"Esther Sternberg is a rare writer-a physician who healed herself...With her scientific expertise and crystal clear prose, she illuminates how intimately the brain and the immune system talk to each other, and how we can use place and space, sunlight and music, to reboot our brains and move from illness to health."-Gail Sheehy, author of Passages Does the world make you sick? If the distractions and distortions around you, the jarring colors and sounds, could shake up the healing chemistry of your mind, might your surroundings also have the power to heal you? This is the question Esther Sternberg explores in Healing Spaces, a look at the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. Sternberg immerses us in the discoveries that have revealed a complicated working relationship between the senses, the emotions, and the immune system. First among these is the story of the researcher who, in the 1980s, found that hospital patients with a view of nature healed faster than those without. How could a pleasant view speed healing? The author pursues this question through a series of places and situations that explore the neurobiology of the senses. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety or instill peace. If our senses can lead us to a "place of healing," it is no surprise that our place in nature is of critical importance in Sternberg's account. The health of the environment is closely linked to personal health. The discoveries this book describes point to possibilities for designing hospitals, communities, and neighborhoods that promote healing and health for all.

Staying healthy at work has never been more top-of-mind than it is today. But staying healthy isn't the same as staying well. Staying well at work isn't just about the germs and toxins that impact how we feel physically or even make us sick; it's also about the many aspects of the environment that affect our stress levels, mood, focus, and productivity. Whether you work in a traditional office or a corner of your bedroom, healthy workplaces need not be a luxury. Well at Work reveals how to design these spaces for wellbeing across the seven domains of integrative health: stress and resilience, movement, sleep, relationships, nutrition, spirituality, nature and the air we breathe. You'll learn: * How the environment you work in all day can impact your sleep at night * Optimal lighting and noise levels for reducing stress and staying alert * How to adjust temperature and humidity to protect against infection * Why open-plan offices can keep you more active * The myriad benefits of access to nature (and how to bring nature indoors) * Office layouts that foster social interaction, but not distraction. * Foods to enhance cognitive performance * And more On this eye-opening journey of discovery, you'll meet Dr. Sternberg's colleagues in science and medicine, design and architecture, and building sciences who are striving to make workplaces more conducive to wellbeing. And you'll glimpse into the future of the workplace, where artificial intelligence and the metaverse will help us design environments that respond to our individual needs. Above all, you'll come away with a menu of simple steps anyone can take to be-and stay-well at work.

This text explores the mind-body connection and what it means for health. Esther Sternberg provides accounts of the experiments that reveal the physical mechanisms - the nerves, cells and hormones - used by the brain and immune system to communicate with each other. She describes just how stress can make us more susceptible to all types of illness, and how the immune system can alter moods.