Say you are living in less than optimal surroundings. Your upstairs neighbor routinely rearranges furniture at midnight. The dog next door is bored and lonely and loud. His owner snarls as you pass by. Your living room is the wrong shape, the windows are in the wrong place, and the paint color that seemed so creatively chic five years ago is getting on your last nerve.
Then you move. And as you bask in silence and symmetry, with pleasant neighbors, a soaring view and soothing white walls, you feel something in your brain click on. Or does it click off? Either way, you feel very good. What is doing the clicking, and why?
These are the deceptively simple questions Esther Sternberg tries to answer in “Healing Spaces,” an exploration of environmental influences over the brain, the body and (all due respect to your new living situation, but there are more important issues at hand) the course of mental and physical disease.
link: Books - The Puzzle of Spaces That Soothe - Review - NYTimes.com
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