The healing home: how to design your house as a sanctuary - Paula Robinson
Episode 517, released 10th September 2025.
In this week’s show Lian is joined by Paula Robinson. As an intuitive interior designer, Paula understands the profound effect that the spaces where we live and work have on our health, happiness and success in life. Often called the ‘space whisperer’, she helps people to create living and working environments that transform their lives on all levels.
Listen or watch on:
Transcript is here: episode517transcript
Paula has been an interiors columnist for The Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph and Move Or Improve? magazine, and is the author of "The Healing Home & Garden: Reimagining Spaces for Optimal Wellbeing" and "The Room Planner: Over 100 Practical Plans For Your Home".
Paula is happiest in nature - especially by the sea - and loves designing outdoor spaces. She is passionate about the environment, sustainable design, re-purposing furniture and objects, and supporting craftspeople over mass-producers.
In this episode, Lian and Paula explore how our homes shape our bodies, minds, and mythic lives… the primal ways space soothes or unsettles us, and the quiet work of making a dwelling that heals. Together, they trace the path from head to heart, from trend to truth, and from copybook rules to the felt sense of sanctuary.
Together, they journey through refuge and prospect, the simple power of moving a chair, and why bedrooms and workspaces ask for special care. Paula shares how intuitive design emerges, how objects carry the craft and energy of their makers, and how plants, animals, light, and air restore a room’s vitality.
At the centre of this conversation is a gentle invitation… listen to what your home is already telling you, let your instincts set the first mark, then let practicality refine it. Beauty follows when a space begins to mirror the soul that lives there.
We’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment below.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
Start with feeling, then refine with form: notice how each room lands in your body, create refuge and prospect by seeing both door and view, then let measurements and plans serve what already feels right.
Small changes shift everything: rearrange to interrupt stale traffic patterns, personalise even temporary spaces, and enliven rooms with plants, natural light, fresh air, mirrors, and the quiet presence of animals.
Design as living story: choose objects that speak to you, honour their makers and materials, and when a house feels unsettled, consider energetic space clearing so the home and its history can move with you rather than against you.
Resources and stuff spoken about:
Work with Paula: Paula has kindly offered our listeners 20% off her virtual one-hour consultation if you quote BEING MYTHICAL when booking.
She also offers a free 30-minute Discovery Call.
Buy Paula’s book: The Healing Home and Garden: Reimagining spaces for optimal wellbeing
Join Paula on Instagram
Steve Pavlina on priming your mind
Join UNIO, the Academy of the Soul: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul’s calling to truly live your myth.
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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan