Place-Based Healing
Architectural Digest
Full healing can only happen in the context of a specific place as healthy connections are intentionally restored at every level: mind, body, spirit—individually, communally, & within the natural world.
It is nearly impossible for an individual to flourish in a traumatized system.
How can your body be healthy when there isn’t nutrient-rich soil to grow healthy food for you to eat?
How can you feel secure when you know you have neighbors who are desperate to cover their survival needs?
How can you feel like you have each other’s backs when you don’t know your neighbors?
This list could go on and on…
But place-based, embodied, systemic flourishing, looks to design environments that promote a flow toward healing and flourishing for all.
Think about it like the difference between sticking a monkey in a small metal cage in a zoo, versus the habitats Jane Goodall helps create for primates now. What if we turned the same kind of attention and care to making habitats for our own species to thrive in?
What would a human habitat look like that was designed for our thriving?
Healing literally means making whole. Wholing, we could say.
Flourishing goes hand in hand with healing because flourishing boils down to being fully connected and whole.
An organism is flourishing when it is alive, fully functioning, and whole; able to connect meaningfully to itself, others, and the natural world in the present moment, most of the time.
In short:
flourishing = connected
trauma = disconnected
We all suffer from trauma & inherited trauma. (You can listen to a fantastic podcast on our collective & inherited trauma in Krista Tippett’s interview with Resmaa Menakem.) Trauma, from the Greek root, simply means an unhealed wound.
Dr. Gabor Maté explains that trauma is not an event that happens to us but what happens inside us when we disconnect from our ability to feel, be present, and respond flexibly to situations.
Healing, Trauma, & Place
Our towns are organisms, too. The question is: Is my town a place of healing or of trauma?
Our built environments are a physical manifestation of our collective subconscious. It’s like our invisible beliefs calcify, crystalize into our towns like the hard shell forms around a squishy oyster.
It’s pretty easy to see how the places we live in today are embodiments of our Machine Age. They literally look like computer chips.
Suburbia, USA
Mumbai, India
A Disconnected/Machine World
This kind of Disconnected/Machine World believes in homogeneity, domination, separation, & exploitation. It’s a monoculture. It creates the same problems as monocropping in agriculture:
Unsustainable land use
Fosters isolation, loneliness, injustice
Requires more infrastructure
Requires more transportation
Centralized & spread out resources make large systems vulnerable
People are disconnected from nature & natural exercise
Homogeneity makes it boring & fragile, lose value, lacks personality
Do you see how the separation is a result of and perpetuates collective trauma?
The alternative is an Integrated/Living World…
Giuseppe Nucci
A Connected/Living World
People who build/built places like the one pictured above have inherent beliefs and values of diversity, harmony, peace, & integration. Places like the village above are like permaculture & regenerative agriculture version of a community for people:
Much more sustainable land use
Fosters connection & flourishing
Requires less infrastructure
Requires less transportation
Decentralized resources make all systems more resilient
People are connected with nature & natural exercise
Diversity makes uniqueness & resilience, builds value, attracts tourism
Flourishing places center questions like:
What do the people here need to flourish?
What does the ecosystem here need to flourish?
How can we design systems that get the entire job done?
Would I be willing to step into the life of any person here despite their race, gender, sexual orientation, wealth, age, etc.?
Can everyone play? Does everyone have the time, energy, resources, and emotional safety to be able to play and enjoy life?
How can we do things more beautifully?
Does everyone feel heard?
What is most unique and beautiful about this place? How do we release/develop that more?
Given the granularity at which we now understand what our minds, bodies, spirits, communities, and ecology need to flourish we can design environments and systems to support that flourishing better than ever before.
“When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
— Alexander Den Heijer
