Space Healing

What is space healing or healing spaces? It is a concept surrounded around an environment supporting the needs of your body & mind to promote inner healing. Our senses play an important role in how we perceive our surroundings. Sight, smell, touch, sound and taste all have powerful influences when it comes to the body’s response of liking or disliking something.

Over the last 40 years there has been a lot of research done on the positive benefits a healthy environment and connection to nature can have on one’s body.  The Samueli Institute defines healing as "a holistic, transformative process of repair and recovery in mind, body, and spirit resulting in positive change, finding meaning, and movement towards self-realization of wholeness, regardless of the presence or absence of disease."

Ruan Living have suggestion that these are the ten key elements  to transform your home into a healing environment (taken from their blog post “what is a healing space”):

1. Air quality

• Detox sources of toxic fumes

• Ventilate during key times

• Consider air purifiers that can improve air quality

2. Cleanliness

• Use a nontoxic cleaning approach

• Fight the dust regularly

• Vacuum with a HEPA filter

3. Connection/Community

• Healing environments support the engagement of their occupants internally and interpersonally

4. Diet

• Detox your diet. Developing a diet that is low in unnecessary toxic exposures helps our planet while also supporting the health of the person eating the food

• Nourish your diet. A diet full of nutrients that support your inherent processes for detox, healing, and restoration is helpful

5. Light 

• Optimize the opportunity to integrate natural light into the design of the space to create sun-filled rooms

• Minimize unnecessary exposures to artificial light, especially ones that generate toxic exposures

6. Sight

• Views of nature—either windows glimpses to the outside, interior or exterior gardens, aquariums, and art with a nature theme—are key.  Creating peaceful public spaces is helpful too. Integrating nature through gardens or views to gardens has been shown to reduce stress and improve the cohesion of mind, body, and spirit. 

• Artwork and sculptures

• Soothing colors

• Reduce glare from lights

• Personalize space with special personal items that provide comfort

• Natural materials, like wood, marble, and limestone

7. Smells

• Detox toxic fumes

• Remove sources of unpleasant odors

• Invite pleasant smells

8. Sounds

• Minimize stressful noise.

• Use sound-absorbing materials

• Create pleasant sounds by playing sounds of nature or soothing music

9. Temperature

10. Touch/Textures

If we live in a space that is cluttered, dirty, dusty, smelly, dark, uninspiring, the list goes on…how can we expect our bodies and minds to heal in those conditions?

There are an infinite number of reasons to declutter a space, teaching and trusting yourself to let go, but what about the internal and external benefits of it. Our mental and emotional health play a very important role in how we feel day to day – wouldn’t we want our homes to be a positive element to promote healing?

What are your thoughts on this? I would love to hear some feedback in the comments.