Think of hospitals – Spartan and lacking in aesthetic, with only the barest necessities – and compare them with spas – rich in sensory experience, dedicated to pleasure. And yet, despite all their differences, hospital and spa designers share a common purpose.
Healing results from specific conditions like those found in a recovery ward or in a thermal suite.
In hospitals, those conditions have been understood, at least since research studies began in the 1980s, to result in faster recoveries among patients. Those patients were able to see nature from their rooms or halls and studies found that their recovery was also marked by other benefits, including reduced need for pain medication and earlier discharge. Those results demonstrate that the conditions in a hospital room are neither arbitrary nor passive with respect to recovery. They show instead that the setting itself is active in the healing process.
Likewise, spa designers understood those principles intuitively, if not explicitly, long before formal research established the benefits associated with natural light, natural materials, the sound of water, the absence of visual clutter and control of temperature. All of those features trigger measurable effects in the human nervous system. For Spa Breaks Bristol, consider //hatherleymanor.com/the-spa/spa-breaks-cotswolds/bristol
Hospitals expel harmful conditions and introduce healing ones. Spas follow a similar pattern but begin with a different premise. That underlying premise is obvious in the spa environment, which is so rich in conditions that promote rest and restoration. It is less obvious in hospitals, where the conditions that promote rest are often obscured by more pressing goals. But in the end, the similarity between the two becomes clear: the body responds to conditions, not instructions.
