SERENE of countenance and as inscrutable as the Buddha behind us - which is changing colour from emerald green and turquoise, to sapphire blue, deep purple and shocking pink, and back again like some therapeutic light show - Master Chan Kun Wah is explaining how and why a figure of the founder of a religion of spiritual purity has found its way into a smart Edinburgh hairdressing salon.

It's all to do with the free flow of energy and harmony - and with making pots of cash. And that's why a blinking Buddha, set into the wall of the Charlie Miller salon in Harvey Nichols, has not seen so much as the flick of a feather duster for the past three months, despite the gleaming nature of its surroundings.

"Dusting would ruin the energy, which must be allowed to mature and build up slowly, but they can clean it soon," explains Chan, a leading exponent of the ancient Chinese art of feng shui.

Now some of us may be a tad sceptical regarding all that faddy New Agey stuff about swapping mirrors around and keeping the lavatory seat down so that the chi energy - the universal life force - doesn't go down the pan. Isn't it so much feng phooey? Not according to Charlie Miller, the head honcho of four successful hairdressing salons in Edinburgh, including their newest in the chic department store, which opened this spring. (It'll soon be five when the family-run business expands to Ocean Terminal this summer.) The fringe benefits of feng shui are enormous, asserts the mustachioed guru of Scottish hairdressing.

With long, pewter-coloured locks, like a well-groomed Old Testament prophet (albeit one clad in designer black), 60-year-old Miller is adamant that he and his family have found health, wealth and happiness - that triptych of modern mantras - since they were feng shui'd.

After consulting the mystical Chan, they have changed not only the surroundings in their glamorous businesses but in their homes, too.

"I am their house doctor," Chan says with a smile, adding that he has recently feng shui'd a whole town in Austria, at the invitation of the local mayor.

The Millers met the Edinburgh-based sage of Chue-style feng shui about eight years ago. "And since then we've prospered. Oh yes, we're definitely much wealthier," says Miller over afternoon tea with the Mao-jacketed Chan in HN's Brasserie.

Although Miller is famously into mysticism - a practising Buddhist, he has recently returned from a trip to India, where he and the Kwik-Fit tycoon Sir Tom Farmer had audiences with the Dalai Lama - it was his younger son, Josh, who first became intrigued by the wiles and wisdom of Master Chan, after his mother read an article about him.

Josh asked him to feng shui the home he shares with his wife, Jill, and their two small children. Shortly afterwards, Miller senior and his wife Janet invited the Edinburgh-based teacher to look at the design and layout of their award-winning salons in Stafford Street, Frederick Street and South St Andrew Street, as well as that of their penthouse flat in the city.

Before long, the Millers' eldest son, Jason, and his hairstylist wife India, who also have two children, introduced feng shui into their Morningside home.

Professionally, the couple have won plenty of awards in recent years, finding fame among the best-tressed set - jetting out to Rome last November for the MTV awards, where they styled the locks of the likes of Eminem, Gwen Stefani and Franz Ferdinand, after hanging out backstage the previous year when the awards were staged in Edinburgh, at which they even brightened up The Darkness.

Their many celebrity clients have included supermodel Jodie Kidd (they transformed her into a Star Wars amazonian for a glossy magazine), Sean Connery, Donna Karan, Rory Bremner, Robson Green and even Cherie Blair.

With Zen-like calm Charlie Miller declares that such glittering success is down to talent, hard work, and sitting at the feet of the master and practising what he preaches.

Such is the Millers' faith in Chan's 3,000-year-old philosophy that they even followed his advice on which particular day to open the new salon to the public, and at exactly what time. The décor and the glowing colours were chosen by Janet Miller, who designs all their elegant salon interiors, with lighting designer David Brown, but colour schemes are chosen from a palette supplied by Chan. "You must never underestimate the calming effect of certain colours," he says. "The right shades soothe people - and offer a warm welcome."

WE MAKE an appointment to meet in Miller's new salon, with its wall of mirrors, posh purple floral arrangements, and stylish stylists. Chan and I perch on a voluptuous, velvety sofa the colour of mandarin oranges and discuss how he persuaded the family-oriented business to go with the flow.

There was, he says in his careful English, bad energy in the space allotted for the salon franchise on the store's second floor. According to his calculations - done with the aid of his unique compass, which is the size of a small plate embellished with fiendishly clever symbols, and which he also uses to read horoscopes - nothing about the site was good. It was facing in the wrong northerly direction and he could detect an over-abundance of metal in the construction. "It was drawing in strange energy like a poison," he shudders.

Even the plumbing was in the worst possible place, therefore riches were going down the drain. The reception desk was not situated to his satisfaction and, as for the lavatory, which is in the salon's wealth corner, well, he's still not happy about it. He told Miller that it needs to be green and it isn't. "I'm working on it," Miller reassures him, adding that he has implemented every single one of Chan's other suggestions, ripping out existing plumbing and completely re-thinking the use of everything from water to mirrors.

"But if that room is green, then the energy will not be dispersed, as it is being at the moment," continues Chan, who is tall, neat and aesthetic looking, with black hair styled in a no-nonsense short back and sides. He cuts his own hair, he volunteers, and has never once put his head in the hands of either Charlie Miller, who though retired still occasionally gets his scissors out, or a member of his team.

"This was a weak, negative site," says Chan, gazing around him with satisfaction on his thin face. "Now, there's a positive, strong energy. People are working under the protection of the Buddha, so they're happier and their health is better."

Of course, Charlie Miller is not alone in his belief in these principles. Companies ranging from Anita Roddick's Body Shop to Orange and Richard Branson's Virgin, have engaged their own practitioners. Chan has also advised many of the rich and famous, some so high-profile that he can't divulge names. "But they all know that it works."

Wherever he goes, and he travels constantly to Europe, Australia and Asia, since he has more than 700 students worldwide, he's feng shui'ing. The minute he walked into Harvey Nichols to inspect the existing salon premises, he suggested that the store managers reverse their escalators, therefore creating more wealth opportunities. Now shoppers walk through the store's front door and go onward and upward, instead of being faced with the down escalator. As a result, sales have apparently escalated.

Hong Kong-born Chan knows of that which he speaks, because he has devoted his energies to feng shui for more than 40 years. A youthful looking 58, he was chosen as a pupil at the age of 14 by his teacher Grand Master Chue Yen, who eventually bequeathed his Hong Kong-based foundation to Chan, who in turn brought it to Scotland more than 20 years ago.

His website says that he is "highly skilled" in three styles of feng shui, including something called Yuen Hom - "Mystery of the Void", which remains a mystery to me. Chan discloses only that it is the style of China's imperial courts and is therefore the most powerful, most secret style of the feng shui science. End of discussion.

Nonetheless, he sees himself not only as an inspirational practitioner but as an ambassador, and reckons that he is responsible for "a new era of feng shui in the West". Implacably against the dumbing down of the art, he repeats that he is a proponent of "genuine feng shui", following a path of logic and lifelong research. "Beware of cheap imitations," he exclaims, advising that you should always ask for a feng shui practitioner's qualifications and to see their certificates. "Untrained people can ruin energy, then disaster ensues."

The move to Scotland was made because Grand Master Chue found Eastern students unquestioning of the tradition. "In the West, he saw the chance to keep the flame alive in a time when the very world would be under threat from human greed, and the truth of the ancients would be needed more than ever," explains Chan in the foundation's manifesto.

The parlous state of the world - as well as the lavish layout of hairdressing salons - exercises Chan's mind continuously. He even maintains that, using feng shui, he can predict the future. Last November, for instance, he warned his students not to go to Indonesia, because he knew there was going to be a terrible disaster. "I didn't know what sort of disaster," he admits, adding that he actually put this advice on to his website long before the tsunami devastated the area.

In 2000, he forecast the appalling events of September 11, 2001. "Again, I didn't know what the details of the tragedy might be, but I told my students that if they had shares in American companies, they should sell before September because the market was going to collapse in that month.

More than 70 per cent of them listened to me and they sold. A third didn't listen, so they lost."

He also foresaw the encroaching plague of foot-and-mouth disease, and as for the Scottish Parliament, well, don't get him started on that. For a moment, he loses his air of tranquillity and rages against everything about that beleaguered project, from the choice of the site to the architecture of the building. Even the date on which they chose to begin building was ill-fated. And, says Chan angrily, he warned that both Donald Dewar and the architect Enric Miralles would not live to see the building completed.

"No-one would listen to me," he says, furiously clenching his fists. "I told the TV journalists and all the Scottish newspapers, but they didn't run the story until it was too late. I love Scotland. The energy here is very nice and so I care about the fact that this building is not in a harmonious and productive environment. Feng shui is about the form of a property and the balance, and I know that the parliament building will become an even bigger problem in the future."

However, Edinburgh is full of positive energy for Chan, who loves the city in which he's settled with his wife. "I am comfortable here, even the water here is very fine," he says happily.

Chan has done individual horoscopes for all the Millers. "He told me something about myself that was quite uncanny," says the venerable classy crimper. "He was 100 per cent right; that's why we trust him, because he knows so much more than we do. No, I'm not going to tell you what he told me. I am, however, trying to address it.

"Money always follows you, Charlie," he also told Miller. "And do you know something? He's right," remarks Miller. "I've always had enough, always had exactly what I wanted. Money does follow me."