The Alcove

I’m delighted to let you know that I have opened up a new office space- The Alcove, in my home city of Bangalore. The Alcove is designed to be a therapeutic space whose purpose goes beyond just being an office for me to conduct therapy sessions with my clients. It also seeks to be a space where I can come together with other individuals and professionals in the fields of healing and healthcare to host intimate, therapy adjacent activities and gatherings- like workshops, book clubs, interactive lectures, and discussions. 

The Alcove is also my first formal application of some of the core principles of environmental psychology. This field of psychology seeks to understand the relationship between human beings and the various spaces that they inhabit, both indoor and outdoor. Specifically, environmental psychology attempts to examine how various aspects of our environments such as lighting, noise, colour, texture, spatial layout, natural elements, personal space, and population density, can affect our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. The focus is on designing context-specific environments that are more conducive to our physical and mental well-being.

My study of this field was inspired by a desire to create a space for my clients that is able to gently hold the various parts of themselves and the various thoughts and emotions that accompany them during the course of therapeutic work. Much of the research that I have encountered, has highlighted how thoughtfully designed therapy spaces can help clients feel more secure and comfortable to express their vulnerabilities, and also help them feel more committed to their therapeutic journey. This is because spaces have tremendous impact over how we feel and behave. Each of us will be able to attest to feeling more comfortable, safe, energetic, or cozy in certain spaces, while feeling an overwhelming urge to leave other spaces because of how uncomfortable or uninviting they feel. If your therapist’s office is a sparsely furnished room with bare white walls, a couple of uncomfortable chairs, and harsh overhead lighting, would you want to go in there week after week and express the most intimate parts of yourself? I don’t think so. 

More importantly, I have been studying how spaces can influence our psychology to the extent of creating long lasting changes within us. Rather than simply seeing our environments as having a momentary positive or negative impact on our mood, I believe that spaces have the potential to change the very way in which we relate to ourselves, and to the people in our lives. Over the course of my therapeutic work with clients, I have found that living in a particular space or spending time in a particular space over a long term period, fundamentally altered their mental health, and made it more or less likely for them to feel hopeful, productive, and fulfilled. The Alcove is thus designed with the goal of helping my clients understand how the design and environmental factors of a space can impact their willingness to be introspective, vulnerable, and communicative, not just during therapy, but also outside of it. And eventually, I hope that my clients are able to change or modify these environmental factors within their own spaces of living and working, so as to create conditions that are more conducive to their mental and physical health.