{"id":590,"date":"2009-05-19T16:14:57","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T16:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html"},"modified":"2009-05-19T16:14:57","modified_gmt":"2009-05-19T16:14:57","slug":"this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html","title":{"rendered":"This is Your Mind on Five Wisdoms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div>When I studied urban planning in grad school, one of my strongest interests was in the ways buildings affect how people feel, as a result of both their individual appearances and of the way they&#8217;re massed around open space or on a street. Of course, to measure such things one must find ways to work around the inherent subjectivity involved. <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">Fast Company<\/span>, in an article titled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/blog\/michael-cannell\/cannell\/your-brain-architecture\">&#8220;This is Your Brain on Architecture<\/a>,&#8221; reports that neuroscientists and psychologists are finding ways to do just that. The results are quite interesting.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more-->Among the things they&#8217;ve found are that factors such as ceiling height and room color affect the creativity, mood, and attention levels of their inhabitants in predictable and quantifiable ways. Apparently, we&#8217;re more creative in blue rooms and more detail-oriented in red ones, among other things.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It calls to mind a program developed by\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shambhala.org\/teachers\/chogyam-trungpa.php\">Ch\u00c3\u00b6gyam Trungpa Rinpoche<\/a> called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maitripractice-international.org\/vajra\/vpractic.htm\">Maitri Space Awareness<\/a>, which places participants in rooms of varying shapes and colors and instructs them to adopt various postures so that they may observe the states of minds that are invoked in each one. That practice is based on the Vajrayana Buddhist teaching that five elemental wisdom &#8220;families&#8221; characterize mind and the phenomenal world.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>At present, I believe the rooms exist only at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado and Dechen Choling in France, but it is possible to approximate the experience using colored classes, as demonstrated in this video:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/pc2aCiOz1eY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/pc2aCiOz1eY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/object>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I&#8217;ve done the program both with the glasses and (in abbreviated sessions) in the actual rooms, and either way I highly recommend it. It&#8217;s one of the more fun meditation programs you&#8217;ll encounter, and I&#8217;m impressed at the degree to which it prefigures the work of these leading scientists.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I studied urban planning in grad school, one of my strongest interests was in the ways buildings affect how people feel, as a result of both their individual appearances and of the way they&#8217;re massed around open space or on a street. Of course, to measure such things one must find ways to work&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>This is Your Mind on Five Wisdoms - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This is Your Mind on Five Wisdoms - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I studied urban planning in grad school, one of my strongest interests was in the ways buildings affect how people feel, as a result of both their individual appearances and of the way they&#8217;re massed around open space or on a street. Of course, to measure such things one must find ways to work&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-19T16:14:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Greg Zwahlen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"This is Your Mind on Five Wisdoms - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"This is Your Mind on Five Wisdoms - One City","og_description":"When I studied urban planning in grad school, one of my strongest interests was in the ways buildings affect how people feel, as a result of both their individual appearances and of the way they&#8217;re massed around open space or on a street. Of course, to measure such things one must find ways to work&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-05-19T16:14:57+00:00","author":"Greg Zwahlen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html","name":"This is Your Mind on Five Wisdoms - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-05-19T16:14:57+00:00","dateModified":"2009-05-19T16:14:57+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/05\/this-is-your-mind-on-five-wisdoms.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"This is Your Mind on Five Wisdoms"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/6aede7186f63611a529a4a16cce5df54","name":"Greg Zwahlen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/706\/7066c07c9d69ab14d18489c3b85d90d2x96.jpg","caption":"Greg Zwahlen"},"description":"Greg Zwahlen began practicing meditation and studying Buddhism in 2000 and joined the ID Project at its inception in 2005. He lives in New York City, where he is also a member of the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. He has undertaken advanced study over the past few years at the Rime Shedra Rime of New York City, the Mipham Academy under Khenpo Gawang, and the Nitartha Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/gzwahlen"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}