When the space itself is the answer
It didn’t use to be like that. Things used to feel alive and colorful; there was real fullness to them. Now life feels duller at the edges somehow, less sweet, less here for you. You handle everything that matters really well: stress is manageable, support is in place, health is fine. It feels almost wrong to complain, yet you find yourself quietly complaining, feeling tired, wondering where the ease went.
Something deep inside you knows it isn’t age, or just how life goes. There are no logical reasons, and you need answers beyond temporary comfort. Our minds can make the search for reasons very complex, but what I want to offer here is very simple. Not for the mind; for the body. And for a home as a way to get back to how you want to feel.
This route does not involve better interior design solutions. We are looking at something way more intimate and powerful – the intricate relationship between a human body and the body of a dwelling. In some ancient cultures the houses were called human’s third skin (clothing being second); in others, it was called the second body.
That’s how intimate this is.
We lost the multi-layered subtlety of this relationship, and the visual sense took over. But a home is not a backdrop, or a statement piece. The space you live in is actively, constantly and undeniably shaping the state of your nervous system. Your thoughts, your emotions, your sleep, the quality of your relationships – all can be traced back to your home.
I do not mean this as a metaphor, I mean it quite literally. Working with spaces and places for a long time, in a strange kid of role, I know what they need to support life. This might sound enigmatic but it is mainly structural diagnosis. The symptoms showing up in a person’s life can be traced back to the structure of the place because a home truly is like a larger body; it carries information.
Its floor plan is never neutral, it either works for you or against you. Your nervous system reorients itself to the structure of your home, it is conditioned and programmed by it. When the features of a floor plan are not well matched, the effects show up in you.
Let’s say you have a kitchen with a bathroom above it. This setup usually tends to stir a lingering sense of anxiety. You might feel it mostly in the kitchen, so the idea of a good kitchen remodel might sound like a solution, but it will not solve the problem.
All parts of your home, be they visible or not, are inter-related, just like in the human body. They influence us in ways that are difficult to name because we do not have yet the accepted vocabulary for it. So you don’t think: something’s wrong with my floor plan. You just feel more tired, more irritable. Probably frustrated too, because no mater how much effort you put into the house, it still does not support you.
Better decor can help. Better lighting always helps. But these are surface solutions to deeper structural imbalances. It’s like applying makeup to skin that needs real treatment – it will look good for a while, but it doesn’t stay. Deeper issues always take over.
A client came to me about a year after she completed a big renovation. Her home looked truly stunning, with each choice carefully considered. Her life was as good as before the renovation – she loved her job, her social circle was fulfilling – but the increasing sense of tiredness was becoming a concern. So she started looking for answers, and my work was recommended as a possible solution.
I felt the answer the moment I stepped into her home, even though of course I examined the whole house. She had invested in a stunning black staircase with meticulous architectural detailing. It was very impressive, beautiful and unique. It was also massive, heavily dominant, and positioned right in the center of her home; visible the moment you walked through the door. Its presence was overwhelming.
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 dynamic was doing to my client was clear. The staircase wasn’t just a beautiful architectural feature; it was the most commanding force of the entire space. Because of its position in the center, its influence determined the feeling of the whole house; and it was demanding subservience.
My client was a creative and successful woman who led others with ease. Inside her own home, though, she was being drained and commanded in a subtle but constant way. We discussed many solutions, but first it was important for my client to actually see the present dynamic, and acknowledge it.
This particular setup was easy to explain: in all ancient cultures the center of the space was intentionally left open. It was always known that the center, also called the heart of the space, needs to be light and open because it serves like an engine of a sort, for the whole space. Even the name implies it – it’s the center.
Identifying what was happening, 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 got back their sense of 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. She gained her energy back, and felt much lighter. Knowing the source of any experience is so important because without it we cannot really change things; only improve them for a while.
Our homes are surely not just a backdrop, they are active participants in our internal and external worlds. Never neutral, either supporting or quietly working against us. Waiting to be met, and waiting to be seen for what they actually can offer.
Related:
When You Keep What is Keeping You
Not Every Home Knows How To Hold You
Why A Beautiful Home Can Still Feel Wrong
Image: Clay Banks
