Conscious Choice: Defining Personal Space

May 1996

Defining Personal Space

by Aliess M. Brady

"In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored,
or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building,
old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth....
Home is where one starts from."
— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker

You may know the story of the five blind men who described an elephant. One thought the elephant was long and flexible (like the trunk), another thought it was stout and heavy (like a leg). Others thought it was like a wall, a snake, (the tail) and a leaf (the ear).

In the same way, your living situation on a mountain, by a lake, or amidst tall buildings that block your view of the sky will affect your experience — and your sense of place. They are as present as an elephant standing in your way. Yet your experience of those places may have more to do with your own perceptions than with the physical constraints of the place where you live.

The effect of physical place may have been more distinct three generations ago. But for the past 50 years electronic media have been eroding the impermeability of our sense of place. Where once the walls of the boardroom, office, bar, club, and home were open only to those who were physically present and social roles were determined by physical or socioeconomic place, now television, modem, and cellular phones have erased some of those boundaries.

In fact, Joshua Meyrowitz, author of No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, argues that "Our shared sphere of interaction is informational rather than physical." He adds, "We bypass many previous generations’ dependence on physical location as a prime determinant of access to people and information," For example, live coverage on television ensures that millions who can’t afford Bulls’ tickets are still capable of witnessing a spellbinding play by Jordan or sublime concert by Yanni at the Acropolis in Greece.

Merging and overlapping media have exposed most Americans to places and perspectives that were once beyond our reach. We have, collectively and singularly, parent and child, man and woman, few secrets anymore. With no walls to shield or separate our encounters with varying audiences, we tend to synthesize our behavior, as our experience has been synthesized, into one common denominator. Meyrowitz notes, "As telephones, radios, televisions, and computers increasingly link the home to the outside world, external behavioral norms begin to merge into internal ones. The living room, kitchen, and bedroom are being reintegrated into the larger public realm."

We are becoming a visually nomadic people, hunting and gathering information. For better and for worse, once insurpassable boundaries no longer exist to the same degree. Without traditional boundaries to define our own place, it becomes more difficult to nourish a sense of home and personal space. We must define it, then, in mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical terms.

Even in these cyber-sensitive days, the most basic indicators of place are linked to our senses: light, color, the layout of the structure or land and placement of our belongings, aromas, and plant life all influence us in vital ways. For that reason, the type of lighting we choose for home and office, our sense of placement and physical space, and our use of sense-based aids like aromatherapy are tools we can use to create and define more nurturing personal spaces.

Physical Responses to Light and Color
Photobiologist Jacob Liberman, in his book Light: Medicine of the Future, notes that "color appears to describe life itself, evoking inner feelings, memories, and responses. It has a power and language of its own, which, when communicated as energy, can excite, sedate, balance, motivate." Just as fundamentally as night and the colors of the day affect our inner body clock and its regulation of vital hormones, so do the type of light and the spectrum of color we receive have a profound effect on our physical and mental well-being. Evidence from studies conducted by Dr. John Ott and Jacob Liberman suggest that the eyes are not merely for vision alone, but are actual extensions of the brain and receptors of light for the vital functioning of our body’s nervous and endocrine systems.

Light enters the body through the eyes and goes through the hypothalamus to the pineal gland where hormonal messages are then sent to the rest of the body. The pineal structures our body’s relationship to the environment by keeping tabs on the amount of available daylight and the change of the seasons, preparing us for onslaughts of heat or cold. Ott has argued that, by spending almost all of our time indoors under artificial lights, we weaken our connection to nature and may suffer from "malillumination." That’s because most typical lightbulbs, even cool white fluorescents, have a Color Rendering Index (CRI) of 68, compared with the sun which has a CRI of 100. The color rendering index refers to the effect of a light source on the color appearance of objects, their richness and vibrancy or relative flatness. Cool white fluorescents burn hottest in the yellow zone of the rainbow of light, denying us most of the blue and green wavelengths and eliminating what Ott describes as beneficial levels of ultraviolet (UV) and infared light.

UV light has three classifications: near, mid, and far. While near-UV, or UVA rays are responsible for the tanning response, mid-UV, or UVB rays "seem to activate the synthesis of vitamin D and the absorption of calcium and other minerals. Far-UV — mostly filtered out by the earth’s ozone layer — is germicidal, killing bacteria, viruses, and other infectious agents," says Carla Cassata in "Light: The Ignored Nutrient" as published in Let’s Live, March 1994. From this perspective then, most of the lighting in schools, offices, and homes leaves us malnourished.

Full spectrum lights, the types of light that most closely approximate sunlight, are those which have a CRI of 90 or above and a correlated color temperature, measuring how hot the light burns, ranging from 5,000 to 7,500 degrees Kelvin or candles of light. Vita-lites, spectralites and chromalux incandescents are considered full spectrum lights. "This type of light grants improved visual acuity and better color matching. It’s easier to read under because by increasing the balance of spectral quality, you see black and white better," emphasizes full spectrum lighting specialist Mary Okumura, Chicago representative of Vitality Concepts, Inc.

The most optimum situation for any household are well-placed windows which allow you to rely primarily on natural light. It’s important to weigh factors of health, light sufficiency, and energy efficiency when making lighting decisions. The Sun Pipe Company in Northbrook, IL can also help, provided you have your own roof. "The Sun Pipe" is a 13-inch diameter tube that is installed through the roof and covered with a clear plastic dome. It collects natural light, reflects it down, and diffuses it on your ceiling, bathing the room in natural light," says Peter Beckman of Light Source in Evanston.

From the warm red and yellow tones of light that bathe and awaken us in the morning to the cool tones of violet and indigo of an evening sky that sings us to sleep, our bodies take their cues for activity and rest from light and color. Depending on which end of the spectrum most nourishes us then, we can determine how to light and color our personal space.

The Art of Placement
A more personal way to monitor and experience one’s sense of place is through feng shui, the Chinese art of placement. Feng shui is the practice of arranging space so that chi, or life energy, can flow smoothly. The main tool of feng shui practitioners is a Ba-gua, somewhat akin to a mandala of energy. Shaped like an octagon, it has eight angles or corners through which to focus energy in a particular way. Placement of the Ba-gua is individual to each home and is typically lined up according to the main door of the house or room where chi enters. The Ba-gua is then used as a sort of map through which to look at one’s space and identify which areas need help.

Generally, one’s career corner is in the north. Circling around to the east, the chi moves through areas of energy related to knowledge, family, wealth, fame, partnership, children, and finally, helpful people. Earth and health energies are in the center of a space, wherein rests the culmination of all things. In feng shui, each area also has color, elemental, and physical associations. Family, for example, is associated with green, the element of wood, and feet.

The result of careful, educated placement should be a coherent sense of place in which energy, colors and light move freely, where it simply feels good no matter where you are. Whether the concepts behind feng shui are exciting to you or not, however, simply focusing that much personal energy and consciousness on every aspect of one’s home can serve to enhance ideas, goals, and relationship — creating a truly supportive nest for anybody.

Aromatherapy
Many people think aromatherapy was created by shampoo and bodycare manufacturers, but the concept dates back more than 4,000 years to aromatic medicinal practices in Egypt and India. The Egyptians created massage oils, medicines, embalming preparations, fragrant perfumes, and cosmetics with aromatic plants. Throughout the Middle and Dark Ages, people in Persia, Greece, Rome, China, and Europe kept aromatics alive in similar ways.

Twentieth century approaches to aromatherapy stem from the experience of French cosmetic chemist R.M. Gattefosse in the 1920s. After burning his hand in a laboratory accident, he thrust it into the nearest available cool liquid, a vat of lavender oil. Noting that his hand healed quickly with little pain or scarring, Gattefosse went on to spend the rest of his life studying aromatic plants and their benefits. Today, aromatherapy and flower essences are gaining in popularity and are being prescribed more and more for healing purposes as well as ways to enhance or purify the air.

Aromatherapy uses pure, all natural essential oils. These essential oils are what give plants their fragrance. Most oils are steam distilled from plants, while others are expressed from the rind of the fruit. Only 20 percent of flowering plants have extractable essential oils. Essential oils contain hundreds of organic constituents, including hormones, vitamins, and other natural elements.

You can bring essential oils to a room in a couple of different ways. You can use heat to evaporate the oil by adding a few drops to boiling water or using an aromatherapy diffuser. You can create a room spray by mixing eight to ten drops of oil in a cup of water in a spray mist bottle, or simply add a few drops to the corner of a pillowcase or handkerchief.

A few examples for creating a relaxing environment include clary sage, which has warming and euphoric properties and can be used either in the bath or as a diffuser. Basil is clarifying and uplifting and can be used to strengthen, tonify, and refresh. Cedarwood harmonizes and releases aggression, and Eucalyptus can be very emotionally healing and balancing as well.

The aromas we smell also affect our experience of places and events and can be used to influence our state of being. Smells that are consistent with various places can become pleasantly familiar, pleasing, and something that the body anticipates and responds to in positive ways. For example, if you have frequented an ashram where sandalwood incense is always burning, your body will begin to associate that scent with meditation and the relaxed sensation of a good yoga asana. Just walking through the door and into the scent of sandalwood can begin to relax the body and focus the breath.

Even if it’s the smell of your favorite pasta sauce simmering, it’s easy to enhance your personal space with aromatherapy. Beloved smells that key you into positive memories and experience can be all the difference you need.

The Common Denominator
Places change, wither, die, and grow up again. The way we experience them, however, depends upon how we define and choose to see them. For that reason, your sense of place depends upon you. It is bound to contain, for your benefit or detriment, what you carry with you from home, through traffic, on the train, to work, to the store, to the club, to a playful outing, and home again. Tools can only assist you in making changes of your choosing. You are the determining factor, the common denominator. And though I offer here some new and alternative tools, the old saw remains true: home is what you make it.

Resources
Carla Cassata, Iridologist "Light: The Ignored Nutrient," Let’s Live, March 1994

Jacob Liberman, OD, Ph.D., Light: Medicine of the Future, Bear & Company, 1991

Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford Univ. Press, 1985

John Ott, Sc.D., "Color and Light: Their Effects on Plants, Animals and People," The International Journal of Biosocial Research, Vol. 7, 1985

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