Designing your Yoga and Meditation Room

Yoga and meditation are routes that lots of us take to getting and staying mentally and physically healthy.  Anyone who’s done either knows that there are some places where yoga or meditation seems to be a more positive experience and others that just don’t seem appropriate at all.

Spaces where people are able to do yoga or meditate effectively share multiple design features.

These spaces feature colours that are not very saturated but are particularly light.  These are the sorts of shades that help us to relax, really relax, and yoga and meditation are definitely best when stress levels are low.

Areas where people really enjoy yoga and meditation also often feature lots of wood with visible grain.  Seeing wood grain relaxes us, making it much more likely that we’ll be in just the right mood to do yoga or relax.

Just as looking at wood grain helps us relax and decompress, so does seeing green leafy plants, roughly a few feet tall, the sorts with gently curving stems.  Real or artificial works in a yoga or meditation area, as long as any artificial plants used are good fakes.  It’s important not to stock a yoga or meditation area with too many plants, however, a few will really do. More than a couple of plants ups the visual complexity in the space to stress inducing levels, which is definitely not desired.

Excess visual complexity, as it’s known in the psych world, clutter as it’s known to the rest of the planet, is a serious no-no in a space for yoga or meditation.  There is almost nothing that makes us feel stressed as quickly as visual clutter.  A space that’s too stark is just as much of a mood buster, so a happy medium is in order—something like this:

But this space is on the lowish edge of visual complexity so it’s a little more low energy than we usually recommend:

 

Softer surfaces can be nice in yoga and meditation spaces, along with curvy lines, both are linked in our minds to comfort, which is a good sort of feeling to have in the place where you’ll be doing yoga or meditating.  Natural light and sounds can also support yoga and meditation.

Relaxing scents, such as lavender and other florals are great additions to yoga and mediation areas.  Smells that are relaxing are discussed in this article.

When people are doing yoga or meditating they need to be able to sit with a view of the entrance into the space they’re in.  People are most comfortable and relaxed in a space when they feel secure and have a view out over the nearby area;  no seat does that as well as one that faces the entrance and gives the sitting person the feeling that their back is protected, because they are sitting just in front of a plant or a wall or in a seat with a substantial back, for example.

Yoga and meditation contribute to the mental and physical health of many individuals.  Design can make them both healthy and agreeable experiences.