Dr. Esther Sternberg, “Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in any Workspace”
A Note from Hope Katz Gibbs, founder and president, Inkandescent PR + Publishing Co. — It’s a pleasure and honor to introduce you to Esther M. Sternberg, MD, author and an expert on the mind-body connection. She currently holds the Inaugural Andrew Weil Chair for Research in Integrative Medicine and is the Research Director for the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona at Tucson. She is the Founding Director of the UArizona Institute on Place, Wellbeing & Performance, Associate Director for Research of UArizona’s Innovations in Healthy Aging, and holds joint appointments at UArizona as Professor of Medicine and Psychology, Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, and Nutritional Sciences and Wellness.
Previously: Esther served for 26 years in the National Institutes of Health Intramural Research Program as Senior Scientist and Section Chief of Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health. She was also Director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program, NIMH/NIH; Co-Chair of the NIH Intramural Program on Research on Women’s Health, and she chaired the Behavioral Investigators’ Review Panel Sub-Committee of the NIH Central Tenure Committee.
This month, we celebrate her latest tome — Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in any Workspace.
Drawing on her pioneering research, Esther shows how to design any workspace—at home, the office, or anywhere in between—to enhance both physical and emotional wellbeing.
“Staying healthy at work has never been more top-of-mind than it is today,” she insists. “But staying healthy isn’t the same as staying well. Staying well at work isn’t just about the germs and toxins that impact how we feel physically or even make us sick; it’s also about the many aspects of the environment that affect our stress levels, mood, focus, and productivity.”
In the book, Esther believes that whether you work in a traditional office or a corner of your bedroom, healthy workplaces need not be a luxury. Well at Work reveals how to design these spaces for wellbeing across the seven domains of integrative health: stress and resilience, movement, sleep, relationships, nutrition, spirituality, nature and the air we breathe.
You’ll learn:
- How the environment you work in all day can impact your sleep at night
- Optimal lighting and noise levels for reducing stress and staying alert
- How to adjust temperature and humidity to protect against infection
- Why open-plan offices can keep you more active
- The myriad benefits of access to nature (and how to bring nature indoors)
- Office layouts that foster social interaction, but not distraction.
- Foods to enhance cognitive performance
- And more
On this eye-opening journey of discovery, you’ll meet Esther’s colleagues in science and medicine, design and architecture, and building sciences who are striving to make workplaces more conducive to wellbeing. And you’ll glimpse into the future of the workplace, where artificial intelligence and the metaverse will help us design environments that respond to our individual needs. Above all, you’ll come away with a menu of simple steps anyone can take to be—and stay—well at work.
Order Now on Amazon.com and scroll down to learn more about her other books!
Healing Spaces – The Science of Place and Well-Being – by Esther M. Sternberg, M.D.
Dr. Esther Sternberg, M.D. immerses us in the discoveries that have revealed a complex working relationship between the senses, the emotions, and the immune system. First among these is the story of the researcher who, in the 1980s, found that hospital patients with a view of nature healed faster than those without. How could a pleasant view speed healing? The author pursues this question through stories, including her own experiences in series of places and situations that explore how what you see, hear, smell, touch, and do in a place can help heal and prevent disease – or the opposite – can stress you and make you ill. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can reduce stress or trigger it, induce anxiety or instill peace.
If our senses can lead us to a “place of healing,” it is no surprise that our place in nature is of critical importance in Sternberg’s account. She ends the book with a moving description of her mother’s garden and her own place of peace, to introduce how the health of the environment is closely linked to personal health. The discoveries this book describes point to possibilities for designing hospitals, communities, and neighborhoods that promote healing and health for all.
The Balance Within – The Science Connecting Health & Emotions – by Esther M. Sternberg, M.D.
For years, believers in common wisdom and New Age gurus have claimed that a healthy spirit will result in a healthy body. But without scientific proof, doctors have not been able to explain or support that belief. As recently as ten years ago, the immune system was believed to be autonomous, with no connection to the brain.
Esther Sternberg, M.D., and other researchers are now making advances that show the actual pathways connecting the areas of our brain that control immunity with those that generate feelings and thoughts. In THE BALANCE WITHIN: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions (W.H. Freeman and Company/May 8, 2000/$24.95 Hardcover) Dr. Sternberg explains the mechanisms and their significance: how nerves, molecules, and hormones connect the brain and immune system, how the immune system signals the brain and affects our emotions, and documents how our brain can signal the immune system, making us more vulnerable to illnesses. They have not only discovered the links, but have demonstrated how they work and what the implications can be for treatable and chronic diseases. What you’ve known intuitively (that being exhausted or stressed can make you more vulnerable to illness) is now understood scientifically.
Ultimately, she answers our pressing, relevant questions: Will stress make us sick? Will believing make us well? Why do we feel sick when we get sick? How does our health affect our moods? Until now there has been a lot of speculation about these questions, especially from the New Age shamans, but no serious, informed answers. THE BALANCE WITHIN provides these answers and explains clearly and engagingly how it happens.
New: Balance Within audiobook now available on Audible
The Science of Healing
Author and Medical Researcher Dr. Esther Sternberg hosts the PBS Pledge Special The Science of Healing. Produced by the Emmy award-winning Resolution Pictures, the program aired in November/December 2009.
The Science of Healing follows Dr. Sternberg to a tiny village in Greece, where her personal experience of the power of place in healing inspired the research that led to this program. We join her as she explores ruins of ancient Greek healing temples, and visits cutting edge science labs to uncover the source of her healing. In the course of her journey we learn more about the scientific basis of the mind-body connection, and the role of environment and emotion in the healing process. The program introduces viewers to the research that is revealing some of the many ways the brain helps us heal, both emotionally and physically. By understanding the science behind the brain’s role in healing, we can each take charge of our own health and find out how to create a place of peace even in troubled times.
Watch it now on Youtube
DVDs of this program are available now at Amazon