All, that is, except for one. This one, she says, pointing to a picture that shows her shrouded in dull yellow with brown shadows, was taken shortly after her father died.
The photos are pictures of her auras - electromagnetic energy fields that are invisible to most people, she explains. They were taken by Seattle photographer Ben Spensieri, who years ago helped invent a camera capable of capturing these fields on film.
“People's auras change from moment to moment,” she said.
This weekend, Spensieri will be snapping aura photos for the paying public in Missoula to help Koontz celebrate the 10-year anniversary of her business, the Feng Shui Center.
Born and raised in Missoula, Koontz's first encounter with feng shui occurred 11 years ago, when she saw a book on the subject in a Seattle book store. Upon returning to Missoula, she bought every feng shui book she could find - which wasn't as difficult as it might sound, being that there wasn't much written about feng shui in those days.
Pronounced “fung shway,” it's an ancient Chinese method of creating balance between the physical and spiritual worlds, Koontz says. She writes in one of her business brochures that “the underlying principle is to live in harmony with your environment so that the energy surrounding you works for you rather than against you.”
Koontz is certified in feng shui by the Los Angeles-based American Feng Shui Institute, and has 10 years of feng shui consultation under her belt.
She started her feng shui business out of her home in October 1996, and a year later took out a small loan to open the Feng Shui Center and White Tiger Gift Shop in its current Main Street location.
The gift shop, the retail side of the business, offers a plethora of items, including self-help books, crystals, essential oils, gift cards, art and jewelry. However, Koontz limits her inventory so it doesn't outgrow its small space. She doesn't want the gift shop to become too overpowering, she said.
“We're not just all about retail and selling, selling, selling,” she said.
The other side of the business, which started out just feng shui, has grown into so much more. As the only metaphysical shop in town, it became a home for all things metaphysical in Missoula, from holistic massage to psychic palm readings.
“This shop just started attracting all walks of spiritual life,” Koontz said, smiling.
The people who work at the Feng Shui Center are essentially contractors, she explained. They divide the calendar among them and try not to overlap their various areas of expertise.
“This is the store that has the most variety of any place I've seen,” said Robin Sophia Rose, who has a background in counseling and social work and has worked at the center for six years offering life counseling services. “There's a lot of us that rotate in and out. We cover the whole range here.”
Terre Nobel, for instance, performs massage therapy. Jason Ritter does tarot readings. Hope Toriello performs acupressure, chair massage and Thai massage.
Others specialize in fields that require a little more explaining. Barbara Champlin, who performs shamanism and reiki, specializes in soul and power animal retrieval. Patricia Kirk performs vibrational therapy, healing with colors and sounds. Leandra Murray travels from Arlee to perform medicine spirit healing - healing by helping people make connections between the material and spiritual worlds they might otherwise not be aware of, she explained.
“I see the invisible worlds around people and am able to make connections,” Murray said.
Over the years, Koontz has watched many of the different spiritual modalities and alternative therapies catch on and become more widely accepted, she said. Acupuncture and massage therapy, for example, are now a part of everyday life. She expects many other spiritual methods will soon meet the same fate.
“We're just a couple years behind the times,” Koontz said.
Feng shui - her specialty - seems to be holding steady, she said. In 10 years in business, she's performed 450 consultations in the Missoula area.
“I just did one in New Zealand, so I just went international,” she said. “But a lot of times it's just people moving into Missoula who are already familiar with feng shui.”
Koontz uses a floor plan and compass to divide the areas in a building where certain kinds of energies lie. For instance, if an area has a particular thirsty energy, it might encourage alcoholism, so to balance that energy she would recommend decorating with a lot of water elements.
While her counterparts on the coasts can charge thousands of dollars for a consultation, Koontz keeps her rates low - at $250 per consultation - in order to meet the demands of the Montana market. Her customer base spans the spectrum: young and old, male and female, she said, and she wants to keep her rates affordable for the average person.
She's noticed a recent rise in the number of businesses requesting her expertise, she said. It's particularly exciting to get in on the ground floor of a building, when plans are still being drawn up, so businesses will start off facing the right direction and so forth, she said.
“One of the reasons I chose this space is because it's facing north,” she added.
Different people will have different needs, but for her, north is the most productive, energetic direction. She also created a little area in her shop that faces a more relaxing direction, and “of course I put my office in the good-for-money area,” she said.
The retail end of the business fluctuates with the rest of the downtown economy, picking up in the summer tourist and winter holiday seasons and slowing down in the between times. That said, her business has been on the verge of folding more than once. Those times support from the community and especially from her mother, Beryl Wilson, encouraged her to press on.
Every once in a while - not often - some narrow-minded person walking by her shop will peer in the window and yelp that it's “the work of the devil,” Koontz said.
Those episodes serve to remind her of all the good the Feng Shui Center has created, how it's become another doorway through which people can walk to find their own way of approaching spirituality.
And once a mind is opened it can't be shut again, Koontz said.
“That's the beauty of life,” she said.
Reporter Tyler Christensen can be reached at 523-5215 or at tyler.christensen@lee.net.
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