Moving Your Furniture To Change Your Life — How Spatial Alchemist Olga Naiman Attacks a Room To Manifest a Future

For interior designer Olga Naiman, the thunderbolt struck during the COVID pandemic. Business was slow and her career felt stalled. She wasn’t finding deep satisfaction in her work, and her soul was wanting. 

So Naiman did what interior designers do, and reupholstered five pieces of furniture in her living room. Little did she know, this simple act would not only bring beauty into her home, it would open her up to a profound internal shift, bring about a life-changing epiphany and jump start her career. 

Naiman, the author of the new book Spatial Alchemy: Design Your Home to Transform Your Life, began to wonder whether her home design choices had something to do with it. Could moving furniture really transform your internal landscape? Can a changed home environment create a shift away from unwanted psychological patterns and help move a person toward greater personal fulfillment?

Had she tapped into some kind of crazy alchemy, or strange new mode of energetic healing? 

After experimenting with some of her clients, Naiman discovered something surprising. “Unexpected doors began to open in people’s lives that they would trace back to the shifts they were making in the home,” she says. “They had tapped into the alchemical power of their environment, working on a level of energy in addition to a level of aesthetics, and magical things were happening in their lives.”

Spatial alchemy is a unique approach to design with the goal of intentionally creating environments that support self realization and transformation in Naiman’s view. And if you get it right, she says, it can change your life. Her new book offers insight on how to code a home for greater clarity, levity and dignity. How to design for connection and stability. How to create a retreat. 

“It feels like now is a perfect moment to explore how intentional home design can help manifest what people want — greater wellness, clarity, productivity, or success,” Naiman says. “Our spaces are the things we can most control.

“Especially when you are feeling unstable — in between jobs or relationships — you want to introduce things that bring stability.”

Bury It Or Burn It

Olga Naiman functions as a sort of design therapist/wellness coach, who not only creates beautiful spaces, but helps clients release outdated identities along with objects that no longer fit with who you are now. Or want to be in the future. She can even create rituals to help people let things go. 

“Bury it or burn it,” Naiman says, speaking of my old file folders, which I proposed moving back to the storage shed. “Even in the shed, they’re still in your field. Ask yourself, ‘Will this ever be useful? What do I value more — the space, or the folder?’ ”

Clearing out and redesigning your space can feel overwhelming, but Naiman suggests thinking about it as “magical play.” And sometimes you need to bring in a piece — she suggested a clear, circular piece of glass for me — as a physical embodiment of the enhanced clarity you yearn to feel. 

“There’s a connection between decluttering and dissolving outdated identities,” Naiman says. “When you let go of stuff, you’re rewiring your brain. Get rid of the visual noise and move away from feeling heavy and overburdened.

“When you’re ready to let go of the past is when doors open in your life, opportunities come your way, and you pull yourself into a space that brings lightness and joy.”

Naiman offers in-person and Zoom consultations (one hour and up) for global clients who fill out her thought-provoking questionnaire, with questions such as, “Who is your Future Self? Describe the version of you that this space will support. What are you manifesting or calling into your life right now? Love/partnership? Creativity? Career success? Financial abundance? Which room or area would you like to focus on? How do you want to feel in this room?”

Clients then send photos or videos of the areas in their home they want to work on. It’s truly uncanny how well Naiman can, well, zoom in on the physical changes needed to nudge someone toward the goals they’ve spelled out in her questionnaire.  

Although she is based in New York, Naiman has a sweet spot for Texas, which she used to visit often as a former freelance stylist. Last year, she returned to speak at Lake Austin Spa Resort as part of their W.I.S.E. Women series, and headlined Designer Day at the Round Top’s Fall Antiques Show. Naiman consulted on a home in Austin for the owner of House of Arete, a coaching practice. Most recently she designed InnerMost, a psychotherapy center in New York City.

“Designing retreat centers and wellness healing spaces is my sweet spot,” Naiman says. 

“What’s the difference between wellness and alchemy? Wellness aspires to tranquility, but it’s not going deep enough. Alchemy changes you. It’s an active process, a release.”