It didn’t use to be like that. Things used to feel alive, colorful and always here for you; there was so much fullness to them. Now life feels static. You find yourself complaining, feeling tired, wondering why and where the ease went. Something deep inside you knows this is not about your age, or just how life goes.
Our minds want a clear reason for everything. They can keep searching and searching for causes until the search itself becomes strangely satisfying. But I want to offer something very simple here: a way back to the body rather than the exhausted mind, using another body: the body of your home.
This has little to do with better interior design. I am interested in something way more powerful and intimate, which is the relationship between the human body and the body of a dwelling. In many ancient cultures, the house was understood to act as the third skin of those who live there, clothing being the second. In others, it was literally spoken of as a second body.
That’s how intimate this is.
We lost the textured, nuanced and multi-layered power of this relationship, and the visual sense took over. We look and look and look, until all we can see and judge is by the looks. But a home is not a passive design statement piece, it can quickly become a hidden dictator of your life without any election; one day it simply starts dictating your feelings, thoughts and emotions, what you can and cannot do, how you sleep and how you relate to others.
I mean this quite literally, not just as a metaphor.
Having worked with spaces and places for a long time, in a strange kind of role, I know what houses need to be able to support life. I also know how easily they can get derailed and start draining life. My work might sound enigmatic, but much of it is structural diagnosis: the symptoms showing up in a person’s life can often be traced back to the structure of the place, because a home truly is like a larger body; it stores all sorts of information.
The floor plan of a house is never neutral. It can be, for a short while, but if you’ve lived in your home for more than six months, its structure now clearly works either for or against you.
Let’s say your house has a bathroom above the kitchen. If that bathroom is actively used, this setup can start contributing to a lingering sense of anxiety. You might feel it mostly in the kitchen, so the idea of a good kitchen remodel might sound like an excellent solution. Only it will not solve the problem.
All parts of your home, hidden or not, loved or not, are intricately interrelated, just like all parts of the human body. It is difficult to name this relationship and its strong influence on us because we simply do not have an accepted vocabulary for it. So of course one would rarely say “Something’s wrong with my floor plan.” They just feel more tired, more irritable, more frustrated, especially after investing significant amounts of time and money into the house.
Of course better decor can help. Better lighting always helps, better appliances, better flow, more natural light etc. But none of them necessarily make the house better at supporting you. Why? Because they are surface solutions to deeper structural imbalances. It’s like applying makeup to skin that actually needs real treatment; it will look and feel good for a while, but it doesn’t stay because it is a temporary surface improvement. Deeper issues always take over.
A client came to me about a year after completing a major renovation. The house was stunning, and every choice had clearly been considered with care. Her life was good, she loved her work, had a full social life, and nothing obvious had gone wrong. But she was becoming increasingly tired, sometimes completely exhausted, and could not understand why. Someone recommended my work.
I carefully examined the whole house, even though I knew where the problem was as soon as I walked in. At the center of the home was a large black staircase, beautifully made, with meticulous architectural detailing. It was impressive and unusual, and it was also massive, visually dominant, and impossible to escape from. You saw it the moment you entered the house, and you felt it anywhere in the house. Its presence completely took over the space.
The longer I spent near it, the more it gave me a headache. The surrounding rooms, despite their generous scale, felt somehow shy, ungrounded and floating. What this setup was doing to my client’s health was clear. The staircase wasn’t just a beautiful architectural feature; it was the most commanding force in the entire home. Because of its position in the center, it dictated the feeling of the whole house, and subservience was its clear demand. My client was an accomplished woman who led others with ease, but inside her own home, she was being commanded in a subtle but constant way. We discussed many possible solutions, it was a relief for her to clearly see what was happening.
This particular setup was easy to explain. In many ancient traditions, the center of a space was intentionally left open. Often called the heart of the space, it needs lightness and openness because it serves almost like an engine for the whole house. Its name implies its role. Identifying what was happening, and making the clear connection between the physical structure and the experience it created, was already a big relief.
The staircase wasn’t torn out, but we found good solutions to address its dominance. The center of the home regained its needed lightness and openness, while the surrounding rooms regained their grounding. The main entry was also reworked so the staircase no longer commanded the view upon arriving home. It took time, and it took work for the home to stop working against her, but eventually it did. My client gained her energy back and felt much lighter.
Knowing the source of any experience is important because without it we cannot really change things, only improve them for a while. And when the source of a continuous negative experience is in our home, the place that has to support and strengthen us, this knowing becomes essential for our health.
Rodika Tchi works with private clients worldwide to create homes that support health, relationships and daily life. She is the author of two published books and has been interviewed by Psychology Today, Business Insider and Elle Décor.
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