Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being

by Esther M. Sternberg MD

Overview

Does the world make you sick? If the distractions and distortions around you, the jarring colors and sounds, could shake up the healing chemistry of your mind, might your surroundings also have the power to heal you? This is the question Esther Sternberg explores in Healing Spaces, a look at the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. Sternberg immerses us in the discoveries that have revealed a complicated working relationship between the senses, the emotions, and the immune system. First among these is the story of the researcher who, in the 1980s, found that hospital patients with a view of nature healed faster than those without. How could a pleasant view speed healing? The author pursues this question through a series of places and situations that explore the neurobiology of the senses. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety or instill peace. If our senses can lead us to a “place of healing,” it is no surprise that our place in nature is of critical importance in Sternberg’s account. The health of the environment is closely linked to personal health. The discoveries this book describes point to possibilities for designing hospitals, communities, and neighborhoods that promote healing and health for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674054660
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/31/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	335 KB

About the Author

Esther M. Sternberg, M.D., author of The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions, has done extensive research on brain-immune interactions and the effects of the brain's stress response on health. She was on the faculty at Washington University, St. Louis, prior to joining the National Institutes of Health in 1986.

Table of Contents

1. Healing Places 1 2. Seeing and Healing 25 3. Sound and Silence 53 4. Cotton Wool and Clouds of Frankincense 75 5. Mazes and Labyrinths 95 6. Finding Your Way ... 125 7. .. . and Losing It 143 8. Healing Thought and Healing Prayer 169 9. Hormones of Hope and Healing 193 10. Hospitals and Well-Being 215 11. Healing Cities, Healing World 253 12. Healing Gardens and My Place of Peace 280 Bibliography 299

What People are Saying About This

Esther Sternberg is a rare writer--a physician who healed herself by going back to ancient truths known by the Greeks, and proving them. With her scientific expertise and crystal clear prose, she illuminates how intimately the brain and the immune system talk to each other, and how we can use place and space, sunlight and music, to reboot our brains and move from illness to health.

Editorial Reviews

Dr. Sternberg is a seriously pedestrian writer, and her narrative never strays from a blandness well designed to offend neither hard-core scientists nor New Age mystics. She ignores some of the more fascinating paradoxes of the terrain (a 30-bed hospital ward may offer more privacy and serenity than a semiprivate room; furthermore, one man’s aromatherapy is often another’s emetic). Still, anyone who has ever felt peace descend in lovely surroundings will find a few seeds of explanation in her book.
—The New York Times

Abigail Zuger

Even the ancients understood that some places had healing powers. But in the late 20th century, scientists began to study how space affects both mental and physical health for good and ill. NIH researcher Sternberg (The Balance Within) thoroughly chronicles research on the neural pathways that connect our sensory perception of our environment with our ability to heal. Why, for instance, do hospital patients whose window looks out on a grove of trees require less pain medication than patients looking out on a brick wall? Sternberg also examines how incorporating light and nature into our cities and buildings can promote health and reduce stress, and how this concept is influencing urban design and the layout of hospitals. Finally, Sternberg counsels individuals to find that place in the world that invites and promotes healing and reduces stress (for her, it is a garden of her youth). The conclusions-e.g., that noise induces stress, which can impede healing-seem intuitive and well known, but readers interested in neuroscience will learn much about the research on why this is the case. (May)

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