Certain features in your external environment can adversely affect the feng shui of your building. These 'poison arrows' can be responsible for ill-fortune in the form of robbery, legal entanglement or serious illness. It is, therefore, necessary to identify the not-so-obvious 'poison arrows' in your environment and to deal with them.

The 'poison arrow' pointing at your main door could be a straight long road forming a T-junction. This brings chi into your house. Other locations where chi is too strong are houses on dead ends of streets or those on curved roads. The harmful effect of hitting chi can be neutralised by feng shui cures. The 'poison arrow' coming from the west can be set right by placing a spotlight above the door pointing towards the road, whereas the cure for a south road is to place a large boulder between the door and the road.

An electric pole or a large single tree outside your main gate also acts as a 'poison arrow'. Flyovers and bridges with fast moving traffic can also generate negative energy around your house. Trouble can come in the form of a new building in your neighborhood. All these 'poison arrows' can be deflected by hanging the octagonal Pa Kua mirror. This eight-sided mirror has a convex or concave mirror in the centre, surrounded by trigrams on eight sides. Never hang this mirror inside the house. The Pa Kua mirror can harm your neighbors if it faces their main door. A better alternative is a five-rod wind chime.

Inside a house, secret arrows are present in the form of pillars, overhead beams, open shelves and pointed corners of furniture. A corner can be softened by placing a plant or a sculpture in front of it. You will experience good feng shui after you neutralise the exterior and interior features which are responsible for bad luck.