What do wellbeing and HomeBeing have in common?

In public discussion, wellbeing is often presented as a personal project.

We are told to sleep enough, eat well, exercise, meditate, reduce stress and develop better habits. Wellbeing is supposed to follow. I know all of this matters, but I am not sure it is enough on its own to bring wellbeing about.

But this approach can also contain a very narrow idea of the human being: that wellbeing is created primarily within the individual and that each person is responsible for producing it.

When we do not feel well, we therefore tend to ask what is wrong with us and what we need to do differently.

But what happens if we broaden the perspective and examine the environment too?

HomeBeing begins with the idea that our wellbeing is not created within us alone. It is continuously shaped through our relationship with the environment.

The body is always reading the conditions around it. Light, sound, temperature, colour, smell, texture, space, clutter, possibilities for movement, signs of safety and the presence of other living beings are important examples.

Much of this perception happens without our conscious awareness. Yet it can influence the nervous system, energy, concentration, sleep, mood and our capacity to rest, move, create and connect with others.

A space can help the body settle or keep it in a state of alert.

It can invite movement or make movement less likely. It can support connection or reinforce isolation. It can help us concentrate or continually demand our attention.

The environment is more than a backdrop for someone creating wellbeing through diet, habits and sleep. It participates in creating it.

This is where wellbeing and HomeBeing meet.

HomeBeing does not ask only: What can I do to feel better?

It also asks: What is the environment doing? What messages is it sending to the body? What habits does it make easier? What activities does it invite? Which needs does it support, and which needs are being overlooked?

This does not mean that there is one perfect home that guarantees wellbeing. People are different. Bodies are different. Nervous systems are different, and our needs change from one day to another.

An environment that brings calm to one person may be too quiet for another. A space that creates joy for one person may cause sensory overload for someone else. Some of us need shelter and predictability. Others need colour, stimulation, movement and change.

The aim is therefore not to discover one correct recipe for wellbeing.

The aim is to become more attentive to the relationship between ourselves and our surroundings and to notice what supports life as we actually live it, or want to live it.

Wellbeing is not a permanent state that we achieve once and should then be able to maintain. It arises and changes through relationships between body, mind, other people, daily habits, nature, society and place.

When we understand wellbeing in this way, it stops being an entirely individual project.

It also becomes a design project, a social project and a question about the conditions we create for one another.

Perhaps the heart of the matter is simply this:

We do not merely live in our environments.

We are continually becoming in relationship with them.