Home as My Only Constant: What France Brunel Taught Me About Designing for Healing

When France Brunel told me "home has been the only constant" in our Space Whispering podcast conversation, I felt something shift in my understanding of what home truly means.

Here's someone who's lived in Hong Kong, New York, Milan, India, and now splits her time between Brooklyn and Paris—yet she creates the most intentionally grounding, healing spaces I've ever encountered.

As the founder of the Space Whispering methodology, I'm always exploring the deeper connections between our environments and our wellbeing. But France's approach revealed layers I hadn't fully considered.

The Designer Who Designs Life, Not Just Spaces

"We're not only designers of our living spaces, we're designers of our life," France shared, and this became the thread that wove through our entire conversation.

Her philosophy challenges the traditional view of interior design as merely aesthetic. Instead, she approaches each space as a canvas for supporting specific habits, emotions, and healing journeys.

The Multicultural Wisdom Recipe

France's unique perspective comes from absorbing the best of each culture she's lived in:

From France: The art de vivre—appreciation for beautiful homemade meals, quality over quantity, and attention to aesthetic details from architecture to packaging.

From Hong Kong: Energy-based practices like Feng Shui, acupuncture, and Qigong (which her father practiced daily). This deeply informed how she thinks about space and flow.

From America: The entrepreneurial mindset of optimism, the belief that anything is possible, and the encouragement to "roll your sleeves up and build it."

Color as Life Force: Beyond Pretty Palettes

One of the most striking insights from our conversation was France's relationship with color.

"Color gives me life. Color is life energetically," she explained. "When you look at nature, all natural things have color and colors, each color has an energetic power and charge to them."

This isn't just aesthetic preference—it's your own energetic medicine.

The Science Behind Color Choices

France shared fascinating examples of how color psychology works in practice:

- Blue as appetite suppressor: "In nature, no food is blue, except for blueberries. Your brain sees blue as a sign that food is rotten."

- Fast food strategy: Red and yellow in chain branding boost appetite, increase heart rate, and speed consumption.

- Intentional application: Using blue plates for mindful eating, energizing colors in living spaces, calming hues in bedrooms.

Nervous System Design: Creating Spaces That Ground

Living on the 32nd floor as someone prone to anxiety presented France with a unique design challenge. Her solution demonstrates the healing power of opposites—a principle from Ayurveda that she's integrated into her design practice.

The Grounding Solution

For someone living "up in the sky" who needs anchoring:

- Heavy wool rugs: that connect you to the earth

- Sturdy furniture legs: that create visual and energetic stability

- Natural stone: like travertine for weight and grounding

- Wall of mirrors: reflecting sky views to bring expansiveness indoors

"In Ayurveda, if a human body is very dry, anxious, constipated... you would use opposite qualities like warmth and moisture and oil and good fats in order to balance the dryness," France explained. "Contradiction in that case is healing."

Habit Design Through Space

Perhaps the most practical aspect of our conversation was how France uses space to support specific behaviors:

Simple Shifts, Profound Changes

Instead of centering furniture around the TV → Face seating toward windows and views

Result: Less screen time, more connection to nature

Instead of storing yoga equipment → Keep mats rolled out in dedicated space

Result: Increased likelihood of daily practice

Instead of branded snack packaging → Transfer to plain, closed containers

Result: Reduced impulse eating (those packages are designed by teams to create desire)

The Entrepreneurial Space Connection

What struck me most was how France applies these principles to building her business. She's designed her work to support her desired lifestyle—splitting time between two continents, working virtually with clients globally.

"Mindset is honestly everything," she shared. "Being an entrepreneur is the ultimate self-development journey. Before anything I do in the day, if I only have time to do one thing, it's not going to be design work, it's going to be mindset work."

This alignment between personal values, lifestyle design, and business structure is what I call living your Space Whispering—when your external environment perfectly supports your internal truth.

The Deeper Invitation

France's story illuminates something profound about belonging and home. When you've moved constantly, when your roots are spread across continents, home becomes something you create rather than something you find.

"Even if I'm in a space for a short amount of time, whether it's a few months or a couple of years, I will definitely design everything to support my well-being," she explained.

This conversation answered a question I've been carrying for less than a year now. As someone who's recently embraced a more nomadic lifestyle, I keep asking: *Where is home?*

One of my conclusions had been that home is this temple—my body. I thought maybe it was also the familiar tools I bring in my luggage, or the fresh paint I buy in each new place or country because I love to paint and keep creating. But France revealed a missing piece I hadn't fully grasped.

It's not just about the familiar objects or even honoring the body as home. There's a deeper layer that needs to be addressed—and that layer is your nervous system. It's your emotions, your state of being, the different parts of who you are that need tending.

When France talked about needing color for her life force, or heavy wool rugs for grounding her anxiety while living 32 floors up, she wasn't just talking about design preferences. She was describing how she takes care of different layers of herself through space. She tends to her emotional needs, her energetic needs, her nervous system's needs.

This is the missing piece: home isn't just about carrying familiar objects or honoring your body as sacred space. It's about understanding the multidimensional nature of your being and creating environments that support ALL of those layers—emotional, energetic, nervous system, spiritual.

This is the invitation for all of us: What if we approached every space—temporary or permanent—as an opportunity to support not just our physical comfort, but our complete wellbeing?

Your Space Is Speaking

As I reflected on our conversation, I kept returning to France's core insight: we are designers of our lives, not just our living rooms.

Your space is speaking to you right now. It's either supporting your dreams or sabotaging them. It's either nourishing your nervous system or adding to your stress. It's either reflecting who you're becoming or keeping you stuck in who you used to be.

The Space Whispering Question

What is your space whispering to you about your life?

France's journey from constant movement to intentional grounding shows us that home isn't about finding the perfect place—it's about bringing your authentic self to any space and designing it to support your wellbeing.

Whether you're living in a high-rise apartment or a beach house, splitting time between countries or settling into one community, the principle remains: intentional spaces create intentional lives.

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Ready to design a space that supports your dreams?

🎙️ Listen to the full episode with France Brunel: Link

✨ Book your free Space Whispering discovery call: Link

🌐 Connect with France: https://weareyoom.com

What's one small shift you can make in your space today? I'd love to hear about it—share in the comments below or tag me on Instagram: @rhayni_

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Ready to discover what your space is whispering about your authentic self? Book a Space Whispering Discovery Session and let's listen together.

💋 Besitos,

RHAYNI
Founder of Space Whispering Methodology
RHAYNI.CO

Rhaynelina is the founder of Space Whispering methodology, helping founders & creatives design spaces that bring clarity & flow. Based between NYC and Dominican Republic, she explores the intersection of space, wellbeing, and belonging through her podcast and design practice.