AHN NEWS: August - September 2007

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August and September 2007: AHN NEWS

This issue of AHN News is dedicated to CREATING HEALING ENVIRONMENTS. I interview Traci Teraoka and Kate Strasburg about their work in designing both spaces and publications for healing. I also review the Healing Environment's publication on Healing Elements of Design, and the book, Spirit and Place. This issue's featured links are RxArt and the Center for Health Design. You can also find here a featured Connection Center post and readers' responses to the June/July issue of AHN News.

Those of you who have been following AHN News for a while may recall that we also did an issue on this theme in December 2004, and I invite you to take a look at that past issue in our archive. It features a nice interview with the Suite Dreams Project.

May this current issue inspire you to create the best environment for your health and well-being.

Many well wishes,
Mary Daniel Hobson, Director, Arts & Healing Network

AHN INTERVIEW: Kate Strasburg and Traci Teraoka, Co-Directors of Healing Environments

"We hope to help patients and caregivers transcend their pain by connecting to the universal through the power of beauty, meaning and art." –Traci Teraoka

Traci Teraoka and Kate strasburg For fourteen years, Kate Strasburg and Traci Teraoka have been using their gifts with design to help ease the suffering of those going through health crises or major life transitions. Their nonprofit, called Healing Environments produces free publications of incredible quality and design that uplift the spirit. Titled A Light in the Mist, each issue addresses a different topic such as memoir, transformation, story, music and more. You can find them all archived on their web site at www.healingenvironments.org. They also have applied their gifts with design to creating healing spaces at hospices, homes and their own office space in San Francisco, CA. Mary Daniel Hobson interviewed them in July 2007 about their inspiring and beautiful work.

Mary Daniel Hobson: Tell me a little about how Healing Environments got started?

Kate Strasburg: Traci and I met fourteen years ago. I was going through a divorce, and she was managing an antiques store. We connected immediately over our love of design and its healing potential. I was furnishing a ski condo and trying to infuse it with a sense of stability, history, and transcendence. Traci got it. Together we picked out antiques, art, and even books from the library of a French convent in Carcasonne. We found the experience so amazing that we vowed over coffee one morning that we wanted to use our love of design to heal. I had lost a large number of people to cancer, and Traci, being a good deal younger, was concerned with the AIDS community. We started with a showcase of our ideas in Palo Alto, CA. A year later, we met Sam Smidt and started our publication, A Light in the Mist, as a way of increasing our impact. It's been a long and magical association. We believe if one is clear about the desire to do good, the pieces will fall into place. Aristotle once said that mission is where passion and the world's need intersect. I think Traci, Sam, and I have been incredibly, richly blessed in that we have found that intersection that feeds our souls.

Mary Daniel: What does a "healing environment" mean to you? What are some of the key ingredients?

Traci Teraoka: It all stems from our mission - we hope to help patients and caregivers transcend their pain by connecting to the universal through the power of beauty, meaning and art. Kate and I believe that a room or environment can help sustain us in difficult times. It is not enough to create a beautiful room. It is much more about how the many elements of light, comfort, qualities of life and art meet together to create support for those who need and use the space. The environment itself does not heal, but enables the person or people within to discover their own power and ability to cope with suffering.

A healing environment can take many shapes and forms. Let's use an example of a comfortable room – furniture that makes you feel at ease and physically supported, and then add expressions of art and nature. The content should be thoughtful, considerate and respectful of those using the room. Or perhaps the healing environment is in the form of a journal like, A Light in the Mist, where the pages and words inside provide meaningful content and design, not to mention information about powerful healing tools and even interactive worksheets.

Our goal is to help relieve suffering by empowering those with life threatening crises with tools that provide a level of comfort to disarm the impersonal situations encountered in the healthcare system. I read once that illness is usually less than 5-10% of our physical body, and yet it often becomes who we are. After diagnosis, appointments and treatments, patients often feeling a huge loss of connection to who they are, and even their loved ones often see them as their illness. This leads to passivity, resentment and anger. None of which lead to good health and relationships. If we feel supported in our environment and in our relationships, then we find the energy, strength, courage and determination to handle situations as best we can.

Mary Daniel: Your own Healing Environments office space sounds wonderful, replete with an art gallery, meditation room, library, and sandtray room. Tell me more about it and its transformative impact.

Traci: Yes our office space is a lot more than office space. From the beginning in 1994, we felt that the office - no matter the size – could be more than an office. It could provide a blank canvas to demonstrate what a healing environment might feel like - examples of the many elements and tools that we describe in our work. It includes a resource library filled with books about spirituality, wellness, creativity, design and medicine. There is also a wonderful Jungian sandtray room to explore. An unusual quality about encountering our office is that nothing is for sale. There is often a sense of relief from visitors that the usual retail experience has been suspended. Instead there is room to relax, browse and be curious.

For example, one day, an elderly woman walked by our office and paused to peek in the window. I invited her in to let her look at things more closely. As she began to tell me her story it was clear that she was depressed and angry. Her husband had died earlier in the year, and her hip replacement surgery had just been postponed. She was advised by her physician to seek "retail therapy." As I began to share with her our work, she became interested in our journal, A Light in the Mist. She was intrigued by our style and content, and then something magical occurred. Violet remembered the first poem she had ever memorized in her life. Through each of the rooms of Healing Environments she became increasingly more curious and at the same time she remembered more and more of this poem. By the time she left, perhaps twenty minutes later, her countenance had radically shifted. She was empowered by remembering this beautiful poem, and had decided that she needed it with her at home and when she went to the hospital for her operation. She left recharged by her own connection to meaning and beauty. That is ultimately the power that we all have within us. The challenge is to find a place externally and/or internally that enables those shifts to occur.

Mary Daniel: Tell me about another healing environment you have created.

Traci: Another was at Maitri, a residential care facility for people living with AIDS. On our first visit, Kate and I walked into a San Francisco Victorian expecting to meet the Executive Director of this ten year-old AIDS hospice. We were greeted instead by a young man who was lying comfortably on a six-foot sofa in a bay window filled with sunlight. He was extremely thin and worn from disabling AIDS. Yet, he welcomed us into Maitri, and asked if there was anything we needed. It was surprising to witness such illness, and yet be greeted in such a way that made us feel at home. My interest in Maitri grew to the point that in 1997, we donated nearly all of the furniture for their fifteen bedrooms, two living rooms and a dining room. We planted a garden with the help of volunteers – now the garden is one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen, and the residents tend to it. It is a remarkable place.

Mary Daniel: Your publication, A Light in the Mist, is so beautifully conceived and designed. How did you develop this sense of healing design?

Kate: Traci and I cannot take credit for the design of A Light in the Mist, although we have certainly had a lot of input. Our graphic designer Sam Smidt is one of the best in the San Francisco Bay Area. At seventy-seven, Sam has a lifetime of accomplishment behind him, and yet feels that nothing has fed his soul as much as his work for Healing Environments. We first met Sam in 1995. Within ten minutes of meeting us, Sam announced, "I get it. You're all about transformation." We say that Sam gives form to our vision. He has both a clear framework and a boundless sense of innovation. He has succeeded in healing our readers with his soothing sense of design. One hospice worker wrote that finding our materials was like discovering a secret garden with nourishment for her soul.

Mary Daniel: Who is the main audience for A Light in Mist? How does someone get a copy of this inspirational publication?

Kate: I am happy to say that A Light in the Mist has almost universal appeal. Although our formal mission is to relieve the suffering of the seriously ill and their families and caregivers, the truth is that life is an endless struggle of challenges and losses. We have purposely tried to break down the artificial barrier between the healthy and unhealthy. We are all dying. We are all dealing with loss. We all struggle to muddle through this journey we call life. And above all, we are all searching for meaning. The hospice and hospital communities love us, but so do artists and writers, clergy and therapists, professors and philosophers, and anyone who has lost someone or is afraid of losing someone. In short, almost everyone. Simply said, we speak to the human condition.

We send our publications free of charge to forty-nine states and ten foreign countries. Anyone can be put on the mailing list or receive specific issues by visiting our web site where they are all archived -- www.healingenvironments.org.

Mary Daniel: Do you believe art can heal? And if so, how?

Kate: Yes, we believe art can heal in many ways. First of all, we feel that beauty in one's surroundings can relieve suffering by placing it in a larger context. For example, if one is in a sterile hospital room, with no beauty to focus upon, one is left only with the reality of one's pain and suffering. If on the other hand, one can look at a beautiful landscape photograph, or an arrangement of shells, one can feel transported and transcend one's immediate circumstances. Beauty and art also dignify experience. A patient in a beautiful room filled with art feels that his soul is being cared for as well as his body. Design from the heart speaks to the heart.

The experience of creating art is healing as well. By writing or creating art out of one's pain, that experience is dignified and elevated from the merely sad to the arena of universal human experience. In this universality, we overcome isolation, which so magnifies suffering. In sharing our experience we are both healing and healed.

Mary Daniel: How do you sustain the great work you are doing...emotionally, creatively, and financially?

Kate: First, we accept that there will be a natural ebb and flow in our creativity. If a project fails to excite us, we set it aside and work on what does excite us. We have also matched our creations to our natural rhythms. We are sprinters, not long distance runners. We recognize that our optimal rate of production is three to four projects a year. We need to "birth" a project every few months to keep ourselves fueled.

books Second, we always honor what we are going through emotionally. We start each meeting with an emotional check-in – "What's up for you?" We acknowledge our personal crises instead of sweeping them under the carpet. Sometimes acknowledging them results inour best work. For example, the children's issue was a response to a great deal of heavy grieving that Traci was doing over the death of a good friend's baby. It is this honoring of what is real that makes our work strong and authentic.

Third, we are closet mystics. We believe we are being led in our work. We do not take credit for the work. We are merely the pipelines. The work is coming through us to serve others. We never search for design jobs. They come to us. We jokingly refer to our editorial committee in the sky. Only we're not joking. A sense of mystery and infinite possibility fuels our own work.

Fourth, we have been able to make our work living, evolving, and organic. Within the framework of our mission, we are always trying new formats, new subjects. We never repeat ourselves. For a long time we stayed with a monochromatic color scheme, but now with the little booklets we have branched into color.

Fifth, another key to our success is autonomy and honoring one another's boundaries. The result is that almost all of our energy is used creatively. There are none of the political, competitive, emotional hassles in most organizations. We give each other as much free rein as possible. We each have our own territory. We make suggestions to each other, but honor each other's process. We brainstorm, but do not try to design by committee. We have purposely stayed small to remain flexible and autonomous.

Art Studio Sixth, what should appear atthe beginning of this discussion, rather than the end, is that what really keeps us going, both emotionally and creatively is the feedback we get from the people we help. For example, there was an American Cancer Society counselor who called us from Appalachia to tell us that a young mother of five who was dying of cancer and so poor that her family feared they couldn't bury her, when she was give our memoir issue cried, "This is free?! This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" Several times a week, we receive touching emails of how our work is helping people all over the country deal with personal tragedy. THAT is what keeps us going! We feel incredibly blessed to have this work to do.

Lastly, our least favorite topic is finances. We prefer to believe in the parable of the loaves and the fishes - that miraculously there will always be enough. As a private operating foundation, we have been blessed with a source of independent funding. As a tax deductible nonprofit, we have also been blessed by thousands of donations from readers and a few unsolicited grants from foundations. But as our publications have increased in length and cost, we have had to face the limitations of our funding, and sadly tighten our mailing list from twelve thousand to about four thousand faithful readers. The wide enthusiasm for our smaller booklets (hospices and hospitals have been ordering them by the hundreds) have led us to dream of additional funding which would enable us to supply them to more of the country's facilities. Happily they are very inexpensive to produce and their benefit far outweighs their cost.

Mary Daniel: What advice do you have for anyone who would like to create their own "healing environment"?

Traci: First, consider what are the resources in your own life that you use to comfort, relax, excite and inspire you. Then look at your space - your home or your room - and begin simply by looking at what you encounter. If you are met with a welcoming room that invites you in and provides a place to put your things and get settled in - you internally read that you can make yourself at home. Too often our space becomes a reaction to our busy lives. I would encourage the use of music, colors and imagery that best motivate that person. Sometimes you need to clean up – let go and re-access what the purpose is of our "living room" or how we really intend to use the dining room. Many years ago I had a woman who left Healing Environments and went home, talked to her husband and decided that their dining room just took up a lot of room and didn't fit their lifestyle. So, she painted it a terracotta color and changed it into her little-bit-of-the-Mediterranian room. Another simple and very effective change was the patient who wanted to have more connection to nature and see the moon, so they moved her bed where she had a view of the moon. Sometimes the best ideas are the most simple.

To learn more about Healing Environments, please visit their web site at www.healingenvironments.org.

FEATURED PUBLICATION:

Healing Elements of Design: Creating Transcendent Meaning

By Healing Environments

Opening this volume feels like stepping into a sacred space. The slipcover yields two beautifully designed softcover books – one a workbook, the other a book of inspirational quotes, imagery and articles. The latter begins with letters from each of the co-directors of Healing Environments, followed by short chapters each dedicated to a healing element of design, such as love, memory, meaning, faith, healing art, intention, music, and more. It concludes in color with a tour of the original Healing Environments space in Palo Alto, CA full of lovely photographs. The workbook is a tool to help "Create A Personal Haven," "Support Someone Who is IIl," and transform a healthcare setting. The workbook includes lots of empty space in which to write one's answers to questions like "Which pieces of art best reflect who I am?" and "How can you use your physical surroundings to return you to your essence?" Together both books form a fabulous guide for transforming any space into a healing environment.

Healing Elements of Design is part of A Light in the Mist, A Healing Environments Publication, Volume 10, Number 2, 2005. To receive a free copy or view portions of the book online, please visit www.healingenvironments.org.

Below is an excerpt from this book - a condensed version of an essay written by Kate Strasburg that outlines how one might begin creating a healing environment for a patient or a friend or family member who is ill.

1) Seek to ground the patient in the world at large. Use natural materials such as wood, stone, and slate to connect the patient to the outside world. Introduce nature itself in the form of living plants, running water, and beautiful orchids. Incorporate natural lighting and provide access to fresh air through skylights, courtyards, and atriums. Appeal to all five senses through light, color, texture, music, comfort foods, and natural light and scent. Include items with age (antiques) and handcrafted artifacts to place patients in a larger context of time.
Comfort patients with the essence of home: comfortable furniture, coffee, and access to kitchens.

2) Offer the option of transcendence (especially important for the patient whose life is threatened and for his or her loved ones). Create special and easily accessible places for prayer and meditation. Keep a sense of mystery, of that which we cannot know. There is comfort in the concept that man is not the measure of all things. Incorporate icons and symbols of transcendence. Avoid the denominational and seek the universal. Attempt through symbols to transcend both time and space.

3) Counteract the sense of disempowerment and loss of identity which often accompanies serious illness. Where possible offer choice (bed linens? art for bedroom walls?). Encourage self-expression (make an art studio and sandtray room available). Incorporate in each patient's room a means of expressing and celebrating his individuality (a locked display case? a frame on the door for a photograph and bio?). Offer easily accessible patient libraries for medical information regarding treatment. Replace the ubiquitous TV with a DVD player, and consider individual CD players with earphones.

4) Attempt to place the patient's experience in a context that may give it meaning, thereby reducing suffering. Where possible offer healing, as opposed to merely decorative art. Healing art is art which relates to the depth of the patient's experience, rather than glossing over it. Consider the healing power of literature. Incorporate inspiring quotes and poetry. Avoid minimalism and replace it with a rich layering of detail.

5) Consider the well-being of the patient, the family and the medical staff to be inseparable - they form a triumvirate and each effects the other. Offer all three populations means of self-expression, avenues for grieving and inspiration for healing. Make waiting rooms and examining rooms as healing as individual patient rooms.

FEATURED BOOK:

Spirit and Place

By Christopher Day

Spirit & Place Cover

"This book is quite simply about how to make the world a better place through better buildings…It tells us how we can all step beyond the ego to the eco, from the sustaining to the sustainable, to the healthy, healing, life-enhancing buildings that nourish the spirit and repair community. Using the elements of light, water, earth, warmth, and air, Christopher leads us gently through ways of shaping space, light and heat, and our own human endeavor, to create beautiful buildings." –Sue Roaf, from the foreword in Spirit and Place

Spirit and Place delves deeply into the topic of architecture and creating healing environments from the ground up. The author has a keen sensitivity to nature, ecology, and green building principles, as well as an attunement to the psychological and health impacts of design. The book is structured in three parts – "Issues for the 21st Century" which explores the unique challenges of our time; "People, Places and Process" which investigates how people physically engage with space; and "Building to Heal" which addresses environment and health and healing by design. It is quite detailed and offers insights for the professional architect as well as the everyday person seeking insights on how to create healing through design. This 253-page softcover book is well-illustrated with both color and black and white photographs and drawings. It was published in 2002 by Elsevier Butterworth-Heineman in Oxford.

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