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A newly-opened space in VCU Health’s Adult Outpatient Pavilion offers an immersive, calming experience for patients, caregivers and staff. The Healing Space, a unique room featuring a 9-by-16-foot curved LED display wall, 13 hidden speakers and customizable lighting, is offered through VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Integrative Health department.

Shelly Arthur, Terrell Harrigan and Becky Massey led the development of The Healing Space.

The room is the brainchild of Massey board members and volunteer leaders Terrell Harrigan, Becky Massey and Shelly Arthur. The team envisioned the space as a place for individuals to find peace in a busy and stressful environment, and they hope the space will also be used for gatherings like support group meetings, yoga and meditation classes.

“The Healing Space stands out above and beyond what is offered at other cancer centers,” said Harrigan, who with her husband, Elliott, donated funds to support the construction of the room. “It makes me really happy to know we’ve got this space that our patients, staff and families can find as a place of healing, whatever healing they need – in spirit, mind and body.”

Immersive experiences to engage the senses

Upon entry, it looks like a beautiful, quiet room, with benches and chairs for reflection lining the elliptical space. According to Matt Roman, AIA, whose firm Hawkins Roman Architects designed the room, incorporating technology in a way that it completely disappears from view is “the trick of the room,” allowing more opportunities for reflection and immersion. The floor-to-ceiling screen blends into the walls around it until activated by an iPad.

The Healing Space’s 9-by-16-foot curved LED display wall offers peaceful scenes from nature.

“It’s meant to be in the background until it’s a part of the experience,” said Roman, who with his team designed a selection of settings to suit individuals’ needs on any given day. “The stages of healing and recovery are part of the sequence of lights, sounds and videos in the room. The lights go from dim and warm to bright and cool, and you can choose options to reflect your mood or lift you up.”

Visitors can customize their experience to meet their needs: If you want a quiet space to meditate, you can choose a light setting and sit in silence or with a soothing soundtrack. You can also select from a variety of soundscapes or videos representing diverse nature settings, with light and sound syncing up to create the sense of immersion in the scene.

Massey chaplain Reverend Charles Riffee, M.Div., provided input to best incorporate the senses into the healing process.

“In medicine, I encourage supplementing the care of the body with care of the mind and spirit,” said Riffee. “A lot of patients I work with are immunocompromised, which keeps them from being able to do something they love like going on a family beach vacation or putting their hands in the dirt to garden. The immersive experience here doesn’t replace that ability, but it can help bring mindfulness and emotional health back to a place where you can sense joy and be able to find calm.”

Where mindfulness and medicine meet

The ability to create tranquil, immersive experiences within this space lends itself to mindfulness-based interventions, relaxation, yoga and other modalities, some of which have been shown to help with anxiety and depressive symptoms during different phases of cancer treatment.

The planning team envisioned endless possibilities to add on to the current functionalities of the space, including using it for research to enhance and advance the holistic care of Massey patients.

“We are excited about the programmatic and research opportunities in The Healing Space,” said Masey Ross, M.D., director of the Integrative Health Program and an oncologist specializing in breast cancer. “We hope to collect data as we go, through patient-reported outcomes and other methods, to demonstrate the impact on patient and staff well-being in real time, which will generate more ideas for creative uses for the space.”

Watch the video to learn more about VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center’s new Healing Place

This data collection can help Massey researchers identify key factors that can make dealing with the burden of cancer easier. This information can then help researchers identify the specific needs, values and experiences associated with being a cancer survivor and how to address them to improve quality of life and future cancer outcomes.

“This is just part of the expectation of what a comprehensive cancer center really is,” said Becky Massey, volunteer leader and chair of the Massey Advisory Board. “It’s exciting, it’s groundbreaking, it’s unique, it is the most fabulous advance that we’ve had in integrative health in a long time.”

Written by: Annie Harris