By Iyna Bort Caruso

Creating Sacred Spaces in Napa

Most people consider their homes a refuge but for some, it’s more than just talk. They’re building meditation platforms and yoga studios, designing Zen gardens and positioning windows to frame calming vistas. In these spaces dedicated to quiet contemplation, homeowners are redefining the notion of home as sanctuary.

Gary Zaremba and his wife, Laura, created a meditation room on the top floor of a converted five-story brick water tower in Mattituck, N.Y. The historic structure was built in 1932 as part of a New Deal Works Progress Administration project. The Manhattan couple bought it three years ago, along with a modified 1880s barn they use as their weekend home. The water tower, one of the tallest structures in the area, “allows us to sit and meditate with all the birds that perch on the roof,” he says.

The room is a simple space with wood floors and terracotta block walls painted white. “We go there for quiet time and just unwind. It’s a space to open up inside our heads. It’s the same sort of thing as a having a tree house as a kid,” Zaremba says.

Luxury Homes in Napa

In a time when luxury homes are becoming increasingly high tech, no tech has its own appeal. The yin-yang of 21st century living just may be a smart home with a space in which you can power down completely.

In some locales, that escapism is easy to find. Bryan Bruce, of Costa Rica Sotheby’s International Realty in Guanacaste, says the Costa Rican experience, for instance, “is largely about a connection to nature and the incredible beauty of this place. You see a lot of great design here that enhances this connection that is often quite simple and clean. The star of the show is clearly the world of beauty that surrounds.”

For Lisa Gidlow Moriarty, whose four-bedroom home sits on five acres of rolling meadows, ponds and woods in Stillwater, Minn., it is not only the natural setting that brings her a sense of tranquility but also the 14 different labyrinths set on the property.

A labyrinth is a meditative tool typically found in public spaces like churches, hospitals and parks. “The purpose of putting a labyrinth into a private home is to create a sanctuary to relieve our stress and to move into a deeper, more spiritual experience,” Moriarty explains.

Contrary to popular belief, labyrinths are not mazes. A maze is a puzzle meant to confuse with dead ends that trip people up. A labyrinth is a vehicle to enlighten. One path takes you to the center, a place for rest, prayer or mediation. The same path leads you out again. “It immediately slows you,” says Moriarty. “You appreciate the elements of nature and it brings you into a quiet space. The way your heart beats, the way you breathe and become more aware of natural world and elements that are waiting there for you.”

Moriarty’s first labyrinth was created in 1999 when her husband mowed pathways through the meadows for meditative walking. They became more elaborate over time and Moriarty began creating them herself out of flowers, brick pavers, flagstone, creeping thyme, white pine needles, decomposed gravel and even soy stained on concrete. She is an artist and her property is, in a sense, her canvas.

Moriarty has no plans to sell but should she change her mind one day, labyrinths are easy to undo. It is often just a matter of letting the grasses grow again.

Creating Sacred Spaces in Napa

Real estate experts in Napa area say they are seeing an uptick in high end home buyers looking for homes that offer a place to escape to within their own estates. According to Joel Toller, of Heritage Sotheby’s International Realty in St. Helena, Calif., “most of our buyers in Napa Valley are moving up here for those types of spaces. Most homes designed within the last three to four years and priced above $1 million all have some type of landscape design or structure that focuses around mediation or tranquility or healing or privacy.”

Those structures have included massage rooms, mediation rooms and even yoga studios built into temperature-controlled caves. “It’s most ideal if they’re detached from the house. And if they are, they are usually located on a pinnacle view spot on the property,” Toller says.

For homeowners who create sacred spaces in Napa, it is about the luxury of being able to disconnect. Says Zaremba, “Anything that makes me put my BlackBerry down for more than ten seconds is an amazing feat of derring-do.”