Ever wonder why great architecture like Notre Dame Cathedral makes your spirit soar and bad architecture can make you feel sick? Dr. Esther Sternberg, a former member of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) says that built environments can be built to soothe and calm or unintentionally create a stress response. Dr. Sternberg is author of, Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being. In her bestselling book, she describes how the brain registers sensations through sight, sound, touch – and how elements of architecture like natural light, materials, nature, and silence have an impact on the human psyche. Her work has largely been used for creating hospitals that promote healing and remove the stress of being a patient.

“Stress can make you sick,” she says. “If you want to design a hospital, you want to remove barriers that might trigger the stress response.” She says that hospitals were some of the first to embrace the link between design and well-being. Some architects are using the findings to encourage developers of offices and other buildings to consider the broader impact of their built spaces. “Designers create their works through intuition,” says Dr. Sternberg. “I’m not advocating they stop. But understanding the physical elements can inform them and help them to design for health.”

The TKF Foundation works to promote sacred spaces. Its “Opens Spaces, Sacred Places” programs contribute to creating outdoor spaces to help people connect more with nature as a way to reduce stress. “In a time when modern man is more and more surrounded by the built world, beset by ever increasing stress and overwhelmed by technology, the need for open, sacred places in nature is more important than ever. Every neighborhood needs a Walden Pond in their back yard, a place where people can be in nature and reconnect to themselves, to the land, and to each other,” the foundation says. Its park benches, labyrinths, gardens in cities and prisons have contributed to transforming lives across the country. It attests to the positive power of drawing closer to the earth and appreciating the natural environment. Now that spring is close, check out what good environments, built or natural, inspire your soul.

Bio: Debra Moffitt is author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life. A visionary, dreamer and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices at the Sophia Institute and other venues in the U.S. and Europe. Her mind/body/spirit articles, essays and stories appear in publications around the globe and were broadcast by BBC World Services Radio. She has spent over fifteen years practicing meditation, working with dreams and doing spiritual practices. Visit her online at http://www.awakeintheworld.com.