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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the observable unknown, where science meets the unexplained. I'm Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscoboard.com and after two decades of working at the intersection of comparative religious studies, grief counseling, anthropology, quantum mechanics, and consciousness studies, I've discovered that our most profound human experiences often exist in the space between what we can prove and what we can perceive. In this podcast, we'll explore the measurable influences of immeasurable forces, those hidden factors that shape our reality but often escape our traditional scientific frameworks. From the latest research in consciousness studies to the ancient wisdom that's now finding validation in neuroscience and quantum physics, we're here to bridge the gap between academic rigor and spiritual insight. Whether you're a skeptic, a seeker, or simply curious about the deeper mechanics of human experience, you're in the right place. Together, we'll examine the evidence, challenge our assumptions, and explore what happens when we dare to look beyond the obvious. Today's guest invites us to rethink the space around us. Not as decoration, not as status, but as a living mirror of identity itself. Olga Nyman is the author of Spatial Alchemy, a work that asks a deceptively simple question. What if the home is not merely where life happens, but where the self is rehearsed, reshaped, and revealed? Trained across psychology, design, and theatrical scenography, Olga approaches interior space like a narrative field, one where color, placement, and symbolism become quiet actors shaping our emotional and spiritual posture. Her work explores the relationship between attachment, memory, and environment and how the smallest physical shifts can ripple outward into profound internal change. Tonight, we move beyond decor trends and into the deeper architecture of becoming. What does it mean to design for a future self? Can a room regulate the nervous system? And where does beauty end and transformation begin? So, without any further ado, let's join the conversation. Olga, it's fantastic to have you sitting here with me today. I've been very much looking forward to our conversation. We were just chatting about your completion of the innermost facility. Please tell me all about it from beginning to end.
- [02:08]
B
Well, innermost is a. Well, first of all, hello before jumping in, hello. And I'm so honored to be on your podcast.
- [02:17]
A
Thank you.
- [02:17]
B
This topic is a passion, like, it's one of my passions. The topics that you unfold, and hence, innermost. It was one of my favorite projects I've ever done. It is a psychedelic psychotherapy center with medical doctors and therapists and led by a man named Casey Paleoz. And he did clinical trials on MDMA research and works with ketamine and spravato in the clinic. So I went into it in a very close relationship with Casey and his team because I've been in the client situation. I also have received healing from, you know, all kinds of, like, ketamine and spravato and all kinds of plant medicines. So I know how powerful setting is when you're in an altered space consciously. And so Casey and I really mapped out every moment of the client journey somatically so that the clients really felt held as they were moved from space to space to space space. And it wasn't a clinical setting. It felt like a home. That's how I designed it. I didn't want it to be like a funky, psychedelic, cool gallery space like some of the ones that I've seen, or a space that felt too clinical. I wanted people to come in and feel like they were entering a friend's home so that their nervous system relaxed and the space held them. So, yeah, that was the raison d' etre and the. The impetus. But behind the design, that's fantastic.
- [03:44]
A
Would you share some of the elements you applied and the thinking behind them?
- [03:47]
B
So at the. When people step out of the elevator space, they. They. They're on the 11th floor, and they're beautiful penthouse views. But I wanted that experience to be more intimate, like, their energy to kind of go inward, because the space is called innermost. So in on the logo wall, I applied, like, this beautiful textured blue watery wallpaper. And in alchemy and through the Jungian lens, water has emotional world. So immediately, it was like the subconscious program of, we are entering the emotional world. You're coming out of, like, a busy New York City environment. You're entering into an inner world, an emotional world. And then I did, like, a console that had elements of home, like books and candles and, like, chic vases, a chic dish of, like, oranges. And oranges in feng shui mean abundance, signal abundance, a lot of gold elements. So it felt like you were like walking into someone's beautifully styled entry, and then the reception desk kind of greeted you with beautiful sconces. And the thing is, this space is really interesting because not only is it a daytime psychedelic therapy center, but it's really an active member of its community in terms of hosting events with the psychedelic assembly and other kind of, like, therapists. So they do have a lot of evenings events and group therapies. So this space has to be a daytime space for clients and an evening space for fostering community. So those are kind of the beautiful lighting and the sconces really start bringing people into the evening space because they're lit up in the evening, and you kind of come out and you're entering, like, a fun, loungy experience in the evening. So it had to serve both purposes.
- [05:39]
A
Tell me now, with a lot of the clients at Innermost, clearly the idea of reintegrating is significant. Did you embed any tools, Tools or elements that you felt would help them with the reintegration?
- [05:50]
B
Yes, yes. We have a beautiful womb, like, recovery. And it's like the walls are dark and the clients are really held in this space with, like, velvet sofas, this kind of beautiful, simple, but like. Like amoebic. I mean, said. That's the wrong word. But it has movement. It's an irregularly shaped gold coffee table that's just very simple, like. Like a pedestal and just soft velvet chairs. Dark room.
- [06:19]
A
The.
- [06:20]
B
But deep, rich red and a deep, like, really rich wall paint. So it's like, it really brings down your wall, your nervous system, and mimics this feeling of being in a womb. Like, deep, like, body color of the, like, brick red has this feeling of womb that I wanted to help the patients feel really held in their altered state in a, like, small, more enclosed space so that they can kind of collect themselves. Help the space helps them collect themselves. And the lighting is beautiful. Onyx sconces. So it's like this soothing, deep lighting. So that is. Was a key feature of the space. Like, how would the clients be able to exit the altered space gently?
- [07:03]
A
The color palette seems extremely important to you. May I ask whose research you implemented? Is it exclusively Jungian? Are you trying to go with the work of Dr. Maxwell Lucher, whose idea regarding colors and how colors may trigger or may allow for a heightened absorption? Are you applying with this?
- [07:21]
B
You know, it's extensive research. Research that I did, like, across the whole spectrum. There wasn't any one person whose, like, theories I focused on. And a lot of it was intuitive as well. And I look at, like, the vibrations of color, you know, and how they relate to the vibrations of the body, like in the chakra system in the Indian tradition. And also, it isn't even as much about color. Yes, it's about color, but it's mostly about tone, the tone of color, because we know with, like, say it's a red, there's a bright, activating red like a fire engine. And that's a very motivating color. It's. It grabs our attention. And then there are these, like, deep, earthy, brownie Reds that have a very different effect on the nervous system. So it's. It's about intensity. It's about tone and saturation of the color. So it's. It's. As a designer, you work with these things very intuitively after having done research across, like, multiple. In multiple ways. And then you synthesize very intuitively and how it begins to affect your own body.
- [08:23]
A
It sounds like a really fantastic project that you've undertaken and I'm sure executed with immense skill. Mask. Your turning point begins with reupholstering furniture during a period of uncertainty. What changed psychologically in you before anything changed externally?
- [08:39]
B
So it's interesting. I want to kind of give a little bit of my background just for people to have context when I answer that. So I was an editor at House Beautiful magazine. I had a successful design career around the time that you're speaking, and it was moving along. I had, you know, clients like West Elm and CB2. It was, like, in the realm of mainstream design. And I was beginning to see more and more clients and taking them deeper and not, like, kind of into their own psychological spaces. And my parents are both psychiatrists, and I have a bachelor's degree in clinical psychology. So I was gently, gently moving along this path, but I was frustrated because I wanted it to move more quickly, and I wanted to bring my design skill into a deeper context, a deeper conversation. So when I was kind of stuck, as we are in life, what I'm doing doesn't feel right, but I don't know, the next thing, like, the next thing isn't coming. The pandemic happened, and people started relating to their homes in a very, very, very different way. So they were beginning to be ready to have this conversation. So back to your question. I was doing a lot of internal work, like, bringing through, like, I was doing the Kabbalah because it was the pandemic, and I'd always wanted to study the Kabbalah. So I was taking online courses in the Kabbalah. I was doing a lot of studying of you. I was. I did a womb workshop, actually, because it was like, how do we birth energy into form through our wombs? So it was this, like, womb priestess. It was actually a very beautiful workshop of, like, going into the womb as a place of creation. Very semantic. So I was doing that emotional. I was working on the four levels. I was working in the emotional world, in the intellectual world with all the study, in the spiritual world, with meditation. I have a regular meditation practice every morning, and I work with Joe Dispenza's meditations. And I kind of do all kinds of different meditations at different points in my life. So my mental, emotional, and spiritual planes were being dressed. What was the aha moment for me was bringing the physical, my physical home into alignment with that. So my furniture had been destroyed by my two kids during the pandemic. And I would. When I would walk by my living room, like, part of me would crunch inside contract. Like, I would feel an inner contraction, like an inner, like, resignation feeling, like, okay, all my shooting jobs, all the photography jobs and the styling jobs that I had were closed. And I was feeling a lot of scarcity. And I couldn't justify spending the money to reupholster my furniture to bring it into alignment with what I was doing on the mental, emotional, and physical levels. But then I realized, like, I want to bring my future self into the present moment. Like, I would like. It's kind of inspired by Joe Dispenza's work with meditation. Like, really start connecting to your future self and start bringing that into form. I was doing that on the emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental levels. But then I thought, why am I not doing it on the physical level? On the physical level, my space is programming my body for scarcity and, you know, just a resignation. And I kind of bit the bullet, took money out of savings and reupholstered all that furniture. And literally the springs were popping, popping out. It was. It wasn't good. And I'm a designer. I was so deep in my own scarcity fears. And then after I did that, things started to happen. The Washington Post called me and interviewed me for an article literally three weeks after my sofas and my chairs came in after from the upholstery. And they wrote about me being a design therapist. And then immediately after that, Artisan Books called me to publish a book about this. She's. They said it was very apropos and people were seeing their homes in this way. So I landed a book deal without even trying. I wasn't even thinking of writing a book. Like, it didn't. I was thinking of just doing design, not necessarily writing a book. So all these things that were far outside of my manifestation realm came through when I addressed the fourth element, the physical world, and brought it into alignment with the emotional, mental, and spiritual worlds that I was already exploring.
- [13:03]
A
That is a profound catapis you went through. And coming out on the other end, you clearly made the best of it. You also described designing for a future self identity rather than a present identity. Is this closer to Jungian active imagination or behavioral conditioning?
- [13:16]
B
I would say it's a bit of both. It's like, yes, it's Jungian active imagination. So you begin to imagine this future self and connect to it and like, literally until your body starts to respond. So I would be in meditation imagining, you know, this future self, these future feelings, and how my body would feel while having these feelings. But also, once you design your home to start bringing that future self into the present moment, you know, it starts touching on the. Some of the stuff that James Clear writes about in his. In his book Atomic Habits. And it's really about how our environment affects our behaviors and how our habits will shape us as much as any of our past does. So how you like how the environment shapes you, affects your behavior and becomes equally as important as actively imagining that future self. The physical 3D world programs. So spatial alchemy is really a combination of all of those things.
- [14:16]
A
I'm interested that you bring up James Clear. Is this something that really sparked your focus on how to structure environments or was it more adding to the wheelhouse you already worked in?
- [14:28]
B
It was adding to the wheelhouse. So, James Clear, his book I read in 2021, and it blew my mind in that I was trying to develop new ham habits. It was the pandemic. We were still in it. And I was trying to develop all kinds of healthy habits. And when I read the book, I realized if I programmed, like, my kitchen to take vitamins like I'd been wanting to develop, like this, this, you know, extensive vitamin taking habit. And then I. And I was putting it off and not doing it and not doing it. And then I thought, why, why don't I just program this into my kitchen? And I got a beautiful walnut tray and a beautiful carafe with a beautiful glass on it. And I put the vitamins in beautiful little bowls, you know, different colored bowls, so I knew which vitamin was which and took them out of the ugly vitamin containers and. And that made me want to go there in the morning and, you know, pour the water. It's like this beautiful succulent habit of. The sensual habit of, like, grasping this beautiful karaf, pouring the water into a beautiful glass, taking the glass, taking the vitamins. It becomes like this ritualistic thing. And as I started doing that for myself, I realized the power of it in shaping our habits. And Clear speaks to that. So I did that. I made my altar more beautiful for meditation. And I see everything as an altar, not just like one with a Buddha on it or, you know, a Christ cross on you know, I see the foyer as an altar. So you start program positive habits into the foyer. Like, for example, how you open your mail. And the process of that, you can start, like, ritualizing it so it's not chaotic in there. So, yes, it was. Reading the book gave me a lot of ahas that I wove into my already thought, you know, developed practice. But we're always growing, so it was an amazing book to read.
- [16:17]
A
You've brought up meditation multiple times now. How much has your meditation. Meditation practice influenced the sort of inspiration that you draw from?
- [16:26]
B
It's. It's very influential because when I first started meditating, I couldn't sit down for even 30 seconds. I started after my father died, and he died suddenly in 2016, and I was distraught. I didn't get to say goodbye to him. And I, you know, started meditating with Joe Dispense's work first because I needed to be guided in, because I couldn't even sit for, like, 3:15 seconds without jumping up. It was like my nervous system couldn't take meditation, so I had to really, really walk myself into it. And since then, it's really taught me how to savor, how to slow down, how to stop rushing. Because I'm someone who's like. I'm an Eastern European, like, Soviet Jew. A lot of this kind of rushing, scampering energy is very much in my nervous system. So I've had to learn meditation in order to begin to undo that inner program. And yes, it's very influential because it opens your mind to that which is outside of your own realm of knowing. You kind of invite the higher power or creator in, and it's an expansive practice.
- [17:35]
A
I love that you brought up the concept of Ashkenazi epigenetic influence. Where do you feel you personally put this nervous energy when it comes to your work?
- [17:43]
B
Well, oftentimes, and especially these days, when we feel like we can't control the news and the like, our. Like, it feels like our environment in the collective sphere is feeling less and less soothing, if it ever felt that way. But it feels more and more chaotic, is what I say. I wake up very, you know, very anxious, triggered by it. And I have to really use my practices to calm myself down. And one of the ways that I find my own agency and really anchor into my own agency. Agency is working with my home. So I wake up, and it's. The first thing I do is, like, reorganize a drawer, you know, for 20 minutes. I want. I don't want this to become a compulsive. Habit. But for like 20 minutes or 30 minutes, I rethink or make better an area of my home that I've been meaning to work on. For example, the mechanical room is the project now because it's messy and I want it to be, you know, even though no one goes in there, I want it still to be like very pleasurable experience when you walk in the door. So I do a lot of that to help my nervous energy. And it really gives me an anchoring of agency right from the get go. So I do that and then that helps my body to kind of settle and then go into meditation when. And sit.
- [19:02]
A
When you're designing a space for a client, do you intentionally embed agency activating moments or tasks into an environment or a client who you feel may similarly have a very anxious disposition?
- [19:14]
B
Yes, yes. We, I mean we. That's. That's part of our initial conversation. And we create a strateg strategy around it based on their needs, based on their budget and timelines. So you know, if they're a nervous kind of anxious person like me, like some kind of tends to be overwhelmed, tends to be a little add a little scattered. We kind of, we start working with color in a very specific way. That's the very first thing I go to. And the symbolism in their art. So we really look at their space and start seeing if their art is calming or if their art is like, like overly activating. Does it feel like they want to feel or is it like outdated identities that are hanging on their wall that they don't even notice anymore? So we start scanning their home for old versions of themselves and outdated identities. And it's a very illuminating process. So if they want more agency in their lives, we look at places where they feel like they don't have agency. And I say, where do you feel the least amount of agency? Or what items in your home are tied to when you didn't feel agency? So example things that like came to them from childhood if they didn't feel an agency, like which items are least resonating with the feeling that you want to have and can we release them? So we do a purge. First it's like an information gathering, then a purge. And then we start based on their budget, filling this in with items that feel conducive to or resonant with what they're bringing to us. So say it's stability. Say the client has not had. Has had a story of instability throughout their whole life. They've moved, divorce, or for whatever reason when they were A child. And that's a theme that keeps recurring in their adult life. We start looking at their home for plate, for pieces that are lacking stability. And you'd be amazed at how many like that people design their greatest laments right into their home. Like rickety side tables, beds that don't feel stable, rugs that are too small for the room, skinny little floor lamps and tons of them, you know, things like desks that aren't. That are kind of old and wobbly, you know, that were like a hand me down that don't really serve their needs. So we start looking at their home with different eyes and then they start having many, many aha. Moments of oh my God. Because when you see it, you can't unsee.
- [21:45]
A
Why do you think people build these pieces into their home to sabotage themselves? Is this more out of an economic forcing of circumstance or do you think it's tied to something unconscious that they're working through in their environment and maybe haven't found a solution to?
- [22:01]
B
You know, we, I think, you know, of course money has to do with it, but it's, it's really. I would not even say that that's the majority reason, you know, we as within. So without, you know, that is the kind of all alchemical principle that I really believe, you know, is, you know, really paints our world. So whatever we have within us, we're going to design for that thing like on the outside. So for example, unconsciously, this is unconscious. So a client I had who has money, she had a beautiful brownstone. She's like editor at a, you know, like a very well known publication. Stylish woman. She had a beautiful brownstone and like she had just completed a ren, but she was working in the basement of her home and literally spending most of her time on like perched on this metal stool. Like the kind that you see at like shop class, in stool in school. Just basic metal stool, no pillows, no back, you know, just a metal stool and using a metal shelf as a desk. And she was like a high ranking woman, you know, and she didn't realize that she was projecting herself back into a cubicle and a very uncomfortable one at that. She didn't see it until I pointed it out. Like you spend most of your day in on that stool. How uncomfortable is that for your body? You're not cherishing. And she was like, when she saw it, she was like, oh my God, you're, you know, like. And then she couldn't unsee it. So back to your question after this example. We design like so many of our laments into our home and we're blind to it because it's us, you know, it's our. Just like it's, it's unconscious so we don't see it until it's pointed out. And then you really begin to, to see it and you see how your home is programmed to keeping you stuck. For example, another example, like a client of mine wanted partnership. Also a woman, high, like high level position woman, you know, in her 50s, she wanted partnership and a lot of her furniture she bought with her ex or pulled up off the street. And she was like in her 50s but with her ex from like 20 years ago. She had bought the, got this furniture in New York City. We love pulling things on off the street because you could find really great stuff on the street. But she was a New Yorker and she had all this stuff from her ex boyfriend on the street. And her bedroom had all these images of single people and there wasn't any room for the partner to come in. There wasn't like an invitation. Her bedroom was not an invitation and she didn't see how it was keeping her stuck.
- [24:44]
A
Do a lot of your clients say that the idea of designing their environment is confusing because they're not sure what their compass tells them, they're not sure where they want to go with their environment. They're defaulting to you to tell them what in terms of the environmental drive should be?
- [25:01]
B
Well, definitely, definitely. Because it's hard to see our own selves. We're blind to our own selves. And even as a designer, sometimes I just like, I see something in my own home and I realize, oh my gosh, wait a second, I've been living with this thing, but it's not really conducive to what I want to bring. So sometimes we get very seduced by the beauty layer of things and don't touch the symbolic layer things. So yes, and that's what I bring to the table. That's, that's my fairly unique approach in that I come to their home and I don't want to recreate everything. I don't want them to spend a lot of money. I don't want them to like throw away all their things and start from scratch as many high end designers do. I really want to use a lot of their stuff, but I want them before we do anything to see their home through the eyes of symbol and through the eyes of kind of their psychological lives. Because if you don't address that, then you're just like putting pretty things on Top of something, you're not going into the deeper layers of psyche so that your home begins to shape yourself.
- [26:08]
A
You know, that's golden. Tell me more about where you're recognizing concealed or otherwise obfuscated symbols in a person, person's environment that might be sabotaging them, but that they completely lack an awareness of.
- [26:21]
B
Yeah, well, there are four layers of design, and most design kind of practice only addresses tools. So there's two visible layers, the beauty layer, the function layer. That's visible, we can see that. And that's what designers are trained to do. But then there's also the psychological layer of design, and then there's the manifestation layer. So in the psychological layer of design lie a lot of, of symbols. Right. And that, and that's kind of the foundation, just like in therapy, you know, what's the symbol underneath the dream? What is it really saying to you? So in the, in the home, everything is a symbol. And if you learn to see it with those eyes, it could really begin to. And you begin to shape it. Deliberate. You begin to bring in art or bring in even objects that have like a very specific symbolic layer that to them. I'm going to give you some concrete examples in a second. Then it begins to affect you. So you're building a web thread by thread by thread of deliberate symbol creation that speaks to your unconscious, because that's what your unconscious mind understands. It understands symbol. And that's how it speaks to you in dreams. It speaks to you in symbol. So what I'm trying to do is help people speak back to it in symbol of, like, this is what I'm. This is the symbol that I'm consciously bringing into my home. So, for example, say, let's go back to stability. Say you want stability. If you start drinking daily your coffee out of an earthy brown solid terracotta clay mug that has the energy of earth. That's earth energy. So if you want stability, you want to drink in more stability, you want to drink from a cup like that. Whereas, for example, if your life is, is stagnant, if you feel stuck, if it feels boring, if you kind of, you're making good money, you've gone to the same kind of boring job for the last 15 years. You want to get out of it, but your creativity is a little squashed, then I would say drink coffee out of a clear glass, clear for clarity, kind of clear glass mug with like a playful handle, maybe a curvy handle or candle that's a little out of proportion to the month. Mug like an artisanal made clear glass mug. Because clear glass, playful like, designed in a playful way, has a very different symbolic energy than an earthy mug. And this extends out and out and out. So we look, start looking at our little things first. And this is how I teach people in my book Spatial Alchemy. When they are not hiring me, but they still want this knowledge. I, I tell them to look at the things, their habits, habits and their routines and the things that they touch every day and how you can begin to intentionally program those to resonate with what you want to bring into your life. So, for example, there's the coffee mug. There is the salt cellar. There is, you know, the waste paper basket. There is the stapler. There is the dish that holds the sponge that you use, you know, in your bath. There is like all these little things, but many, many touch points. If you track your routines throughout the day and start thinking, wait, this is like this chipped cup. I, I drink out of a chipped cup. Or my cup is not deliberately like some mug that like my Aunt Gertrude gave me. I'm not deliberately designing anything. You want to start bringing that deliberate focus onto the symbolic and psychological layer, because then that begins to touch, touch that yummy fourth layer, which is the manifestational. And that's the layer. When we spoke about my upholstering the furniture, that's what I was touching. I used my psychological layer to then get into my manifestational layer, which is the fourth layer of design. So once you start working with your own psychology and expanding like self love, self nurturing, self awareness into your home, and you start doing that more multiple times, like a spider building its web one strand at a time. So you're at 10 strands. The web is starting to get strong, right? Your body's starting to feel it. And then it starts touching the manifestational layer, where then something happens in your life. You run into someone that's exactly the right person, or an unexpected door opens, or your timing is perfect and you're able to link it. Oh, I know that that thing happened because I've been doing this work in my home and expanding my vessel to receive more. I know that that's related to that. And that's where the alchemy really starts getting.
- [30:59]
A
At that point, you map design onto physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual layers. Which one of these layers do you see most people over developing?
- [31:08]
B
I would say the mental. We're all over thinkers. That's how we're taught. That's how we're programmed at school. You know, we we want to think our way out of things. So, you know, like, some of this is kind of cultural programming. So it's kind of like what brands or what look reinforces an identity that you want to reinforce. Not necessarily like. Like, for example, like, I had a Mercedes and like a used Mercedes, and I bought it. And as soon as I bought that used car, I thought the Mercedes would help me kind of of bring this luxury energy into my life. That was like my mental thought about it. But as soon as it came out of the dealership, I literally got two flat tires, like, immediately. But then for five years, I kept getting flats. I kept getting flats and I kept enduring this car because mentally I was not noticing what the world was showing me, which is like, this is not a, like, flavor of luxury. This is like a trauma response in leather seats. You know, I'm like, reinforcing it because my mental faculty is overriding the other faculties. So I would say mental and our idea of our identity and like, wanting to keep and reinforce our identity is the most overused.
- [32:24]
A
Your chapter on emotional regulation chairs and supportive environments reframes the home as a parental structure. Is spatial alchemy for you fundamentally attachment repair?
- [32:34]
B
Well, you know, that's interesting that you put it that way. I wouldn't say fundamentally, but there's a. Because there's so many elements in it, you know, with the future self and like, it's almost like bringing the future into the present moment. There's that side of it, but really on the emotional level. And I believe that our home needs to express the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual world. So on an emotional level, yes, you want your home to have your back. You want your home to be a solid base, like a secure base, a solid foundation. You wanted to be able to hold you. So, for example, the emotional regulation chair that I speak of, we have so many habits that we get into. Everyone with their own set of habits when we're feeling emotionally dysregulated. For some, it's eating snacks, cookies, munching something. For some, it's drinking. For some, it's smoking weed. For some, it's corn. For some, it some, it's shopping. For some, it's like, you know, other compulsive things that to avoid feeling our emotions and processing our emotions because they're pretty intense sometimes. So one of my thoughts for creating the emotional regulation chair with my family, including my children, was to make it safe to feel your feelings in a yummy, comfy chair and to go to that chair, rather to than to an unhealthy habit. Go to that, that chair when you need to feel held and wrap yourself up in a delicious throw and give yourself that hug when you're feeling disregulated. Is that attachment repair? Yes, I think in. To. In many degrees it is attachment repair.
- [34:09]
A
So do you believe that a home can substitute for relational healing if properly designed?
- [34:14]
B
Well, I, I don't. I don't know if the word substitute is the word that I would choose. I would say it would. It's attitude, it's supplement. You know, people are people. And of course, if you do your powerful emotional work with your parents, like, and your parents are in for it to like, really heal your, you know, the trauma of your past relationship or the hurts, the wounds, and you heal it with your parents, of course, like, that's the powerful work. But so powerful as well is while you're doing that, design your home to hold you as you will. Wish your mother had, but she was too busy building her life with the American dream. And this was my mother, you know, as an immigrant, you know, and never had the bandwidth to hold you. So if you start. And I'm doing a lot of repair personally in my relationship because she's a psychiatrist, so she's in for it, you know, doing this deep work with me. But in addition, I give myself the thing that I always wanted to have as a child and never received and I am always looking for from the outside world. You start programming your home to give it to yourself. For me, it's being cherished. I want that feeling of being cherished, and that's the word I use. And I look at my home through the eyes of where am I not cherishing myself? And how can I cherish myself more? How can I give myself that? So while I'm doing the emotional healing work with mother and friends and whoever else, I'm having rupture and repair cycles, cycles with. You want to start giving that to yourself because that's the thing you can most control is how you can control your home in a way that you can't control your body, you can't control other people, your work, your kids, your spouse, like the world, you know, Whereas your home, you. You have more of agency in it than you do in many, many other things. So I always say use the agency that.
- [36:03]
A
Before recording, we were chatting about therapists and the tendency for a lot of them to ignore situational design. Tell me more about what you have done for therapists who have obviously taken some recognition of that truth and made their environments Better for their clients.
- [36:19]
B
That's one of my great loves. I love working with therapists and people that are very attuned therapeutically. So oftentimes, and I've been a client since I was 18 in very many therapists offices. My parents are both psychiatrists, so that was kind of hard for the course as a young adult and into my 20s, being in therapy myself. And I would notice that a lot of therapists aren't necessarily visual people. And a lot of times their homes and I would talk to them about this because I was already working in design. Like they're. It's made up of things that didn't quite. I mean their offices are made up of things that didn't quite work in their homes. So they were like this random chair, this, that the art was like, didn't work in their living room. They brought it into their office. So a lot of times it was this kind of unfocused mishmash, warm and cozy, that, that they're good at making it warm and cozy. So it's like a warm cozy sofa. But it's not. There's no like focus or direction in the room. And it's not necessarily plugging the client in with the symbolic layer that it takes to support their healing. So when I work with therapists and when I redesign their offices, spaces like Innermost, we really look at the somatic experience of the client. For example, when the client is sitting and talking to the therapist, what is the client looking at? That's beyond the therapist because sometimes the client's eyes wander beyond the therapist when they're thinking and, or feeling. And what is it? What piece of art is hanging on the wall there? What text style is hanging on the wall? Is like, what does the room feel done, dusty? Does it feel open? Does. Is there like, what is the symbolized. What is the symbolism behind all the objects they chose? What elements like wood, metal, glass, you know, are represented in the room? And is the therapist aware of these symbolic implications of all of that that needs to be brought to the attention? Because setting, as we know as therapists or as people who work in the healing art, setting influences the set. So it's set and setting and the setting shapes the healing in a huge way. And there's so much research us.
- [38:30]
A
Oh, absolutely, yeah. The human psyche is completely context dependent. The idea of embedded symbols brings to mind something I've been meaning to ask you. How do you personally distinguish between what you think of as spatial alchemy and a more traditional practice like feng shui?
- [38:47]
B
Well, Feng shui is very much, much about directions and qi energy. And it's influenced by the Daoist in the Taoist traditions. Alchemy is my. The way I built it. The spatial alchemy is influenced by the kind of Western, Middle Eastern traditions of like the Tree of Life, you know, you know, the mental, spiritual, emotional and physical realms are directly, you know, taken and influenced by the Tree of Life and kind of the, The. The psychological aspect of how the space shapes the psyche as well as energy. So that, I feel, is very. The right word templated into kind of the Western psych. And I feel like that's where I. Because I feel like a space and psychology are so interrelated. That went while I studied Feng shui a bit. Not extensively, but a bit. The kind of dual directionality and the baguas and the kind of that stuff didn't feel conducive or as conducive to the way that I saw the world, which is when alchemy started coming in, when I started learning the Kabbalah and I was like, oh, my God, this tracks. So, yes, our spaces, you know, the directions of rooms and the different corners. And energy is a huge topic that's very similar because both practices touch on universal principles. So there's the, you know, Taoist lens and then there's the, you know, Judeo Christian kind of that lens. But both lenses are different ways of seeing universal principles that are calm to us.
- [40:22]
A
To that you speak of energy as practical, almost sensory. Do you see energy as metaphor or measurable somatic feedback?
- [40:29]
B
I would say both. I'm always a both person, you know, yes, energy is metaphor, but energy also affects. Affects the body. I mean, I'm not measuring how like, we're doing this as like, you know, like the client tells me how they respond, how their body responds to the changes that we make. Like, for example, I re hung photos like we did. Like, my client was feeling stuck in her office. She was feeling like just, you know, creatively frustrated and not able to financially make it work as a film director. Director, documentary film director. And her office reflected that. And so we did a session. We completely cleared it out. We rehung the pictures, and as you walk in the door, there's this central image that felt very inspiring for her. And we. We did a whole gallery wall based on that. We cleaned out the whole thing. We restyled the home office using most of what she had. We didn't really even buy anything new. We just did it with what she had and the Next morning, she was like, wow. Like, I walked in, in here, and I felt like, a sense of hope like I haven't felt in years. So, yes, that's somatic. Yes, it was energetic. And the energy affected the.
- [41:39]
A
So the idea of it having a physical. A physical framework that is expressible is something that really does muddy the waters when we discuss something like Feng shui. We can discuss energy all day long, but it's more typically in other traditions handled as a metaphor, I think, than something that you see as palpable. What happens when skeptics interpret it purely neurologically? When you're dealing with a client, they're not talk to you in a language maybe, that explains. They understand energy as a metaphor rather than as something that impacts them. This woman who from her photographs now suddenly felt inspired. When you're dealing with a client who is perhaps skeptical of the idea of hermeticism of Kabbalah, then what language do you speak to them in? How do you explain what the environmental shift will do for them or for a therapist for their clients? Clients?
- [42:30]
B
Well, oftentimes I don't even bring out the Kabbalah, you know, I'm just a nerd. So I. I love. I love it in my own practice, and I speak to it a little bit of my book. But with the, like, the majority of clients, we're really more tracking what their home is telling them, like, how their home is programming them, which they totally can see and feel, especially when it's pointed out, you know, and like, how they will shift when their home shifts and they can feel that to. So in a way you don't even. Like, there's. We know how powerful our homes are. Like, we know this inherently. Even the biggest skeptical person knows the difference between when you walk into your home and it's like, really disordered and, like, chaotic. And then when you walk in your home after, like, the cleaning lady has been there, you know, or someone has cleaned it, and you walk in and it's like, immediately you just like, ah, you know, you feel right. Or like, after a weekend spent reorganizing your closet, you know, you don't need to be convinced. You know how powerful the impact is on you for the rest of the week and even the month as you walk into this organized, orderly closet, and you're like. Like, you get that dopamine hit. You're proud of yourself. You're like, I'm happy. So happy I finally did that, and it starts impacting you. So I honestly don't get that many people who are skeptical of it. It's just a such a basic thing that we all know that our home impacts us on very deep levels. And the more you start to tune it to what you want, how you want it to impact you, the more it will do. So I think there's something in all of us that inherently knows that when
- [44:14]
A
you're dealing with a client, that you may want to see some therapeutic actualization of one kind or another in. Do you urge them to use chromatic variations or specifics geometry that might urge change through mild triggering? Or do you let your clients pick just what is going to be comfortable and supportive of their current state?
- [44:38]
B
You know, I always love to play it a little bit in the uncomfortable realms, but. So, for example, like, when I re. I'll just speak to a personal example. When I kind of realized in my office that I was perpetuating patterns of overwhelm and scatteredness by the kind of desk I was working on with these surrealist legs. It was this table that I designed for an event. And I hadn't realized that all the little legs going in different directions looked cool, but they were perpetuating the pattern that I wanted out of my life. And then I got, like, a desk on really thick legs. It had been like a dining. Like a small dining table in another room. And I brought that in because it had these very thick legs, as opposed to the many little legs of my previous desk. And then I decided to style it, like, with things that actually were not my identity. I saw myself at that point in time as this funky Brooklyn artist, stylist, designer, A little bit punk, a little bit rock, a little bit, you know, Like, I had a very. Like, I had a very specific way of perceiving myself and my style. Style. And I decided to design this space not for who I was, but who I wanted to become. So I got these footed vases. Like, it felt, like, suddenly more gracious, more dignified, less, like, rebellious and kind of punky and more like, I got a leather desk blotter with my initials monogrammed on it in gold. I never do that kind of thing. I would used to laugh at that of kind. Kind of thing. People who wouldn't monogram, you know, things. I'd be like, poo. Why are they doing that? So silly. And I decided to lean into the opposite of my identity, to start touching cords that I actually really wanted to bring into my life, But I was resisting. So I had one foot on the gas and one foot on the break of, like, yes, I Want these abundance energies in my life, but I'm, like, holding on to this, like, scrappy identity that I developed in my 20s and 30s. So I encourage clients. Yes, we want comfort. So I'm not gonna go into, like, discomfort, physical discomfort, but a little bit of emotional discomfort. Yeah, that can work. Especially if they are feeling like. Like their bed is this, like, hard metal bed. I have clients that they have these iron beds with these bars, like, in jail that they can't, like, lean back into. And they want partnership, but their bed is so pointy and, like, you know, not welcoming because the metal iron, like, bars, they can't even really lean back into it and feel held. That's where I'm like, okay, this is an investment into a bed that could hold you. Like you want your partner to hold you that you can lean back into. So, yes, the investment is uncomfortable, but. And the identity shift is uncomfortable, but this was my grandmother's bed. Well, do you want to perpetuate the patterns of your grandmother? If you do, then sure, let's keep sleeping in it. But if that's not working for you, that's where you start touching your discomfort. And last thing I'm going to say about that, when I let go of my, like, cool surrealist desk with all these little legs, like, many, many of them going in different directions, directions that represented a huge career success for me. This event was, like, featured in a magazine, and editors came to this event and loved this surrealist table that I designed. And then the client gave it to me for free. So it was also free. So, like, A, it was a career success. B, it was free. C, it was serving a purpose. My desk letting go of that was so uncomfortable, I gave it to my upholster. Letting go of that thing, like purging, is highly uncomfortable, comfortable. But that is the first process in alchemy, and you see it across every spiritual tradition that when you go into the temple, you do a sacrifice. You sacrifice something, and that represents sacrificing part of your identity for the greater thing. So, yes, there is some discomfort involved, but we. I hold you through it.
- [48:44]
A
If there was one thing you would love to see everyone consider in their environment that they can change, that they could do immediately, what would that one thing be?
- [48:54]
B
Be is see your home through a stranger's eyes. So when. So begin to see and notice your patterns and then purge outdated identities. This is free. This is not going to cost you a penny. So you start looking at your home through the eyes of symbol, through the eyes of your pattern. If you can't do it, invite a friend. Because you can go into your friend's house and immediately see where the friend is perpetuating. Especially someone who's psychologically minded can see where the friend is perpetuating their. Their patterns in their home. You walk into a stranger's home, you know the place, but you walk into your own home. And oftentimes we're blind, we don't see it. So begin to see through a stranger's eyes. Like scan your home through a different lens and then see what outdated identities are living with you in your home, what old versions of yourself that are perpetuated, patterns that you no longer want to keep active. I would say that is the first and really the most powerful step before you buy anything.
- [49:54]
A
That's probably one of the best things I've heard in a very long time. Thank you so much for sitting with me today, Olga. It's been delightful.
- [50:00]
B
My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you so much for your thoughtful questions and for having me on. I loved it.
- [50:06]
A
Absolutely. Hopefully we'll have a chance to chat again soon. Yes, take care. And so, as we close tonight's conversation with Olga, Time, and I find myself looking at the rooms around me a little bit differently. Maybe that is the quiet power of this work. It asks us to listen to the language of objects, thresholds, textures and light, and to notice how each choice whispers something back about who we believe ourselves to be. If the home can become a laboratory for identity, then every chair, every symbol, every rearranged corner becomes a question. Who am I rehearsing myself to become? To Olga, thank you for reminding us that transformation is not always loud. Sometimes it begins with a subtle shift. A moved lamp, a cleared pathway, a space that finally feels like it has our back. If tonight's dialogue stirred something within you, take a moment after this episode to walk through your own space with fresh eyes. Notice what calls you forward and what quietly asks to be released. I'm Dr. Juan Carlos Re, and you've been listening to the observable unknown. Until next time, stay curious, stay courageous, and keep listening to what waits just beyond the visible.