"The shampoo sink is where you let go of your hatred and your pain," says Michael Koler, a salt-and-pepper braid trailing down the back of his Indian tunic. At Michael's Motorcycle, his sunny, cheerfully ramshackle salon in the ritzy Dallas neighborhood of Highland Park, we're about to walk over to that cathartic spot so that Koler and I can take the first step in my feng shui haircut.
Applying what's now known as "the art of living in harmony with land and physical structures" to a shag or a bob would make about as much sense to Fu Hsi, who compiled feng shui's founding principles, as the Swarovski crystal-heart chi balancer on sale at Shop.com. About 5,000 years ago, Fu created the bagua to chart the relationships among the universe's five elements (fire, earth, metal, water, wood) and harness the flow of chi, or life force. Feng shui, which translates as "wind and water," would eventually be used to determine propitious grave sites as well as living spaces that enhance good fortune. Now, of course, it's the money machine powering sales of zillions of instructional books ("The Complete Idiot's Guide to Feng Shui"), tabletop fountains, room spray and, yes, haircuts.
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