OPO wellness content for hotels and real estate developments

wellness tech content for office workplaces, hotels, resorts and real estate developments with Chris Connors of OPO

Welcome to episode 062 of the Green & Healthy Place podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality today.

In this episode I’m in Ibiza talking to Chris Connors, Founder and Creative Director of OPO, a wellness tech studio applying the principles of mindfulness to daily life via psycho-acoustics, neuro-aesthetics and awareness practices. 

Belfast-born Chris is a psychotherapist, leadership coach and master in zen meditation. He has previously created projects for the likes of Prada, LVMH, Nike, Aesop, Kering and Net a Porter. 

Amongst other things, we discuss everything from their nature-based mindfulness portals scattered around various mixed-used developments in London, their multi-sensory recharge room in a coworking office and the meditative moments they create during the guest journey for luxury resorts and hotels.

https://www.opo.world/

https://www.instagram.com/opo.app/?hl=en

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Matt Morley

I wanted to start with context around what you saw as the initial opportunity for creating a wellness technology business working with mixed-use real estate, office and hotel brands. There's a lot of movement in the ‘well tech’ space right now but clearly, you felt there was a combination of talent, skill and potentially funding on your side to go fill that gap?

Chris Connors

I've been in this in the world of mindfulness for 23 years now. I started training in Japan with many different monasteries and monks. I spent many months on retreat there, and started to really understand deeply what was going on.

You might hear from my accent, I actually come from Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and grew up in a very adverse place, and found that meditation had a strong impact on my mental health. At that time, of course, I didn't have any science to support anything that was going on, it was a very intuitive experience. So at that point, I realised what a strong benefit it was having for me.

Fast forward into I guess, 2014 - 2015 when I started to see this emerging trend coming, the work that I had been doing, which actually had been very secretive, or discreet - back then people didn't talk about things like mindfulness and sound healing. And these kinds of words, were certainly banished to far away places.

Meditation in daily life

I started to create a little website called on modern consciousness which caught the eye of a lot of experts. And it was really about how you could bring meditation into daily life through design or objects or spaces. And in that early time, I there was a realisation that people were starting to warm more and more to this work. I was teaching it a lot. I noticed a lot of the younger generation doing research on meditation, as were some of the great scientific institutes like in Harvard, and places like that, which were doing a lot of tests and trials.

mindfulness apps for wellbeing

So for me, that was the early spot, that there was going to be a a really big movement in this field. And then I started to see some apps come through very early days, mindfulness apps. And lo and behold, Headspace and apps like Calm started to really push out into the world.

They’ve taken a huge area of the market, I wanted to look at how we could create something with OPO that wasn't just about learning to do this work, but it more about the applied aspects, how can things like meditation come into daily life? And what would that mean from a daily habitual point of view, or spaces that you might interact with, or behaviours that you might have? And we've been building it now for the past five years.

Matt Morley

Did you have a business to business strategy as a way to distinguish from, say, the Headspaces of the world that have gone heavily down the B2C route and the mass market?

Mind training for business communities

Chris Connors

It' a mixed view of that really, I've been a coach and a leadership coach for many businesses primarily in the luxury and design, through that, of course, I started to see the ailments of organisations and organisational behaviour and was very interested in what I could do to help from a coaching perspective, but then of course from a learning and development perspective, and I saw OPO could really help with those functions.

The way we've approached it as a business is that we are working to build blocks through the B2B model. Our end goal is that anyone in the consumer or Public domain can use OPO and we want our business communities to support us as a social enterprise to create more urban wide ‘portals’, which I'm sure we'll talk about, and initiatives that reach to a much wider public. And that's really our game. But we want to work through the channels of b2b business communities.

Mindful locations at mixed-use real estate developments

Matt Morley

Okay, so I've had the OPO app on my phone now for a month and a half, the ‘portals’ seem to be in some way connected to places, geographies, but at the same time I don't need to be in that specific location in order to access the content.

So how do your portals fit into the overall context of the business? And then how is it that you ended up working with mixed use real estate developers like Kings Cross and Greenwich Peninsula in London to develop those portals?

Chris Connors

The portals came from our first projects, which actually were spaces. We have created two spaces in central London, one was in Shoreditch, and the other one was in Kings Cross in Coal Drops Yard, which is the big King's Cross development, we worked with Argent, who are, of course, fantastic developers, very visionary.

We made two very interesting spaces that attracted a lot of attention in terms of what we were offering, they were automated spaces, people could go in and have 15-20 minute experiences.

I kind of wanted to find out, what could we do that would not just be an indoor thing. What could we do for people during summer, or during the outdoor times, where you could really wander around the city, and stop at these portals and have some kind of experience equivalent to what we were having indoors at these spaces.

promoting mindful moments in urban real estate developments

A blended experience actually creates the portal itself. And it's a very simple experience, in the end,, the app will guide you to a park bench, or a river view, or some space in the city and beyond. But once you're there, the app will unlock a guided mindful practice based on the view that you have.

I guide you with exact view of things that are in front of you. And that presencing experience gives a very optimal neurological, quite phenomenal experience for our system, and floods us with different hormonal inputs.

The portals for me have been an absolutely brilliant guide for us, we want to plant as many as we can around as many cities. And we're finding as people use them, they're getting those true stillness moments in the noise, which is actually the real core aspect of what Meditation.

It's not just about getting calm and being away from everything. It's actually about, how can I be in it, and be completely with it, but also find a deeper stillness and connection at the same time, which is a very urban experience, of course.

Matt Morley

And so if I may ask, is that a commercial relationship, then if there's another developer or a location a place or a hotel that may want to develop or likes the idea of having one of the portals, they would contract you to make one?

blending wellbeing and wayfinding with OPO ‘portals’

Chris Connors

The portals are basically a combination of you might call it wellbeing and wayfinding. The wayfinding aspect is really helpful. Of course, for developers, they want people to dwell and sit and enjoy their spaces. And OPO was a perfect instrument to do that.

We've done that along The Tide, which is the Highline of London at Greenwich Peninsula, we built our portals all the way along the walking area, so people could dwell and enjoy certain views. They really create this much more multi dimensional experience of the space itself. And of course, for a developer, that's always good news. And you're also building in some good wellbeing mandates as well.

wellness tech in a hotel or resort guest experience

Matt Morley

A lot of the times when I'm working with a hotel or resort group, I'm more focused on the physical spaces that we're able to create. But i always need to have a clear idea of how they're going to be used by guests.

Hotel guests are only going to stay a few days most likely, so there’s less opportunity for repeated exposure, repeated moments of connection, typically how does OPO integrate into a luxury hotel or resort brand’s customer journey on that basis?

Chris Connors

Well, we started with the room first, we realised that there's an opportunity to bring more 360 wellness into the hotel or resort bedroom itself. That's typically where people spend a lot of their time. We've built content that people can upload through a QR code on screen from reception, where we're building menus that are really helping people while they're in the room.

So especially things like sleep, stress, anxiety… we’re also working with quite a few really good hotels around sound and relaxation treatments, for example. Also we build portals. We can do things like reception sending their guests off for a sunrise guided meditation in the morning, and the app will take you to the rocks and sit with the sunrise and they guide you with that moment, all the way from your room.

We also do a sonic postcard, which is something that the hotel can send to guests prior to their stay to help them along the way, whether it's a song journey for transport to the destination, or after their stay for example. The whole idea is to help extend a brand’s connection with guests and extending the guest journey with mindful content.

how to use QR codes for mindful moment prompts in resorts and hotels

Matt Morley

The idea of having subtle QR codes dotted around a building strikes me as an interesting intervention. Does that require the guest to have an app installed on their phone? Or is the QR code itself the access to the content?

Chris Connors

Yeah, we make web content. We have different content, private content for them that's not on the app itself. We do have a private area on our app for our partners that their guests can use the app on the private area. But the whole point with QR or any form of technology is that it’s web content, there's no signing in required. A lot of hotels are trying to develop their own app so we want to stay as flexible as possible with them.

opportunities for mindfulness content in residential developments and office workspaces

Matt Morley

When you're working with a residential or an office workplace client, I'm sure you're able to consider a more medium term relationship, where something could be used repeatedly. And as we all know, it is the repetition of these acts that cumulatively starts to have a real impact on mental wellbeing, anxiety, mood and so on.

The workplace wellness space seems to be especially interesting for OPO, what are you up to in that space?

workplace wellness tech for mental wellbeing

Chris Connors

The office is a very different place after the pandemic, businesses are desperate to find ways to help people, retain people and also ensure that they are taking care of their people from a healthy building perspective. From OPO’s point of view, we're really focused on what you've just been saying, if someone is repeatedly using a space, then repetition can create a habit and habit formation is a big part of what we offer for our business partners.

We're very focused on the strong development of science around circadian biology. And that's become a big part for us. You know, OPO is very much about our natural self and the natural world around us. We have a 24 hour clock that basically guides everything we do.

We're working now with a global brand called Davines, maybe you're aware of the global beauty brand, we've just run a wonderful first step initiative for them called Unplug about showing how our brain does not operate in a homogeneous state the whole way through the day.

Our focus is how can we help create specific points along the journey of your day, which actually helps balance or restore brain state and brain health for mental wellbeing benefits, in order to really optimise your productivity, but also to help align to your circadian rhythm.

biophilic design and bringing the outside world in to the office workplace

Matt Morley

Do you mostly deal in sound-based interventions or is there a component of sound plus visuals in some cases?

Chris Connors

We’re talking to a few businesses who really want to look at the design of their office and how daily habits and habit change can actually affect design, because it's never really been thought through. That's basically the habit of the office, you know, desk and coffee.

But currently, the way we offer it is it's more audio and helping people with specific habits through the day that involve physical, mental and emotional tasks. But a lot of that is about being outdoors. It's about focus light in the eyes, different aspects that involve nature really as the big player here for supporting the office space.

office meditation room design london

Matt Morley

So I saw the office meditation room that you created with The Office Group in London, UK, it just struck me as interesting concept, tell us about that?

Chris Connors

We worked with the architects Universal Design Studio, really brilliant architectural practice, on design from scratch of that space. So it was very much about bringing down certain stimuli, and then upping others through different kinds of sensory elevations and depravations.

We created a circadian soundtrack. So there was a track that would be playing in there, which basically looked at how sound maps to your circadian biology. So when you went in, there would be a certain kind of stimulation that would be beneficial for your brain at that particular time of day combined with a colour therapy light, which was working on certain activations of the eyes, and very much around what certain colours do at certain times of the day as well, that was all moving and changing.

office recharge rooms and quiet rooms

Matt Morley

I've done a few office recharge rooms or ‘quiet rooms’ for corporate office environments, often full of biophilia. And the question always comes up around how active or passive should it be? Should there be an element of content? Or is it in fact about disconnecting and having no screens at all? Often, we end up removing any screens, I think now the content has got to the point where the availability of such high quality wellness content makes me confident in saying, look, I think we can design a space that includes a feature screen connected to an app such as OPO.

The practical reality is that creating an environment for mindfulness is not enough, most people are going to need guidance to get there.

Chris Connors

And that's the issue The Office Group had before we upgraded their quiet room concept, they were doing little contemplation rooms but people were just using them for eating for or whatever but now if you go into this restorative room in Notting Hill, you take your shoes off, then you follow guidance in order to experience the full journey.

wellness content for different audiences - coliving, coworking, hotels

Matt Morley

How do you adapt your wellness content for different audiences and contexts? I wonder how much is epeat content versus how much is adapted to the specifics of each brand or location?

Chris Connors

In a hotel, we're really looking at ‘elevation’, helping people relax, and go deeper but in a quick and simple way. Whereas, of course, in the office space, we're working with people and their behaviours over repeat visits so there's a different kind of programming required.

What we are advocating is to find some sort of sense of self and being present. In that moment, it doesn't matter if you've got 10 minutes or 10 years. The essence of our work is about that.

social enterprises - giving back to the community as an esg strategy

Matt Morley

You mentioned a little earlier on the idea of a social enterprise and your societal angle. I was interested to understand a bit more about that as obviously a decision you took up front as a business.

Chris Connors

I really wanted to create some kind of circularity in my business, it wasn't just looking at upward trajectories and curves on that level, it's important, of course, the business can grow and flourish. I had always felt that this work is not only about the wellness industry, my work is a service as well. And as part of that service, I wish that it can access as many people as possible.

As part of our social enterprise, we wish to create more and more of these accessible meditation places and spaces for people in and around the city. And actually, our vision for that is ambitious - our dream is to work with mayors of cities, or, you know, the smart city concepts, where we can plug our portals in and actually drive demand in a much bigger way for people to access them. And that fulfils our social mission.

Matt Morley

It's giving back but in a sense without asking anything in return, it's your purely giving, you often don't know who those people are, I guess unless there's sort of some interconnection, or the sort of the geo locator or what have you. But effectively, you've never you never see them.

Chris Connors

We ask all of our real estate and hotel partners to help co-fund those with us. So we have a fund that we always bring into our model to help create more and more portals, it's a bit like tree planting.

https://www.opo.world/

https://www.instagram.com/opo.app/?hl=en

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Further reading

Sustainable hotel brands in the UK

Environmental psychology in healthy buildings interiors — biofilico wellness interiors

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us - Sir Winston Churchill, 1943

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We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us - Sir Winston Churchill, 1943 〰️

Introduction to Environmental Psychology

Environmental psychology is a multidisciplinary field that explores the intricate relationship between human beings and their physical environment. It examines how both natural and built environments shape our experiences, behaviors, and overall well-being. Environmental psychologists delve into the impact of physical settings on human behavior, investigating how elements like natural environments, urban planning, and architectural design influence our daily lives. By understanding these complex interactions, environmental psychologists can inform the design of sustainable and healthy buildings, promote conservation psychology, and mitigate environmental risks. This field is crucial for creating spaces that not only meet our physical needs but also enhance our mental and emotional well-being.

Healthy Buildings, Sustainability, and Environmental Psychology

Healthy buildings are meticulously designed to promote the physical and mental well-being of their occupants. Environmental psychologists play a pivotal role in this process, ensuring that these buildings are not only sustainable but also conducive to human health and productivity. By incorporating natural environments, such as green spaces and natural light, into building design, they create physical settings that support human well-being. Sustainable development is a cornerstone of environmental psychology, aiming to balance human needs with environmental conservation. In the face of climate change, environmental psychologists address pressing issues through research and design interventions that encourage sustainable behaviors and reduce environmental risks. Their work ensures that buildings contribute positively to both human health and the planet’s well-being.

healthy buildings, sustainability and environmental psychology

As healthy building consultants, we combine concern for both physical and mental wellbeing of building occupants with a parallel effort to minimize environmental impact.

These two concepts of sustainable, green buildings and healthy buildings designed with occupant wellbeing in mind, are therefore in one sense at least operating at two different scales.

In the case of the former, the building is part of an increasingly delicate natural ecosystem that has no start or end point as such, meaning a real estate developer, landlord or tenant is assuming responsibility for their contribution to something urgent yet ultimately global in scope - the health of our planet and the environmental impact legacy we will pass on to future generations.

healthy building strategies in architectural psychology

Healthy building strategies are comparatively small-scale and hyper local, i.e. they are more immediately connected to the activities going on within a specific building or space. As such, there is a tangible connection between an individual occupant and their experience of the building they are in.

Partly this is about physical elements such as Indoor air Quality, for example, or Active Design features that encourage movement, yet a large slice of it is connected to environmental psychology. Various research methods, including interviews, data analysis, field studies, and lab experiments, are used in environmental psychology to understand the impact of built and natural environments on human behavior and well-being.

Theories of Environmental Psychology

Environmental psychology is underpinned by several theories that elucidate the complex relationships between humans and their environment. Ecological psychology, for instance, emphasizes the interconnectedness of human and natural systems, highlighting how our surroundings influence our behavior and well-being. Conservation psychology focuses on the importance of preserving natural environments for the benefit of human health. These theories provide a framework for understanding how physical environments affect human behavior and well-being. By applying these theoretical insights, environmental psychologists can design interventions that promote sustainable behaviors, reduce environmental risks, and enhance overall human well-being. These theories are essential for developing strategies that create harmonious and sustainable living environments.

The Role of Environmental Psychologists

Environmental psychologists are integral to promoting sustainable development and mitigating environmental risks. They collaborate with architects, urban planners, and policymakers to design physical environments that support human well-being while minimizing environmental impact. Through rigorous research on human behavior and environmental interactions, they provide valuable insights that inform design and policy decisions. Environmental psychologists also engage with communities to foster sustainable behaviors and develop conservation psychology initiatives. By leveraging their expertise, they create healthy and sustainable environments that not only enhance human well-being but also contribute to environmental conservation. Their work is vital in shaping spaces that are both livable and sustainable.

What is environmental psychology and how does it impact a healthy building?

Environmental psychology is formally defined as “the interaction between humans and the surrounding environment… how environment influences us but we also influence the environment” (ref)).

Environmental psychology is a branch of psychology that explores the relationship between humans and the world around us. It is concerned with the influence of natural and built environment on how we feel, think, and behave (ref). The Journal of Environmental Psychology is a key source of authoritative information on the topics and scope of environmental psychology, encompassing various interdisciplinary studies relating to the interactions between people and their physical environments.

An important part of environmental psychology is recognizing the positive and negative effects any given space can have: for example, the impact of environmental stressors like noise and crowding or conversely the restorative effect of incorporating nature.

cognitive vs environmental

This topic can further be broken down into two subcategories:

1. cognitive/physiological/behavioral aspects

2. more environmentally conscious, conservation aspects

The cognitive/ behavioral/ physiological part makes use of methods such as restoration (mood-improvement), wayfinding (how people find their way in new places, place attachment (what are physical things that make people get attached to certain place), etc. The physical environment affects our behavior, emotions, and cognition, playing a crucial role in environmental psychology by shaping human experiences and promoting wellbeing.

The conservation side focuses more on the relationships between people and the natural world as well as putting emphasis on how society treats our surrounding environment and preserves nature-based connections.

Before getting into what environmental differences can affect the mind and mental wellbeing for occupants in a building, it is important to have a general understanding of how surroundings can positively or negatively impact health.

For more on what constitutes a healthy building see our dedicated article here.

How can a building's physical environment affect our health?

When doing research on how exactly the body reacts to different nature-made vs. man-made environments, most ideas circle back to the influence of the natural environment on human experiences and well-being, particularly through the concept of circadian rhythm and its impact.

Circadian rhythm is an internal clock that helps signal different processes within the body according to time of day. This one biological process can have drastic effects on many other processes such as hormone production and release; motivational drives on cognition, etc.

Therefore, when utilizing biophilic design as a healthy building strategy for example, it is important to keep circadian rhythm in mind.

Incorporating Natural Environments

Incorporating natural environments into building design and urban planning is a fundamental aspect of environmental psychology. Natural environments, such as parks and green spaces, have been shown to significantly promote human well-being and reduce environmental risks. Environmental psychologists work closely with architects and urban planners to design physical environments that integrate natural elements, including natural light, ventilation, and materials. By embedding these natural components into design, they create sustainable and healthy buildings that support human well-being and environmental conservation. This approach not only enhances the aesthetic and functional quality of spaces but also fosters a deeper connection between people and the natural world, promoting overall well-being and sustainability.

Biofilico Wellness Interiors

Exploring the Concept and Its Importance in Modern Architecture

Biofilico wellness interiors represent a design philosophy that integrates elements of nature into built environments to enhance human well-being and health. Rooted in the concept of biophilia, which suggests that humans have an inherent desire to connect with nature, this approach leverages natural elements such as plants, natural light, and water features to create spaces that foster physical and mental well-being.

Environmental psychologists have long emphasized the significance of the physical environment in shaping human behavior and well-being. Research has consistently demonstrated that exposure to natural environments can lower stress levels, elevate mood, and even mitigate symptoms of anxiety and depression. By incorporating biofilico wellness interiors into modern architecture, designers can create spaces that not only support physical health but also enhance mental well-being and productivity. This holistic approach to design ensures that the built environment contributes positively to the overall quality of life for its occupants.

Designing Healthy Buildings Interiors

Practical Strategies and Design Principles

Designing healthy building interiors necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the intricate relationships between humans and their physical environments. Environmental psychologists and architects collaborate to create spaces that promote both physical and mental well-being by adhering to design principles that prioritize natural light, ventilation, and connections to nature.

One effective strategy for designing healthy building interiors is the incorporation of natural light. Natural light has been shown to offer numerous benefits, including improved mood, reduced stress levels, and enhanced cognitive function. Architects can achieve this by integrating large windows, skylights, and solar tubes into the design, thereby allowing natural light to permeate the space and foster a sense of well-being.

Another crucial design principle is the emphasis on ventilation and air quality. Poor air quality can have detrimental effects on physical and mental health, such as an increased risk of respiratory issues and diminished cognitive performance. By implementing ventilation systems that prioritize the influx of fresh air and minimize pollutants, designers can create environments that support both physical and mental health. These strategies, grounded in the insights of environmental psychologists, ensure that building interiors contribute positively to the well-being of their occupants.

WELL Healthy Building standard - restorative spaces in healthy buildings

International WELL Building Institute has a set of recommended standards for integrating natural components into workspace environments and other real estate projects as a way to protect the mental wellbeing of occupants. The Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) plays a crucial role in promoting interdisciplinary communication within the field of environmental psychology, facilitating the exchange of ideas and research between practitioners and researchers to address complex human-environment interactions.

A set-piece interior space focusing on mental wellbeing in particular is often called a restorative space, or a recharge room. These concepts typically make use of a combination of:

• wellness lighting (dimmable light levels, Circadian lighting intensities in tune with our 24 hour internal clock)

• sound wellness (water features, nature sounds, sound masking strategies)

• thermal comfort (sun-exposed outdoor spaces or carefully shaded areas, comfortable indoor temperatures)

• comfortable seating arrangements (movable light weight chairs, cushions, mats)

• nature and biophilic design (calming natural colors, textures and plants)

• visual privacy, in order to complete internal practices such as prayers, meditation or a power nap :)

The role of environmental psychologists in environmental psychology

This also applies to studying interpersonal relationships with environment taken into consideration. Looking into things like privacy, personal space, and having a sense of ownership for a space while also keeping in mind questions like: “how can people learn to better navigate the environment they are in,” and “why are certain environments preferred over others?”

Eastern Buddhist traditions of mental wellbeing

An Interesting Comparison Study from the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies Explored Connections from Buddhist Teachings to Western Psychology. (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-12925-003)

The Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies conducted a fascinating comparison study that explored the connections between Buddhist teachings and Western psychology. This study revealed that both traditions emphasize the importance of mental balance and well-being, albeit through different approaches. While Western psychology often focuses on external factors, such as the built environment, Buddhist teachings stress the significance of internal mental training and balance.

This comparison is particularly relevant to environmental psychology and healthy building design. By integrating principles from both traditions, designers can create spaces that not only address external environmental factors but also support internal mental well-being. For instance, incorporating elements that promote mindfulness and relaxation, such as quiet meditation areas or spaces with natural elements, can enhance the overall well-being of building occupants. This holistic approach ensures that the built environment supports both the physical and mental health of its users, aligning with the core principles of environmental psychology.

An interesting comparison study from the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies explored connections from Buddhist teachings to Western Psychology. (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-12925-003 )

Although it is useful to keep in mind the surrounding environment's effect on mental health, both western and Buddhist teachings believe that happiness derived from internal, mental training lasts longer than that from external sources, such as the built environments we spend our days in, such as an office, home, school or gym.

Buddhists believe that a lack of overall mental wellbeing is a sign of internal imbalances, requiring focused attention through meditation practices and so on in order to integrate these ‘issues' whatever they may be into our psyche.

Equally, for Buddhist practitioners, happiness itself can be a fundamentally ephemeral or at the very least fluctuating experience for most of us, unless we are ‘enlightened' and have found our own internal happiness, rather than chasing after external sources of happiness.

For example, Buddhist teachings stress the importance of mental balance with a fourfold theory of combining conative balance, attentional balance, cognitive balance and affective balance. Things like anxiety, depression, etc are thought to result from an unbalanced mind while a healthy, uninjured mind is thought to be better prepared to deal with stresses.

Buddhist principles for mental wellbeing in natural environments

• Conative Balance refers to the ability that allows to set intention; having set goals increases motivation and commitment than desire alone while stressing the importance of realistic expectations and having clear goals as a way to predict happiness.

• Attentional Balance is the development of sustained attention for optimal performance. This can be applied with mindful breathing as a sense of focus, the theory of flow – being involved in an activity for its own sake. Mindfulness practices such as meditation are also a key component in developing this skill, for example.

• Cognitive Balance implies being calmly and clearly present; engaging in the world without making assumptions or misleading ideas. Being present in the moment, without judgement in other words. This can be seen through mindfulness training and stress-reduction that results in not getting caught up in expectations.

• Affective Balance is having a clear and cohesive mix of the other three.

https://www.routledge.com/Buddhist-Thought-and-Applied-Psychological-Research-Transcending-the-Boundaries/Nauriyal-Drummond-Lal/p/book/9780415599344

Summary on environmental psychology in the built environment

The essence of environment psychology has to do with the environment, yes but mainly relies on healthy minds as the goal and environmental factors as a stepping-stone to get there. While there are many techniques that can be included in design, there is no “one” answer.

Everything comes down to asking the question: “how will this affect my mentality?” and the answer to that, varies according to the context of each building or interior space situations. 

design for mental wellbeing - university of chicago student wellness centre

university of chicago student wellness centre - exterior

Summary of topics covered:

Sustainable furniture: LifeCycle Analysis / Healthy Materials / low-VOCs

Lighting : Natural light / Window walls and corridors / Soft warm light - relaxation / Blue-white light productivity

Biophilic Design: Stone from a gothic hospital / Birch tree windows / Biophilia - boost mental health

Mental health: wellness design / wellbeing interiors

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Sustainable interiors and biophilic design for mental health

With an aim to boost student’s campus life, the University of Chicago recently built their first all encompassing Student Wellness Center. In the past, each department of the center was housed within different locations on campus.

The new building, finished in 2020, brought together their Student Health Service, Student Counseling Service, and Health Promotion and Wellness group into a single building.

Not only does the Student Wellness Center act as a building for health services, it is also a tranquil, restorative space for students to relax and work on their studies. The interior design choices made as part of that process reveal a lot about wellness design today, so read on to find out more.

Biophilic design and sustainable interiors for student wellness

The Student Wellness Center was adorned with sustainable interior furniture to provide nookes of solidarity to encourage collaboration. The quality of healthy furniture was a high priority of the biophilic interior design project. All pieces were ensured to be clean air certified, minimizing the risk of Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs being emitted from furniture that would end up polluting the indoor air.

These harmful chemicals (don’t be fooled by the friendly ‘organic’ in their name!) have been proven to decrease cognitive functioning, among a slew of other health effects - see here for more on the health risks of VOCs.

By procuring such healthy and sustainable furniture, the interior designers contributed to the cognitive performance and indeed physical health of students and faculty, while minimizing their environmental impact. It’s a win-win!

sustainable furniture for wellbeing

Furniture was procured from a range of green, sustainable designers that track the lifecycle impact of their products from manufacturing and procurement, to distribution and sale, even into end of life to recycling.

A number of furniture products by Muuto are made with eighty percent recycled material and Allermuir has their very own 15,000 square foot recycling center. This sustainable interior design not only helps people, but helps the planet too, it combines the concepts of wellbeing interiors with sustainability - increasingly, these go hand in hand.

wellness lighting strategies

The natural and artificial light strategies of the Student Wellness Center are a key element of its wellness design. Many of the internal corridors of the building are softly-lit providing tranquil spaces of relaxation with warm, yellow light.

Areas designed for productivity are illuminated in full by blu-white spectrum light giving students and faculty greater wakefulness during the day. This boosts focus and productivity.

Long halls of natural light are incorporated within many of the outskirts of the structure, these halls surround you with nature giving the building's occupants consistent exposure to full natural light during the daytime.  

wellness architecture

The base structure of the Student Wellness Center is a historic, gothic hospital. The new structure engages with the old building’s architecture bringing the natural elements of stone walls and arches within the walls of the center. The incorporation of the history of the building also brings nature's elements inside contributing to its biophilic design.

The arches create large organic shapes giving the building biophilic design in structure. The glass interior and exterior walls are common-place around the Student Wellness Center allowing for a greater visual perception of space and natural light.

Some of these walls are accented with birch tree forest graphics to create visual privacy while still pulling light further through the building. This design grounds the space back to its natural elements. Additionally, plants are placed throughout the building to provide green spaces and boost mental health via biophilia. 

Biophilic design for student wellbeing

With a focus on biophilic design, the University of Chicago sought to give students a calm and relaxing space to boost student wellness and productivity. From the placement of windows to the furnishings inside, the building was founded with the importance of student health and wellness in mind. Through biophilic design, students at the University of Chicago are given healthy, restorative spaces where they can flourish.

mental health & wellbeing in healthy buildings

The WELL Standard MIND concept

Urbanization and the shift away from nature towards a lifestyle dominated by the built environment has led to a plethora of human health issues, some obvious, others less so. Many of us now spend 90% of our time indoors, making the spaces around us of surprising relevance for mental wellness.

mental wellbeing in a healthy building

Strategies such as biophilic design, mental health programs, the encouragement of an active lifestyle and the provision of restorative spaces can all be used to increase mental wellbeing for building occupants.

In addition, it is helpful to have a designated mental health champion within a workspace, school, or other community to encourage building occupants to engage with mental health issues openly.

For our take on the specific components that make up a healthy building see our dedicated article here.

Biophilic Design for mental wellbeing in a healthy building

Biophilic design aims to connect people to nature through interior design, reinstating the increasingly distant relationship between us as human beings and the natural environment. Our ancestral affinity with nature ensures exposure to nature, even in indoor environments, provides a range of restorative mental health benefits.

The Attention Restoration Theory (ART) states that spending time in nature helps to reduce mental fatigue, increasing focus and restoring optimal cognitive function (Kaplan/Jimenez).

The Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), on the other hand, focuses on how our stress or anxiety levels can be lowered via immersion in a natural environment, whether ‘living’ or, implicitly, indoors thanks to biophilic design interiors that bring the outside world in (Ulrich/Jimenez).

Strategies such as introducing botanical motifs, organic materials, air-purifying plants, wabi-sabi finishes, living walls, Circadian lighting systems, biophilic sounds and forest aromatherapy are all possible examples of biophilic design for improved building occupant mental health. 

nature, Greenery & green spaces for mental wellbeing

Plants are one of the most important biophilic design elements as they provide a plethora of health benefits. Air-purifying plants are especially relevant in this sense, as are rooftop gardens, moss art on walls, hanging Japanese kokedamas and so on.

Besides the obvious characteristic of natural beauty, such botanical greenery in interior spaces increases the human connection to nature as part of a healthy building experience, and also improves indoor air quality.

In addition, a visual connection to such indoor vegetation has been found to reduce stress and anxiety, and even increase healing rates for hospital patients in one often cited study (Bratman).

Also, memory and creativity are augmented with the implementation of green space, especially notable in children as these factors are important for brain development. 

Overall, greenery increases our ability to concentrate and facilitates workers being able to find a quiet space for recharging during the work day.

Daylight for mental wellbeing in a healthy building

Daylight is an essential building block of health buildings and wellbeing interior design.  In addition to reducing a building’s energy consumption, natural light has been found to improve mood, synchronize us with our circadian rhythms, and increase alertness and concentration (Determan). 

Natural light can be used to align us with our circadian rhythms, also known as our natural 24-hour internal clock. When our bodies follow the natural daylight cycles of the day, our health is positively affected through improved sleep by night and cognitive function by day.  

In addition, natural light increases the prevalence of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which improves mood (Kaltenegger ch 13). Due to these positive influences of daylight on our health, daylight has led to lower levels of absenteeism and lower dropout rates in schools, according to one study (Kellert). 

Additional healthy building considerations such as the quality of any external views via external windows (out onto blue or green nature?) and whether the building’s windows are operable are important to factor in. Operable windows can provide the co-benefits of natural ventilation and the potential to increase thermal comfort, while nature views provide additional biophilic benefits, all proven to improve human wellness. 

Mental Health Programs in workplace wellness

Mental health programming is an increasingly relevant workplace provision. To name a few, offerings such as mental health educational programs, stress management and support group programs, encouragement of healthy nutrition and fitness, and childcare support are all viable solutions.

Workplace wellness programs are good for employee health and for the business’s bottom line too - studies have shown that employees perform better when they are less stressed. 

Mindfulness and stress management

Strategies such as mindfulness programs and stress management courses can reduce employee anxiety levels. Mindfulness workshops can be achieved through digital or in person means, for example using employer-designated digital applications, or through in person meetings and exercises.

Educational courses focused on stress management can support employees and encourage them to take breaks and reset as needed throughout the workday. 

As with any benefits program, it is important that the resources are not only available but are being used by building occupants so the benefits can be reaped. Learning materials should be accessible 24/7 to help avoid any lingering stigmas around engaging in mental health issues.

a mental health champion in a healthy building plan

In addition, the designation of a mental health champion within the company can increase awareness and ultimately engagement. These mental wellness advocates can lead informal meetings, facilitate outside speakers and ensure that any mental health issues that emerge are directed to an appropriate expert - a mental wellbeing champion is not expected to be a psychologist, far from it, they just need to know the right person to call, discretely, when needed.

a Biofilico concept design for a nature inspired office recharge room for peace and quiet

recharge rooms in healthy buildings

The provision of restorative spaces in the built environment is extremely important to maintain appropriate mental health levels for building occupants. Especially in work and school environments when long hours of concentration are required, places of refuge are essential to allow students to recharge and reset throughout the day. These rooms can include spaces such as a nap pod, meditation room, or a restorative space for quiet time.  

Many restorative spaces utilize biophilia in their design, due to the proven mental health benefits that come with nature connection. Recharge rooms have been proven to promote feelings of vitality and reduce stress and anxiety, promoting rejuvenation through respite. 

WELL building standard on restorative spaces

According to the WELL Building Standard’s Mind concept, “restorative spaces should include natural elements and have thoughtful lighting, sound, thermal and material choices. In addition, an element of privacy and the inclusion of calming colors, textures and forms is beneficial for recharging and refocusing.” See our own example of this above.

In addition to designing these spaces in buildings, concern must be taken to facilitate their use, creating a company culture that is accepting of their benefits and therefore time spent in a recharge room by staff members - rather than it being stigmatized.

active design and fitness spaces in healthy buildings

Boosting healthy habits such as physical activity and nutrition can be encouraged through building design and have the potential to improve mental health and wellness. Workplaces and schools in particular can benefit from finding ways to promote healthy habits through interior design, active furniture choices more tactical, promotional strategies such as signage prompts. 

physical activity for mental wellbeing in a healthy building plan

Physical activity provides not just physical health benefits but a mental boost of positive mood, enhanced energy and self-esteem, as well as camaraderie if performed in a group setting. Studies show that exercise helps maintain a healthy sleep cycle at night, ensuring deep rest and recovery. 

Strategies such as incorporating fitness facilities or gym rooms in buildings, as well as places to change and shower on site (as part of an active design plan) can all encourage physical activity.

In addition, offering fitness classes, encouraging the formation of community running or biking groups, or employee fitness related challenges can boost activity levels of building occupants.

Finally, more indirect strategies such as promoting stair use through thoughtful design or smart signage can increase activity and physical and mental health. 

nutrition for mental wellbeing in a healthy building plan

Nutrition is also a very important aspect of physical health that has been shown to be linked to mental health. Studies show that mindful eating is correlated to better wellbeing, which can be encouraged through designated eating areas.

Other strategies such as providing access to healthy snacks, providing cooking or nutrition classes, and encouraging communal eating through designated lunch times have all been shown to increase nutritional health (WELL), this in turn helps foster happy, healthy students or staff. 

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Sources

Bratman, Gregory, and Gretchen Daily. The Benefits of Nature Experience: Improved Affect and Cognition. Tech. Vol. 138. Stanford: n.p., 2015. Landscape and Urban Planning. Stanford University Libraries. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.

Determan, Jim, et al. “THE IMPACT OF BIOPHILIC LEARNING SPACES ON STUDENT SUCCESS.” Oct. 2019. 

Jimenez, Marcia P. et al. “Associations Between Nature Exposure and Health: A Review of the Evidence.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18.9 (2021): 4790. Crossref. Web.

• **Note**: this source was used for ART/SRT info (although original theory names given credit above)

Kaltenegger, Ingrid. "Integration of Mother Nature into Smart Buildings." Integration of Nature and Technology for Smart Cities. By Helen Santiago Fink. Switzerland: Springer International, 2016. ch. 13,18. Print. 

Kellert, Stephen R., and Bill Finnegan. "Biophilic Design-The Architecture of Life Viewing Guide." (n.d.): n. pag. Biophilic Design. Tamarack Media and Stephen Kellert. Web. 7 Dec. 2016.

https://v2.wellcertified.com/en/v/mind

The role of sleep in healthy buildings & workplaces

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charlie morley / sleep / healthy sleep / healthy buildings / workplace wellness / cognitive performance

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Welcome to episode 46 of the Green & Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate. 

I’m your host, Matt Morley of Biofilico Healthy Buildings and in this episode I’m talking to none other than Charlie Morley, a bestselling author and teacher of mindfulness, lucid dreaming and all round sleep expert whose latest book deals with resolving trauma affected sleep through a set of practices called ‘Mindfulness of Dream & Sleep’.

Charlie, who is as you may have guessed my brother, was “authorised to teach” within the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Yeshe Rinpoche in 2008. Since then he has written four books, delivered retreats in more than 20 countries, spoken at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, as well as the Ministry of Defence Mindfulness Symposium and The Houses of Parliament. 

Our conversation explores the connections between my world of healthy buildings and interiors, and Charlie’s world of healthy sleep. We discuss sleep hygiene, the physiological impact of sleep on our bodies not to mention our brains, pre-industrial age sleeping habits vs todays, the power nap as a productivity tool, how to create restorative spaces or sleep pods in an office or educational environment that people will actually use, and the role of meditation and restorative deep relaxation practices in improving rest.  

https://www.charliemorley.com/ 

Charlie Morley instagram

Full transcript courtesy of Otter.ai

“Unless you are part of the ‘sleepless elite’, which is less than one percentile of the world’s population, who can do very well on five hours or less sleep, almost everybody in the world, needs seven to nine hours per 24 hour period - this is still the golden standard of sleep. ”

— charlie morley

Matt Morley

When thinking about sleep the building blocks of creating a healthy night's sleep in terms of how much we need, the risks of poor sleep hygiene and what you've described as the ‘sleep delusion’, how does one evaluate and measure a good night's sleep?

Charlie Morley

So the measure of sleep is inherently subjective. How do I feel upon awakening? What are my energy levels the next day? What is my cognitive ability the next day, so we can look at it like that.

They've done some interesting tests where people who are very high achievers are only getting kind of six, or five or six hours sleep, great social lives etc who say, this is all I need, I work perfectly well on six hours sleep, but then you put them into a brain scanner, or you give them cognitive ability tests. And although they say they feel optimal performance, their brain shows significant sub optimal neurological performance.

Now, that's one of the scariest pieces of research I came across, because it shows that even if you think you feel fine, in fact, a state of sleep deprivation has been so normalized by ourselves and by society that are natural, I feel fine state is actually one of suboptimal neurological functioning.

Sleep and cognitive performance in the workplace

So what's the next step, you force these people into position where they have to have one extra hour of sleep per day, it can be a nap during the day or an extra half an hour at night, but you get one extra hour per 24 hour period. Their cognitive performance went through the roof, the descriptions they have is like it feels like have access to a superpower. They're social lives, become more vibrant, their interpersonal relationships get better, or their performance at work gets better, just through one extra hour. So yes, it is subjective. But also there are very objective measures that show seven to nine hours for most people is 17 hours will allow us to function optimally. And crucially, just one extra hour per night can do massive, massive benefit to everyone.

Matt Morley

And how do you see then in terms of integrating an element of tech so that you're able to literally see the sleep quality over the course of the evening that otherwise we're over the course of the night that otherwise you might not? You might have a sense of how you slept, but you don't really no? Are you buying into this? Do you think there's there's real value in it, or were we being sold product and service that frankly, we've managed pretty well without all these years. And we're, in a sense trying to create a desire that, that we don't necessarily need to own these things.

Sleep trackers for health metrics

Charlie Morley

So at the moment, one of the higher end sleep trackers called the AURA ring, who sponsored a sleep science study that was part of even the aura ring, which is really the top end of the market is still only 60 to 70% accurate, which means is a crucial 30 to 40% of the time where it's just getting it wrong. And that's that worrying, let alone most people have a much cheaper version, the kind of, you know, the wrist based ones that hook up to your iPhone and stuff like that.

So if sleep trackers are benefiting your sleep, if they are making you feel more refreshed, if they are leading to more healthy relationships with sleep, then continue to use them. For a lot of people, they lead to a real neurosis around sleep. So take them with a big pinch of salt. I mean, in my new book, The first chapter is about becoming your own sleep tracker. So in the morning, taking most of how do I feel upon awakening? What are my energy levels throughout the day? Yes, what time do I go to bed?

What time do I wake up any dreams, I can remember, becoming your own sleep tracker to create a baseline is far better than that than the level of tech we've got at the moment. However, there is something on the market that we use when we do this sleep science studies called the Zed max or the Z max. Now that's about $600. And that's like a mini EEG machine. That's very, very accurate. So give the technology five years when we can get the technology of the XEmacs into an aura ring or into the to the app on your phone. And then sleep tracker data will be very, very accurate. But at the moment, we're just a little bit behind. So yeah, I wouldn't take don't take it too seriously.

Matt Morley

So if we then jump into establishing exactly what's going on during a night's sleep, you have what you've described as light, light sleep, the dream phase, and then deep sleep. So sort of the top line concepts for each of those three, and how is the sleep connecting with our health during the rest of the day? Like what are the processes going on? Sure. So there's

Charlie Morley

Actually two there's the gateway in and out either side to the hypnopompic and hit sorry hypnogogic hypnopompic. So stage one of sleep is called the hypnagogic state and is experienced by most people. Less is asleep stage proper, more a state of drowsiness. So you can still hear the sounds of the room, you can still feel your body in the bed. brain goes into deep alpha and theater, the brain looks almost indistinguishable to a brain that is in hypnosis.

So every time you fall asleep, the gateway into sleep, whether in a nap in the middle of the day or at night, you go through this natural state of hypnosis. And it's actually in that state that we can do a lot of really beneficial stuff for asleep because it's in the hypnagogic state that we can practice ns a nonslip, deep rest to us, humans term, or yoga nidra practices or my term hypnogogic mindfulness, which are the states of deep relaxation that happened just before we enter asleep.

So we have the hypnagogic state, really good for you, deeply relaxing, but a state in which people who have stressed out sleep will spend a lot of the night you know, you're kind of tired enough to be in that drowsy state, you can't quite pass the threshold. Eventually, though, with normalized sleep patterns, you'll move from hypnogogic into light sleep, light sleep is named for the quite untechnical reason that it's just quite easy to wake people from, you know, back in the early days asleep science, they would register the depth of sleep just by poking someone and saying their name.

So light sleep as it sounds, you're easy to be woken from it, you are now blacked out, you can't hear the sounds in the room. Unless they're loud enough, you can't feel your body in the bed. But you're yet to be dreaming. Light sleep is really good for procedural memory integration. So sleep is all about memory. That's why there's a direct link, as we know, with our with our mum, between sleep and Alzheimer's, and sleep and memory. So let's say you're learning to drive a car, it's light sleep, that you'll be processing the memory of how to do this, the stick in this and the the gears and all of that, and the pedal in the gas and everything that will be happening in light sleep procedural memory, whereas if you were in a car crash, that would be processing dreaming sleep.

So dreaming sleep is about processing emotional memory, memory reconsolidation, especially traumatic or stressful memories too. So we have the hypnagogic state stage one, then light sleep for procedural memory and learning, then we move into deep sleep. Deep Sleep is very, very interesting. This is where the brain is almost entirely switched off. So your brains never fully switched off. But if you look at the brainwaves of the waking state, they're very close together ticket ticket ticket ticket, if you look at the brain wave of someone in deep sleep, this will delta wave is dominant brainwave, and are very far apart.

I know people can't see me, but I'm making slow deep waves, signals with my hand. So in deep sleep, the brains almost entirely switched off, very unlikely to be dreaming very little happening in the brain. Apparently, but actually, if you look at the neuroscience of what's happening, loads is happening. Deep Sleep is when cerebral spinal fluid is flushed up into the brain. And it actually removes toxins from the brain a bit like imagine he had a fruit smoothie, and he drank all the fruit smoothie, but there's still kind of the remnants of the fruit smoothie in the bottle. And then if you put a bit of water in that bottle and shook it up, you could get all the remnants of the fruit smoothie out, right.

That's what's happening in deep sleep, the cerebral spinal fluid is flushing through the brain. And the blood capillaries go big, small, big, small, big small, which creates this kind of flushing motion. And that directly flushes out amyloid plaques, which are what cause Alzheimer's and many other forms of dementia.

So also a human growth hormone is released. So I know you're really into your fitness. If you have like a big workout during the day, like you're you're kind of working out you're lifting weights in the gym. Unless that night you get enough deep sleep, your muscles will not grow, there'll be massive reduction in muscle gains. And the same goes for losing weight.

So if you spent your whole day dieting, but then at night, you don't get enough deep sleep, you will lose weight based on the calorific deficit of not eating that much. But you won't actually make changes to your metabolism that leads to long term weight loss. So deep sleep so so important for memory for toxins flushed out for changing the body in any way we want.

We have that period of deep sleep, and then we'll move into dream. So dream actually comes at the end of the cycle, we think of dream as being a very active sleep state. And it is but by the time you get the dream, you've been knocked out for at least 6070 minutes. And if you put those together that makes up the 90 Minute sleep cycle, the cycle continues throughout the night. What changes is the amount of time you spend in each one until you get to the last two hours or you're almost in full dream for like two hours.

sleep for human performance

Matt Morley

Okay, so I think that's really given us the kind of foundations between these connections between sleep like what's happening at night and how are we performing? How are we feeling, how we cognitively how we functioning during the day so effectively that is the basis of sleep as a form of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Charlie Morley

“Yeah, there is no biological process that is not adversely affected by insufficient sleep - anything less than seven hours per 24 hour period, yet we don’t teach kids about this in school, we have a sense of almost pride that we can get by off of a lack of sleep. It’s crazy. ”

— charlie morley

Certain parts of America lost an hour because the daylight saving. So like 1.6 billion people do this every year different times, but based on your countries, but on that day where people lose one hour of sleep, the next day, American Studies have shown as a 22% increase in cardiac arrest the next day, just by robbing people of one hour asleep. That's 10s of 1000s more death, because of one hour lost sleep. There's also a massive increase in traffic accidents the next day, when you take one hour of sleep.

Conversely, when the clocks change, and you gain an extra hour of sleep, there's a 22% decrease in heart attacks the next day, and a 15% drop in traffic accidents. Now, when you roll that out in 26 countries around the world that have these daylight savings, that is millions of people live longer, or live shorter lives based on robbing or giving them one extra hour of sleep.

Sleep health in a historical perspective

Matt Morley

Yeah, that's powerful stuff. If if we can take a step back to a slightly sort of, let's say, a historical perspective, just to understand the connection between pre Industrial Age sleep cycles, modern sleep cycles, and the potential benefits in accepting and embracing the idea of a nap, a siesta, or sleeping again, after the amount, number of hours you managed to get during the night. So when do you draw the line between how things were before the Industrial Age? And how things are now? And is that necessarily have the optimal version of our sleep pattern?

Charlie Morley

Sure. So I'm sure many of your listeners have heard about this. heard this before. That before the Industrial Revolution, so about 200 250 years ago, most people in Western Europe slept very differently. They didn't sleep all in one, they would obviously this depends on seasonal fluctuations. And a lot of research was done in England, actually, especially the British Isles, where it can get dark as early as 4pm in the nighttime, in the wintertime, so people get asleep within about two hours of sundown.

So because candles are really expensive. They're made of whale oil, only the wealthiest people could have these candles and kerosene was difficult to come across, or whatever they use back then. So people get asleep within about two hours of sundown. So it could be 6pm 8pm. But like early, right asleep for about two, three hours. And then they would wake up again, like fully awake, pubs would reopen.

People would have these like tobacco circles, you kind of sit around and smoke, people would go into the field and milk their cows, they believe the quality of the milk. If you milk them at this time was better people would have sex they felt you're more fertile. That actually true. There is a fertility booster at that time. There are hundreds of these records is oh, there's even a 15th century prayer manual from Portugal, full of prayers especially to do in the second sleep. Sorry, between the first and the second sleep.

So you get this reference the first and second sleep. The way it actually came about was a crime researcher was looking at records in courts and other crimes were committed after the first sleep basically the middle of the night, you'd get your three hours sleep you got Rob someone's house and then go back to bed again. It was like perfect crime. Right. S

o this is how it first came into, into public awareness. Now is that the best way Oh, sorry. And then you would go back to sleep after two hours until sunrise. seasonal fluctuations. So you'll still be averaging about like 678 hours sleep but Krushi with a two hour gap in the middle. Fast forward to the modern day, the most common form of insomnia. In western societies, the most prevalent form is not sleep onset insomnia, which is where you just can't get to sleep. It's actually sleep maintenance insomnia.

Now, here's a description of sleep maintenance, insomnia, the ability of the subject to fall asleep upon first awakening. Within two to three hours, the subject awakens again, feeling fully awake and conscious for up to two hours. The subject is then able to fall asleep again till morning. That is flippin exactly the same description as the pre industrial sleep cycle.

So could it be that there are millions of misdiagnosed insomniacs, who aren't actually insomniacs, they are showing from an anthropological point of view a much more natural sleep cycle than the rest of us who are trying to blackout for eight hours. Does it mean that blackout of eight hours is not the way to do it and we should all be having that nighttime waking No, not at all, perhaps is a chronotype thing perhaps type thing. But it is important for people to know, if they do have that sleep pattern, you're probably not insomniac.

And actually just knowing that it's okay to be awake in the middle of the night moves us out of the fight or flight sympathetic response that keeps us awake and allows us to fall asleep. And secondly, there are a lot of people who have that sleep pattern, but they don't know that there's a second period of sleep waiting for them in the wings. So they don't stay awake for two hours, they just get up and Assad do there is another four hour sleep waiting for you.

But you have to allow yourself to slip back into it. Interestingly, the term insomnia was first produced in print as a, as a kind of a coined term in the New York Times in 1901. It was called the new fangled malaise of insomnia, within 30 to 40 years of us changing the way we sleep, we suddenly have this term insomnia cropping up. So very, very interesting. So no, I wouldn't say we should be sleeping like that. But if you are sleeping like that, it may not be such a bad idea. It may be just the way your body is, is working. And the main thing to know is there's nothing wrong with it. You know, nighttime wakefulness is not a pathology. For some people. It's just the way they're built.

Matt Morley

We introduced the idea of bi-phasal sleeping or perhaps sleeping for X number of hours during the night, and then catching up at another stage during the day. And interestingly, that's one of the connections between your work in healthy buildings / workplace wellness and you work, right. So when I'm looking at, say, healthy building concept of trying to create spaces within a building that are designed to foster wellness, and wellbeing for people spending eight to 12 hours of their days or nights, if it's a residential context, or if it's an office environment, then it's a place where they go to work and to be productive.

With the leading healthy building standard, that's called the WELL Standard, they have an entire concept around MIND. And one of the features there is the idea of restorative opportunities and, and nap policy.

So we're starting to see the way sort of trickle down effect from the top whereby the certification systems that are becoming increasingly common now in the world of real estate are encouraging and completely accepting the concept of a nap being a healthy part of a workday, it might sound confusing for some people, but it's out there.

But for sure, it's already happening. It's already coming. Now, once you have that policy as a as an employer, you then need to offer some kind of a space where that happens. So yeah, that might be an area where I'd say okay, well, I'm going to try and introduce some, some natural elements, biophilic design, I'm going to think about light, I'm going to think about the thermal qualities of the temperature in there and think about the acoustic isolation.

When you think about what I know you've turned sleep hygiene. And so the restorative environment in which one goes to sleep like what are your your key touch points there? Like what are the essential elements that we need to think about when we're creating an environment, whether it's at home, or in a potentially office space, where it's congenial to having a 20 or 30 minute nap during the day?

Restorative spaces in the WELL standard

Charlie Morley

First of all, before I answer that, I just like to say, that's so good to hear that that's part of, you know, you building regulation and part of what businesses are thinking about.

“Apart from any kind of philanthropic aim that the business might have, your employees will be 30% better at anything they do after 60 to 90 minute nap. That’s the science. That’s a fact. ”

— charlie morley

It's like if you want to make more money, give your employees a nap because they will make better deasl. They make better trades, they'll have better interpersonal relationships. It is very good for your employees. Yes. And also you will make more money. It seems crazy. They aren't implementing this. I did a thing at Deutsche Bank at Deloitte. I was telling them you will make more money if you do this, and hasn't been implemented. Not that I know. But really anyone listening?

The science is there. This isn't hippie dippie stuff, your employees will be better at whatever they do after a 60 to 90 minute nap. So rant over next bit. I would say when you people sleeping in public is a really vulnerable thing to do. So actually, your question is not so much about the bedroom at home, but actually sleeping in public, which is very different sleeping and public. I would save for Start, you need something that's lockable, if possible, something that's lockable.

So I know the are these great sleep pods in I believe it's Munich Airport, you can rent them for like an hour, a pop, and these little kind of micro pod beds, but they're lockable. And it's really important that that it's not just quiet and dark and all the sleep hygiene II stuff. But they're lockable. And a lot of the traumatized populations I work with, like veterans and people with C PTSD. simply placing a lock on your bedroom door can increase sleep quality by up to half an hour, an hour a night. Because there's something about humans, we need to no one's going to come in, we're in this deeply vulnerable state of rest.

So I would say they need to be not only private and a correct temperature for sleep, and yes, dark and quiet if you can, but also lockable. There was one rest port I went in, and there is a difference in arrest port and asleep port, where my legs were exposed, there was kind of a big bubble thing over most of my body in my head, but my legs were exposed, very difficult to fall asleep. And one of those, you know, my feet, people could brush by they could do something to them, I wasn't able to fully sleep.

So yes, it would be enclosed, it would be lockable, it would be private. Just to say that those rest pods, you know, there is a difference between NSDI non sleep deep rest and napping. Non sleep deep breath has loads of benefits, too. So even if you can't provide a full private, lockable, even just a space for rest and mindfulness like they have in the Google offices in London are really, really good.

Recharge rooms in tech offices

Matt Morley

Yeah, it is often the tech companies that are approaching the and saying, Well look, we want to create a space in a sense, in your terms, clearly that they will then actually be breathing a multifunctional space where there can be some of that depressed slash napping going on. It can also be a space where it's congenial to restorative practices, whatever that might be taking some time out of your day, perhaps to meditate perhaps to do your prayers, or just simply take some time by yourself.

And in fact, there's often the term the quiet room, or a restorative space where the idea is really just to take some time away from your key tasks to recharge, to go back. And then I think within that there's perhaps a subgroup too, which is the the nap pods or sleeping pod? The issue there with my sort of design head on is okay, you got to think about hygiene.

Now, post COVID, you got to think about ventilation. If it's lockable, and it's an enclosed space, then the best thing to have their own fans and and suddenly, you know, the prices do go up. But I think there's there's real value in that. So we've established you mentioned temperature just to dig into it. So thermal comfort typically is actually cooler than we think, isn't it in terms of the ideal sleeping temperature.

Thermal comfort during sleep

Charlie Morley

I can't remember the exact temperature ideal to seven temperature. First of all, they differ from men and women. I remember a brilliant chapter in a book called The The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry. And the title chapter was air conditioning is sexist. Now you see that the title chapter anyway, I'll come on straight to that chapter. He's absolutely right, the average the default setting of air conditioners across the world are set to the male preferred temperature at room temperature. And women need it about up to one to two degrees warmer. So actually, air conditioning is sexist.

So the first thing your points would need to be would you need to adjust it because women would want a slightly different to men. Basically, if you're in bed, and you can stick your foot out from the blankets or out of the duvet, and it's warm enough to keep it outside your rooms too hot. Your bedroom should be pretty cool, but not cold. But if you stick your foot out, it should feel cool. And your nose should be cool. You know this is cooler, the better many people with sleep problems, they just have the room too hot, it becomes the Princess and the Pea.

You know they pile up loads of blankets and and they get really really hot and you can't you know sleeps about thermo regulation. Remember the we used to we now know actually that human beings used to even hibernate for long periods of time where the deep sleep state would go for a massive percentage. And you could actually move into these almost hibernation states for days or weeks. And of course, what's hibernation about thermo regulation? So yeah, temperatures, pretty important.

Matt Morley

There is a there's a really interesting book was published recently by the Harvard Chan School for public health by Dr. Joseph Allen, in which he discusses exactly that point around the sexual or sort of the differences between the two sexes in terms of body temperature and therefore thermal comfort within a space and it seems that a lot of the regulations that were still in place or to have guidelines in the US and in fact, even in older buildings how the HVAC aircon systems have been programmed, referring to some data that was plucked from sort of 1980s office buildings were so slick as well. What was happening in 1980s, it was male dominated, they were probably wearing a suit.

And there's now just much more sexual, let's say equality. And therefore, as the man in the three piece suit or in a shirt, a tie, and a jacket is completely different to me sending in a normal summer dress. So some of the solutions around that seem to be around, ultimately creating almost sort of microclimates within or having clusters or microclimates where it's adjustable, if they're getting there with the HVAC and aircon systems, it's sort of within the next five to 10 years, it seems like that would be in a really smart building. So like sort of high performing building where they're able to adjust and allow each individual occupant to have some say over the temperature in their space, just by you know, the kind of airflow that's going on within that.

So yeah, another crossover between Your world and mine. Let's talk about mindfulness. Again, it is something that's part of the healthy building concept, the idea that a allowing time within the day and allowing a space within an office environment, for example, where meditation or mindfulness practice and perhaps breathwork, and can take place is positive, again for productivity, but also for worker well being. So how do you integrate mindfulness and meditation with sleep?

Because obviously, once once we're asleep? There's, in theory, for most of us, at least, there's no active meditation or mindfulness going on, right until you get to like next level, Tibetan Buddhist practice of dreaming. Yeah. But before that, yeah, how what's the connection between mindfulness and improve sleep quality, so that if someone's perhaps practicing or finding time during the day, they're also able to have a positive impact on the sleep at night, which is, I think your another gain, isn't it?

breath work and deep relaxation for rest and sleep

Charlie Morley

Yeah. So mindfulness has a whole wealth of benefits. As far as sleep goes, actually more than mindfulness, it's about regulation of the autonomic nervous system through the breath, and through deep relaxation. Those are the two things that you really find affecting sleep. And it's all based on this thing called parasympathetic drive.

So there's a system within the autonomic nervous system called parasympathetic drive, which is, think of it like a battery, which is charged up every time you do anything relaxing during the day, you charge up this parasympathetic drive battery. Now the reason most people tend to sleep slightly better on holiday than in their working day is unless you're screaming kids and stuff, on holidays, you're probably doing more relaxing things. So every time you do anything relaxing the day zap, you get a little charge to the parasympathetic drive. If you spend at least half an hour a day doing something really, really relaxing, that moves you into a deep parasympathetic emphasis, such as yoga nidra, slow, deep breathing, coherent breathing, other forms of non sleep deep breaths, you're spending 30 minutes charging up that parasympathetic drive.

Now what happens is then when you go to sleep at night, even if you charge it at 11 o'clock in the morning, or 10 o'clock in the morning, that battery will store the drive until you choose to go to sleep at night. So when you fall asleep at night, the brain kind of downloads that battery power from parasympathetic drive, allowing you to fall asleep quicker and stay asleep longer.

This means we need to completely reconfigure the way we view sleep. Sleep is not about oh, it's half an hour before bedtime quick put on some sleep hygiene tips like not looking at my phone, going wearing my fancy red sunglasses, all this kind of stuff. It's like That's too late dude. Like if you if you've got high levels of stress or trauma, but again, who hasn't got high levels of stress off last two and a half years we've been through as a global society. Sleep good sleep begins during the day.

How much time can you spend charging up that parasympathetic drive battery, and that's where periods of mindfulness but especially slow deep breathing, and NSDI, non sleep, deep breaths, kind of the hypnogogic, mindfulness practice, those really, really work to regulate the nervous system and help you sleep well at night. So that's the link mindfulness is good, because it can help create a habit of mind that sees not getting perfect sleep as more okay, but as mindfulness creates, fosters an attitude of okayness with myself and compassionate acceptance if it's taught in the right way. But the link between just standard mindfulness and sleep is quite tenuous. The link between non sleep deep rest and slow deep breathing and sleep is very, very direct, because it's based on this parasympathetic drive.

Sleep quality for productivity in the workplace

Matt Morley

So then you you see that there is effectively a short term benefit. That is, if you like he's reaping those benefits. Well, first of all, the person in question so the worker the occupant, and indirectly, the, the employer, that's more than that. So the people who are then that they're producing for once they go back into their work environment and are just sort of recharged and fresher and able to do more or get through the rest of the day without hitting X number of coffees.

But then that same building Brunt that same worker gets their own slightly more medium term benefits later on in the day, that's an entirely private matter once they end up trying to get to sleep that also suggests, you mentioned sort of the three hours, I think there's often, you know, there's practical considerations, of course, around when you work out an exercise, right. But when I see people exercising at 9pm, and the best hours of sleep seem to be between about sort of like 11 and 1am, right. There's just it's a crunch between the late workout, getting to bed and getting good quality night's sleep. So it's that would then suggest if, if at all possible exercise should happen lunchtime slash middle of the day.

Charlie Morley

It depends what the exercise is. So for it again, this is about the sympathetic and parasympathetic system. So for example, lifting heavy weights, like you're doing a big weight session actually can lead to such a parasympathetic hit off with this deep tiredness that comes out was it could be reasonably beneficial or at least neutral to do in the evening. However, as we both do a lot of martial arts like Thai boxing, kickboxing, something really fight or flight II like Krav Maga at 10pm, you want to go to bed at midnight? Yeah, you're going to be while you're going to be in that state.

So it's not so much the exercise, but the type of exercise the effect that has on your body, and you can feel it after your workout. Do you feel deeply relaxed? Do you feel that sense of calm? Or do you feel it's kind of jittery? You know, you've still got your pre workout shake in your system or something like that. So it's kind of subjective and personal. But generally, exercise is really good for sleep. But yeah, if you can do it within like three hours of your preferred bedtime, that's best. Sorry, I would do it not, not over three hours before your preferred bedtime. That's best.

Matt Morley

Cool. Plus, I think we can carry on for a while yet, but we're gonna wrap it up there. So if people want to follow along, see more of your work, or reach out with any questions or buy the books like where is that all happening online?

Charlie Morley

Yeah, my website, Charliemorley.com

I'm also on Instagram So check it out.

mental wellbeing clinic design - the soke, london

The ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series explores the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in office real estate, residential property, hotels and healthcare facilities today.

Episode 27 is with Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya of The Soke in London, UK a private mental health clinic that has re-defined the mental wellbeing clinic for an upmarket clientele, setting a new benchmark in the process.

We discuss the cultural differences between UK and US in openness around mental wellbeing, the impact of Covid on our relationships at home and in the office, mental health champions in the workplace, why having an off-site venue for discussions around mental health is preferable to an in-office solution, designing an interior for mental wellbeing, the parallel with boutique gyms and private clinics in terms of aspirational positioning and how working on your inner game can make you a more effective manager through empathy.

An indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished, and the design features I think tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational. 

Dr Chi-Chi Obuaya

GUEST / DR. CHI-CHI OBUAYA OF THE SOKE, LONDON, UK

• https://www.thesoke.uk/

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-soke/

• https://twitter.com/TheSokeUK

• https://www.instagram.com/thesokelondon/

HOST / MATT MORLEY

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattmorleylux/

• https://www.instagram.com/matt.aspiotis.morley/

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS COURTESY OF OTTER.AI - excuse typos!

Matt Morley

Chi-Chi, welcome to the show. I'd really like to dig into your role as Head of the Clinical Board for The Soke so could you talk to us about what that has involved for you so far and how you see it evolving over time?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Really excited to be here, Matt, good to see you again, as well after all these years. I'm a Consultant Psychiatrist here, I trained as a medical doctor specialized in psychiatry, and I focus on adult psychiatry so I see anyone aged 18 and above, with a range of mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, problems related to birth, trauma related issues, addictions.

I'm the Clinical Lead at The Soke - a behavioral health center in the heart of London, we're coming up to our one year anniversary. And the whole premise of setting up The Soke was really that within the UK, there are plenty of mental health professionals that people can see. But we found that there's still massive stigma around mental health and accessing care. And we just wanted to ease that process for people by having a really high quality service that has a beautiful environment, encourages people to come forward and supporting that by offering them very good quality care in an environment that is conducive to promoting good mental wellbeing.

Matt Morley

I think that really comes across in terms of the space that you've created, and clearly that's one of the key attributes in the experience on offer. But in terms of the mix of resources on the team, and the range of services that you offer, presumably you each have specialisms, but there seems to be this interesting client service director role that is atypical, or less common let’s say. How is your mental wellbeing team structured?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, so our clinical model is a multidisciplinary one, I think we recognize that in private practice, you can certainly access a whole range of mental wellbeing therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and it can be quite difficult for people to navigate through the system, and to really understand who they need to see and what skill set that person needs to have.

So most of us have a pretty broad range of people we would see with a vast range of conditions. But within that, there are areas of interest. So for me, I still work within the National Health System. And I see people with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We have therapists who have a particular interest in supporting people who have, for example, body image issues, who might have disordered eating, but maybe aren't quite meeting the threshold for eating disorder diagnosis.

I'd say generally, one of the themes is that we're trying to be quite proactive and preventative. So a lot of healthcare services are set up to treat illness, and that lends itself to seeing people when they're already really unwell. And there's certainly a role for that. But we're trying not to offer that acute care rather to catch people before they fall into major difficulties.

We have a broad range of child, adolescent and Family Services. So we're working with couples, parents, right across the age span. So really from from birth right through to old age. The multidisciplinary model is key in that we meet on a daily basis as a team, discuss potential referrals, discuss clients who might be seeing a range of us within the team. And it's then bringing our different bits of expertise together to think about how we can holistically support people from a mental wellbeing perspective.

As I said, we're just coming up to our one year anniversary. So there's still plenty of room for growth, and we want to be able to offer a wider range of services, such as nutritional advice. There are a vast array of therapies. So we're really at the starting point, and we want to add to the clinical team there.

Our client services manager is really the go-to person to help people navigate through the team, because it can be quite daunting and the reality is that when people are seeing therapists, they sometimes don't know how to benchmark that, or to get a sense of what progress they're making.

We're data driven, we have outcome measures and we try to be very goal oriented. The Client Services Manager is the person that can think about some of the services we maybe don't provide, but can signpost people externally for that, and where there are challenges where people do feel stuck therapeutically, which happens, it's not a sign of the therapy being of a poor standard, it just happens that sometimes you don't have the right fit with an individual therapist. We're really trying to think holistically, systemically, I think the multidisciplinary aspect is something that has often been missing within private healthcare.

Matt Morley

That really resonates with me having been through a period of about six months of therapy myself and feeling that it was very much as if we were operating in a complete bubble, there was no third party around to bounce ideas off or to sense-check how it was all going. What you've just described having another person, not in the room exactly but right outside would have been so helpful.

Having a beautiful space in which to physically connect with someone in person rather than online would have been good too!

To pick up on something you've alluded to that earlier, the idea that it's prevention rather than cure. And I wondered how you feel as a Londoner, if there is a change, that's already happened, or it's happening around acceptability of discussions around mental health, the idea of not waiting too long before you pick up the phone or walk through your front doors, for example, when you feel that something's reached a point where it's arguably not too late, it's already become critical.

In the US we'd we'd imagine in places like New York, it's far more common that one should engage with these things, almost on a regular basis, not just for six months, but perhaps semi permanently, how do you see culturally where London's at in terms of this dialogue now with around mental health?

UK-US cultural differences in talking about mental wellbeing

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Yes, great question, we're on the journey, we're certainly not at the level of the US, in terms of it just being really ingrained in the culture and something that wouldn't make you bat an eyelid. If you and I were having a conversation and you said, I've just come from my therapy session, that would just be a perfectly normal thing.

The UK is still quite conservative, and we might feel a bit awkward. If somebody said that in the middle of a conversation, we are getting there, there have been massive public mental health campaigns, trying to de-stigmatize mental health, both within society and I think particularly within the workplace.

the impact of Covid on mental wellbeing

I would say that the the covid 19 pandemic has forced people to have these conversations because guess what, it's affected people in every way you can imagine. And I think it's made the language of mental health difficulties much more accessible to people, because they can understand when you start talking about grief, for example, which in British culture, we're not great at doing. People can understand it, because it's actually affecting people directly, or people that they know, given what's happening.

Work has been disrupted for a lot of people. People have lost jobs. They've been put on furlough schemes. They felt that their jobs are under threat. They've been working from home and that's equalled stress. They've been trying to homeschool children too, that's very difficult. So I think the conditions are ripe for that conversation to move forward. It is moving forward. I'd still say it's a little bit too much towards the the reactive end. I when people are experiencing difficulties, that's when they're accessing help. And our vision is that we'd like to support people who kind of think you know what, I don't see anything wrong with just having some exploratory therapy just to take stock of things. Even if there isn't Externally what we might regard as a major issue. And I think that's where people are in the state. So I think we'll get there. But it's going to be a process.

Matt Morley

You mentioned the the impact of what's happened over the last year and a half on mental health in the workplace, and the impact on corporates, large businesses, and how there is clearly a need for there to be a wider conversation in the office.

How do you as a company or yourself personally engage with the business end of mental health, because it does feel like that suddenly become such a critical piece now within our overall wellbeing strategy in the workplace. What does that look like for The Soke?

Workplace wellbeing and mental health

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

There's no one size fits all solution. I think that's the key thing to understand. And you use the word ‘conversation’’, I think the key aspect is to be a part of that conversation, and see where it goes. The reason I say that is that different sectors, different businesses within those sectors are at very different points in terms of their recognition of the scale of the problem when it comes to mental health challenges, and also what they really want to do about those problems.

To give an example, at the end of the scale is just dipping one's toe into the water. There are lots of mental health campaigns now across the calendar, we have mental health awareness week, which is often a focus for businesses. And those businesses may get in external speakers. And we've been part of those conversations. I think with any of these initiatives across a range of issues around social injustice and lots of challenges around the workplace, that really is the start. However it isn't enough on its own. All that really does is it raises awareness. And it gets people thinking and ultimately businesses need to decide what's best for them, we try to support that process.

At the other end of the scale, we've had really good engagement with companies that massively want to change their culture. And that could look like having mental health, first aid training, having champions across the organization, having a culture of supervision, which creates opportunities for conversations amongst peers and one's colleagues, through which discussions around mental health again, can just naturally flow. So those are some of the workshops that we offer to corporates. And it really just depends on on how much time, effort and resources they want to invest in.

One of the really interesting things has been to observe from the outside what different corporates do. I'd say that things have moved in a healthy direction over the last 5 to 10 years. A lot of corporates felt that the right solution was to bring a lot of these services in house, that might include offering GP services or psychological therapy services in the house. We have a fantastic space here. And what we find is that there can be reticence from employees about accessing services in house among senior leaders, they see it as too much of a reputational risk.

Amongst more junior colleagues, there's often a culture of competitiveness, and they find that they're worried about their job security if they're accessing the mental health suite, on on floor x within the building. So often, these initiatives are well meaning but they don't really quite cut it in terms of people really accessing them. Often people will even in very well resourced organizations seek external help, because they're more comfortable with that. So we want to get to the stage where Businesses really understand that and they're able to engage with us in that fashion, because often the employees want to do that way. It might be convenient for them to access us in this increasingly fluid working environment that people have at a time that suits them in an environment where they're more relaxed, and we've put in some features to really to bolster the client's experience, and that's probably going to work better for them, we feel.

Mental health officers in an ESG strategy

Matt Morley

You mentioned the mental health officer role. And it's come up on my radar, having done some work with a real estate developer in London, on their ESG strategy. - environmental, social and governance. Mental health is now part of that remit. So if you have a pension fund putting money into a project and a real estate developer the annual report on their ESG depends partly on their approach to mental health in the workplace.

I just thought that was an interesting combination, because the role of the mental health officer is purely to identify a problem and then get that person to pick up the phone, send an email, or make contact with a professional, passing on the issue to the experts in other words. Nothing more nothing less.

I remember thinking that makes total sense, not trying to resolve something themselves, but having the right person on the end of the line and just joining the dots so that that person feels comfortable in taking action.

Interior design for mental wellbeing

That leads us then into the idea of having a physical space that is not the office, but you might get there having been recommended via your corporate, your employer, you then rock up to the soak. And from what I've seen online, your private clinic’s interior space just does not look like anything I've seen in terms of mental health clinics, I think on some level rewriting the rulebook of what it should feel like and look like when you when you go for one of these sessions.

For those who haven't seen the website, can you describe the type of environment that you have there? I mean, there seems to be sort of Scandinavian influences, vintage furniture, it's like a it's like an interior design showroom. As much as anything, it looks beautiful!

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Absolutely, I think you're spot on. And that is all by design. I certainly wish to take absolutely no credit for it. My role is to focus on the clinical work. But our founder, Maryam Meddin, had a vision. We've talked about the fact that we want people to be able to access care in a way that really feels normal. But the problem she identified was that the environment, and we've got some of the best clinicians in the world in London, I think, New York's up there, but London is about as good a place to practice psychiatry, psychology anywhere in the world.

The indoor environment shouldn't reinforce the fact that you feel unwell, that you're a “patient”. As you said, when you go around a lot of hospitals, which have fantastic clinicians, practitioners offering really high quality level of care, the environment just lags behind. We wanted to create a space that really made people feel nourished. And the design features I think, tick the boxes in that respect, but also to be aspirational.

Aspirational boutique gym designs compared with most private mental health clinics

Lots of people go to gyms now, we don't think anything of it, it's a pretty regular thing to do. And you just go maybe in your lunch break, and you go back to work, and it's not a big deal.

Boutique gyms have become a bigger part of our lives. When they first launched, there was something very aspirational about them. And so the aesthetics support about view that you went to a gym and you just had that wow factor. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here. So you come into reception, it doesn't feel clinical, the sofas are really comfortable. You feel relaxed, it's a bit like being in someone's living room, and a nice one at that.

One of the things about seeing a mental health practitioner in London is that people tend to be very busy. So you leave a session and then you're back out onto the main road and you get on with your day. But actually, we wanted to make people feel that they weren't being kicked out of the building, that they had that time to reflect, and just to not feel rushed, particularly when they're talking about some quite challenging issues.

So one of the key design features would be our pods - spaces next to the therapy rooms, where you can just sit back very comfortably, read a book, have some time in a darkened room to reflect on your session, we have some evidence base technology that supports people, one of these is alpha stem, a device that delivers a microcurrent to your ear lobes. It's a small device, you put it on for anywhere between 20 and 60 minutes. And it has evidence for supporting people in improving their sleep, and also in reducing anxiety levels. And it's going to be approved by nice the National Institute for care and excellence in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.

We see a lot of young people, and they have parents. And so we're able to give something to the parents when they're hanging around, So that's thinking about the family as a system. And we don't just talk the talk, we're able to do that by by linking the building to the therapy directly.

Matt Morley

That reminds me of some work I did in the past around with a hospitality client, we were looking at the guest journey and identified this pain point when you're checking out of a hotel or resort and you know the holidays over and guess what you get slapped with a huge bill and then you're sort of just spat out onto the street again. So how could we rewrite the script on that to turn it into a moment of delight?

After a therapy session you may well be feeling a little vulnerable. You might not want to go straight out into the into the hustle and bustle of London street again. So creating that third space between the outside world and the therapy room and allowing someone just to chill is very innovative, I think.

Create a wellbeing interior design that appeals to men as well as women

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

If we go back to your example. It's about recognizing who the client is. And we've done some work around that as well. So yes, the environment, broadly speaking, allows people to have a really great experience. But we also need to understand who our customers are. And so we wanted an environment that had these soft features. But to say very bluntly, one that isn't feminine, per se, because we have a lot of male clients, we know that men are not great at talking, generally speaking, there's been a lot of work in the public domain around getting men to talk about their mental health difficulties.

So they're a big target group in terms of this whole de-stigmatization process. Being in central London, we know that a lot of our our male clients are going to come from a corporate background. So we wanted to make sure the optics weren't suggesting that we're some sort of hippy or New Age service. So we wanted soft, but also very professional. And I think we strike the balance just right.

Matt Morley

So if we then follow that thread a little further, what would you say are typically the red flags that take place before someone .looks for help, for example, someone in a corporate environment? What should we be looking out for in terms of cues?

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

I think it's important to recognize that there are a broad range of mental health conditions and one of the traps we sometimes fall into as psychiatrists when we're asked this question, we think about the more severe end.

So I do see people with really severe depression. People who've experienced significant trauma, even people who might have a psychotic illness. And we tend to go for that, but there's so much in the middle that we miss. And I think your question speaks to the person that that might be undergoing significant stress over a period of time. It might be work related, it may have nothing to do with work. And it could be very much to do with their personal circumstances. And so it's a lot more ill defined. And we know that stress affects people in many different ways. But in keeping with the idea that we want to get people, maybe before they present with a severe depression, I think it's understanding some of those themes around stress and how it manifests for people.

So the sorts of concept I'd want to get across would be pretty high level. And we might talk about people who are thriving. And it's just as it sounds, it's when you've got that spring in your step, you're very outward focused, you feel energetic, you're paying pretty good attention, broadly speaking, to exercise, your your nutrition, you're engaged with friends, family colleagues, and you've got a I don't like to talk so much about work life balance, there are people who have very busy jobs and work long hours, but you're paying attention to the things that give them a sense of energy and enjoyment.

I think particularly in the current context, burnout is one of the key aspects people need to be looking out for. And that builds up over a period of time, where there's that loss of attention to the things that give one a sense of rejuvenation, and replenishment.

At the other end of the spectrum, we might think about the concept of languishing. And it's just as it sounds, you know, the energy levels are down, you start to become a bit withdrawn from colleagues, you're just not quite on top of things at work. And one experiences significant stress. And one of the things we're mindful of is that people can experience this cliff edge experience where they're functioning outwardly, for a period of time, but where stress is building up, it can hit you very quickly. And the cliff edge term comes from the fact that you can very quickly go from outwardly functioning to really not functioning very well at all. And that can have significant implications within the workplace. But of course beyond that, as well.

Matt Morley

Is it rather like an athlete having a strength and conditioning coach, they might have another one who's their mental coach? If we assume that a high performing executive or indeed any professional who's trying to be at the top of their game, do you think there's a case to argue for their having someone on their mental health team, such as a life coach?

a word on executive performance

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

Certainly it’s best not to wait until something goes wrong. I’m biased so you may guess that my answer is going to be yes, it will be a great idea. I think it's really important to be very clear about what the role of that individual or team would actually be. There are psychologists who work in corporate organizations, and may be termed ‘performance coaches’ or ‘psychologists’.

We've been quite clear about what our perceived role is, and that's why I said there are different conversations with different corporate clients. What we don't see our role in doing is saying we're going to come in, and by engaging with our intervention, you impact the bottom line. If that happens as a result of optimizing employees wellbeing, reducing sickness rates, people being happy at work and so on , then yes of course, we want that. But that's not a direct goal.

I think if I use the analogy of a sports person, and there have been a lot of sports people coming forward, people who've played at elite level, who talk about the fact that everything was geared towards winning and performance, and it wasn't actually looking at them as individuals. And there could be a lot of resentment that sets in for people who outwardly appear to have these amazing lives living the dream. And it's far from that. And I think that's relevant to the workplace as well.

We're not here to just help the organization, we actually want to focus on the individual. In the same way, with an elite athlete, you want to look at them holistically, and say, how do we support this person not to run faster, or to put in more minutes in whatever team sport they're in. But to really focus on their wellbeing, that will, of course, have the direct knock on effect, that they will be able to focus on the challenge that they have, be it in the sporting arena or in the workplace. So yes, we want to engage in those conversations. But we want to do it with real clarity about what we're actually trying to achieve. And I think businesses need to wake up to that aspect. It may sound counterintuitive but actually, this is the way forward.

mindfulness, empathy and the inner game

Matt Morley

Certainly from my personal experience in doing this work, it became very much complimentary to my mindfulness meditation, which by itself was getting me somewhere, but I felt perhaps not to where I wanted to be. Combining the two was a magic formula for my mental game.

I think the point I'd ask people to consider is that by loving ourselves, we're able to give more love back out to the world. And if you're managing people in an organization, if you're managing a team of 10-20, however many people, empathy is critical.

So much of that can come from being able to love and respect yourself first. And knowing what your own triggers are and why you react in a certain way, or why you struggle to get into someone's head, the way a particular person rubs you up the wrong way, that's a real problem, because they're on your team yet somehow you still have to handle them every day and get the best out of them and nurture them.

It's not about friendship, it's a professional relationship. But still, I think, this type of work that we do on ourselves, has so much benefit, not just for us, the individual. but for those around us. I think for me, that was almost this unexpected benefit, a knock on effect that I felt able to connect more easily and in a more honest way with those around me, and particularly people I was managing at that time.

Dr Chi-Chi-Obuaya

That's the point I was alluding to, when I said at the starting level, it's get a speaker in to give a half hour talk for Mental Health Awareness Week, what you described, actually enables cultural change, but it requires a conversation. We don't just have an off the shelf package for organizations. But what you have articulated there is where we want to get to with organisations, but we fully understand that it requires leadership, it requires a bit of knowledge about the mental health landscape, what different providers can offer.

Where you want to get to as an organization that absolutely is on the money in terms of where we want to go. And in our workshops. That is what we try to do we go through that journey with people in understanding a bit about their own mental well being. And the key word is empathy, and just being able to understand what's going on for other people. But yes, the journey starts from within, absolutely spot on.

Matt Morley

Thank you so much for your time. It's been great Chi-Chi!