4 minute read
Room to Breathe
KRISTINA LJUBANOVIC TRAINED AS AN ARCHITECT BEFORE BECOMING A GLOBE AND MAIL COLUMNIST AND WHITMAN EMORSON’S STRATEGY DIRECTOR.
CAROLYN PLATER IS A PSYCHOTHERAPIST, AN EDUCATOR AND THE CO-OWNER OF THE TORONTO WELLNESS CENTRE HOAME.
Q: It is amazing to me that in 2018, emergency rooms are seeing an uptick in visits triggered by stress and anxiety. How do you—along with your partner, Stephanie Kersta, who is also a psychotherapist— understand this stress surge? And how does Hoame, your new 5,000-square-foot meditation and wellness centre, address these issues? / À mon grand étonnement, le nombre de consultations en urgence pour des problèmes de stress et d’anxiété est à la hausse en 2018. Comment vous et Stephanie
A: Stephanie and I started working together at an addiction clinic almost 10 years ago. We hit it off and later opened a private psychotherapy practice together. More recently, we were asking ourselves how we could bring what we were already doing clinically into a modern, accessible setting. We were both involved in crisis work, which is so reactionary; it’s waiting until life is falling apart before we help. So we asked: How do we keep people well? How can we offer preventative support so that it’s cool and fun and you actually want to come in and take care of yourself ? But we’re always fuelled by the science. That’s what drives what we’re offering to our clients.
Q: I have to ask: When it comes to meditation and mindfulness, where’s the science? These practices are gaining credibility, but I’m not sure they are quite yet mainstream in the medical establishment.
A: The reason I started offering meditative practice was because I work with a lot of clients with anxiety; it was to help them clinically. Then I did my yoga teacher training as well—not to teach yoga but to teach people how to breathe. Because that’s really what we do in the ER when someone comes in with a panic attack. There are studies that show that breath work and breathing practice is faster than giving patients medication to temper their anxiety.
Q: Having studied architecture and having worked in environmental design, I believe strongly in the power of space to shape the way we feel. This effect can be particularly profound when it comes to unwell people: I’ve read that in a clinical setting, plant life or access to nature and sunlight can speed the healing process. In creating Hoame, how did you design the spaces to facilitate wellness?
A: We wanted to bring meditation to the masses. But we know that there are people who are skeptical about meditation, so a big thing was to bring people in with wow inducing rooms. The first two spaces we designed were the meditation rooms: a light room and a dark room. The light room, for example, has this cut in the ceiling and blue uplighting that really mimics the open sky— something we often don’t get to see in the city. We also created a living wall. It’s a preserved moss wall with leaves and vines that hang down, and it emits an earthy smell. Studies have shown that being outside can have a distinct impact on mood, so we tried to evoke the outdoors and nature, allowing people to be around plants. All the rooms really speak to our need to remove some of the distractions of modern-day living, our need to be closer to nature.
Q: Another factor that we know contributes to wellness is social connectedness. I’m reminded of Dan Buettner’s book, The Blue Zones, which looks at centenarians around the world and determines that one of the factors contributing to their longevity is their involvement in community.
A: Yes. Studies show that one indicator of longevity is the relationships that you build with the people around you. This is really big for us. We don’t want you to just come to a class and leave. We want you to hang out here. The whole space has been designed as an experience that you can enjoy with somebody else.
Q: A lot of the issues we’re talking about seem to be particular to an urban environment. Is city living fundamentally unhealthy?
A: It’s about lifestyle. It’s how we live more than where we live. Noise pollution has an impact on our longevity; being constantly plugged in has a massive impact too. If I hook your brain up to an MRI machine and look at what happens when you’re looking at your phone or when you’re on social media, I’ll see distinct brain changes.
Q: Certainly. And it’s not just social media that’s pervasive: Work has become harder to escape than ever. According to StatsCan’s most recent General Social Survey, a growing number of Canadians feel that technology interferes with other aspects of life; the proportion of Canadians happy with their work-life balance continues to decline steadily.
A: We were shocked to learn that by 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability in the workplace. Depression in the workplace costs Canada $20 billion a year in lost productivity! The fact is, from a business perspective, it’s actually cheaper to keep people well than it is to wait until their health falls apart. It’s awful that people say “I’m working a 100- hour week” as if it’s a badge of honour. We have a culture that celebrates overworking. No one turns anything off anymore.
Q: These problems aren’t limited to the adult working population. Children are increasingly competing with devices for their parents’ attention, and young people seem more stressed out than ever.
A: Most of my clinical practice is adolescents and children. I have kids I see in my office who are 10 or 11 years old and stressed about how they’re going to afford a home or gas for their car. These are the things that are seeping in. But there are studies that show that mindful practice in youth increases resilience to stresses later in life. In my practice, I’ll lead kids through fun breathing and grounding activities. I don’t call it meditation necessarily, but it’s getting them in touch with themselves and presentfocused. There’s something to that too: not just focusing on the later outcomes but working with kids to—hopefully, in the long term—create a big paradigm shift.
BY KRISTINA LJUBANOVIC
