The Energy of a Space
My friends James and Anna just bought a house on the border of upstate New York and the Berkshires in Massachusetts, set on seventy-six acres of indigenous land.
It’s mid gut renovation, more structure than home right now.
Before anything begins, before plans or materials, they wanted to understand what was already there.
Not visually.
Energetically.
They brought in my friend Joann, who was in town from London, to do an energy reading on the house. I happened to be her ride, which meant I got the unexpected privilege of holding the space while she did her thing.
She does energy readings, healings, and clearings. The kind of work that sits somewhere between intuitive and unexplainable, depending on who you ask.
A Quick Note
This leans more “woo” than I typically write.
Not because it’s new to me, but because it’s harder to explain in the same language we use for materials and floor plans.
And I get that not everyone believes in this.
But most of us know when a space feels good to be in. Or when it doesn’t.
This is just another way of paying attention to that.
Reading a Place
Joann walked the land slowly, dousing rods in hand, following where they pulled, listening more than looking.
At one point she stopped.
“Every place has a body,” she said.
I asked what she meant.
“It’s about sensing where things feel open and where they feel tight. Where something is moving and where something has been sitting for too long.”
She traced it quietly. Not dramatically. Just noticing.
One area felt settled. Another felt interrupted. One section, she said, had been holding something for a long time.
No one else could see it.
But the moment she said it, everything slowed. The space felt more defined, as if it had been named.
Making Sense of It
I asked her how she would explain this to someone skeptical.
“Energy is just information,” she said. “A space is always communicating. Through light, materials, what’s happened there. People feel it before they understand it.”
That felt familiar.
We already describe spaces this way.
We say something feels heavy.
We say a room feels calm.
We notice when something feels off without knowing why.
Same instinct. Different language.
Before You Build
Before anything else, there was a pause.
Not dramatic. Just intentional.
The land is indigenous, not as a concept, but as something that existed long before any of this.
Joann acknowledged it out loud.
She set a simple intention for what the space could become.
She lit a small bundle of sage, letting the smoke move through the air, not dramatically, just enough to mark the moment.
Then she stepped back.
No rush to define it. No immediate next move.
It reframed the beginning.
Not as creating something new, but as entering into something that was already there.
Ritual as Design
I asked Joann if rituals actually change a space, or if they change how we experience it.
“Both,” she said. “But the shift in awareness is what matters. When you enter a space differently, everything organizes around that.”
It made me think about how much of design is about behavior.
How people move through a space.
How they settle.
How they interact without being told how to.
Ritual, in its simplest form, sets that tone.
What You Can Do
Before leaving, I asked her what actually matters on a practical level.
“Let air move,” she said. “Open windows. Shift something that hasn’t moved in a while. Say out loud what you want the space to feel like.”
Then she added,
“And notice what you avoid. That usually tells you where something needs attention.”
Final Thought
Nothing tangible came out of the visit.
No plan. No direction. No list of what to do next.
Just a shift in how the space was understood.
That it isn’t empty, even in its most unfinished state.
That attention shapes experience before anything physical does.
James and Anna, and their almost one-year-old daughter Lili, will be living there for a long time.
And there’s something reassuring in knowing that what gets built there will begin with that kind of attention.
💌Elle
P.S. Before you change anything in your space this week, pause for a second. Open a window. Stand still. Notice what the room already feels like. Then decide what it actually needs.
P.P.S. You can find Joann at @witchywednesdays on IG for your witchy inquiries and tidings
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