed toilet lids.

• Tame ill winds wafting from a microwave oven by storing the appliance in recessed cabinets, with only faces exposed.

• Switch study lights on 30 minutes before working. Place lamp at upper left corner of desk to rev up energies in this "place of the shining mind."

• Avoid sitting with your back to doors, windows or corridors. If you must station yourself so vulnerably, seek refuge in a high-back chair.

• Outside, Darby touts curvy garden paths and borders over sharp geometry.

• For a home aggravated by location, Darby lends stiff-upper-lip solutions that include fences, hedges, or, in the case of noisy neighbors, a pot tipped over and pointing their way.

-kansas.com