If This Space Chills, So Can Yours

Hi, do you know where I'm standing? It's the new miracle on 34th Street in Manhattan: Amtrak's Penn Station, or Moynihan Train Hall as it's officially known. If you're familiar with the old Penn Station across the street, you'll appreciate my comparison of this space to that one as 'heaven and hell.' Unlike the hot, windowless, low-ceilinged station that New Yorkers dreaded going to for the past 50 years, this new Penn Station immediately welcomes you with a bright, refreshing calmness that makes it - dare I say - a place you look forward to being.

“Why aren’t we recreating what our body was meant to be in, which is the outdoors?”

The spaces we live, work, play, and travel in have a significant impact on mood, stress levels, and productivity. So, all aboard for this issue of The Chill Factory newsletter, where Caitlin Wolff , a Social Spaces Specialist from the global furniture maker Haworth, offers these cool tips for curating our indoor environments to help us feel calm. Caitlin was my guest way back on episode 5 of The Chill Factory podcast, titled "Designing Calming Spaces," and she elaborates on all of these points and more in that episode:

• Light your spaces properly so you don't have to strain when looking at devices and print.
• Get natural light, especially in the morning, to boost your energy and mood.
• Create multiple spaces to retreat to for that outside light, breaks and a change of scenery.
• Color your indoor environments with neutral and calming beiges, blues, greens and whites—the colors in nature.
• Embrace biophilia by adding scents from nature in your space such as flowers, house plants, herbs, grasses and wood.

"Providing psychological safety in a space is very important."

There's a name for that pleasant feeling you experience when you enter a visually pleasing room. It's called legible space, and in this audio clip, Caitlin explains how it influences our behavior in restaurants and other environments:

Listen to the full podcast episode here:

Speaking of trains, enjoy your journeys if you're traveling during this vacation season! This fall, watch out for new episodes of The Chill Factory podcast, and follow the show wherever you listen so you'll be notified when they're available.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jordan

Every day, we post a Chillenge on The Chill Factory app to build stress reduction habits for life. As a newsletter subscriber, you also get a free subscription to The Chill Factory app and its hundreds of rapid relaxers during 2023. Just download The Chill Factory from the?App Store?or?Google Play?and enter the password?newslet523?when prompted.

Let's talk about how our chill factory of stress and anxiety reducers can help your colleagues, students, clients and you. We've got speaker sessions, one-to-one coaching, chill apps customizable with your branding and resources, student mental health programs, courses that train you how to teach stress reduction techniques and much more. Learn more or message me here.