The Concept

While it is still only very crudely that I can define this- I'm still going to give it a try. Its been almost two months since my last post and exactly 3 weeks since I've quit my job. The only reason I wasn't able to pen this down earlier was because I did not feel I had done enough research on it and I did not have the words that would do the concept justice.  And also because I had taken time out for 10 days to get a fresh perspective on things- I'm happy to return and say it worked :)

The Chikitsa Behind the Design

The Literal Meaning of Chikitsa is Therapy. Therapy, according to the Oxford Dictionary means 'Treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder' or 'the treatment of mental or psychological disorder by psychological means' while Wikipedia states 'It is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a diagnosis.' Therapies can be categorized in multiple ways, the easiest way to categorize it would be according to the the ultimate aim of the therapy, which could be either 'Preventive Therapy' or 'Supportive Therapy'.

Design Chikitsa or Design Therapy is intended to be a kind of Supportive Therapy. A Supportive Therapy is the kinds which does not treat or improve the underlying condition, but instead increases the patient's comfort.

The Design In the Chikitsa 

Design Chikitsa is actually a solution with multiple dimensions to it. It may include forms of therapies that have already been explored in the past as an individual subject such as Color Therapy or Art Therapy as well as subjects which are not considered a form of therapy at all but purely sciences such as Ergonomics or new advances in Technology or Material Sciences. 

A third aspect that I would like to add here would be the Concept of Space as a form of Therapy. When I look at Design Solutions around me I do feel that it has been explored by Designers subconsciously without really realizing it. But I am yet to stumble across substantial text which proves that Space has been explored as a 3 Dimensional form of Therapy or maybe I haven’t been using the right keywords- if you have any data which you might think is relevant to the above, please do share it with me. Please note I believe that Color Therapy and Art Therapy are purely 2 Dimensional.

Now when we talk of Space Therapy it can be divided into Positive Space Therapy which deals with the actual shape of the product being designed and Negative Space Therapy which deals with the space around the products, which can be used predominately in Interior Designing/Decoration.

My next blog shall be about Space Therapy in detail. :)

Coming back to the point being discussed, 

Design Chikitsa actually aims to be an amalgamation of all of the above but Individually Tailored for each of its Subjects.

While there are three examples that struck my mind while developing this concept, suddenly it is too hard to write them down as they seem too personal to be discussed here. Each of these examples illustrates a distinct aspect of the concept as well as the different ways in which this concept can be put to use. Maybe if you’re interested you could get in touch with me and they could be discussed in detail. :)