Shownotes
What if your home is quietly shaping your emotional wellbeing every single day? On Inner Peace Better Health, hosted by Nazish, this conversation explores how intentional spaces can support healing, nervous system regulation, and emotional clarity.
This episode is for anyone feeling emotionally overwhelmed, disconnected from their environment, or craving more peace at home. Jodi Koch Peterman shares how design, light, textures, memories, and even small changes in a room can influence inner healing and self-awareness.
About the Guest:
Jodi Koch Peterman is an interior designer, founder of Elizabeth Erin Designs, creator of the 5D Process, and host of the podcast Designing in 5D. Her work blends intentional design with emotional wellbeing and mindful living.
Episode Chapters:
- 00:00 – Why healing spaces matter
- 05:12 – Nervous system and home environment
- 11:30 – Fear, intuition, and intentional decisions
- 18:42 – What intentional design truly means
- 27:10 – Emotional attachment to home and memories
- 36:15 – Designing spaces that reflect identity
- 44:20 – Healing rituals, energy, and self-care at home
Key Takeaways:
- Your environment directly impacts emotional regulation
- Small space changes can support healing and clarity
- Intentional design begins with function, not aesthetics
- Decluttering can help calm mental overwhelm
- Home should reflect your emotional needs and identity
How to Connect With the Guest:
Website: https://elizabetherindesigns.com/
Podcast: Designing in 5D
Also available on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Spotify.
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Transcripts
00:00:00 Nazish: We talk a lot about healing as something that happens inside us. In therapy, in meditation, in the quiet moments of reflection. What? But what about the space around us while all of that is happening. What if the room you come home to every day is either supporting your healing or quietly working against it? Today's conversation sits at the beautiful intersection, the between spaces where we live and trying to build it. And it turns out those two things are far more connected than most of us have ever been taught.
00:00:46 Nazish: Welcome to Inner Peace Better Health, where we explore the many pathways to to a calmer, healthier, more grounded life. I am your host, Nasir, and today I'm joined by Jody Coach Peterman, an interior designer, founder of EDI process, member of the Women's Council of Realtors and host of the podcast designing in 3D three five D. Jody has spent a career creating spaces that go beyond aesthetics crafting environments where people feel genuinely at home, supported and at ease. Today we are talking about intentional interior design as a form of healing and what it means to let that space around you become a part of your journey towards inner peace. Welcome to the show, Jodie.
00:01:36 Jodi Koch Peterman: Thank you so much for having me. I very much appreciate it.
00:01:41 Nazish: Beautiful. So, dear listeners, before we begin, some statements reflect personal beliefs and experiences and are presented as individual views, not medical advice. So listeners should consult qualified medical professionals for medical conditions.
00:02:01 Nazish: So yeah. So Jodie, I want to ask you, like, has there been a space like you have been in either one you created or simply you walked into where you felt something inside you shifted not just aesthetically pleasing, but genuinely peaceful in a way that touch something deeper in you.
00:02:23 Jodi Koch Peterman: Oh for sure. Every single project I'm on. Because when you're working on intentional design, you're working from the fact of getting it to function for the person our clients, it needs to function first, and then you're making a space beautiful. And when that comes together, it's pure magic.
00:02:46 Nazish: I can believe that, you know? Absolutely. That must be super true. So. Uh, that has, there's, there's been a vibe, like there is a widely held idea that inner peace is purely an inside job, that what's happening around you shouldn't affect your inner taste. Or if you have done enough work on yourself. But your work suggests that the relationship between environment and inner peace is far more real and significant than that. So what does your what does the the research and your lived experience about the shows. The lived experience actually show about that physical spaces.
00:03:27 Jodi Koch Peterman: Well, you we, we all know about our nervous system and how to reset our nervous system. And so if you're a person that is nervous system is set on edge and you're doing inner work to calm and heal your nervous system, probably living in a space that's filled with clutter and fifty million books laying everywhere and, you know, things everywhere and everything on the countertop, no space to, you know, come in and breathe is probably not going to work well for you. So as much work as you're doing on the inside, it's, you're still going to have that chaos on the outside. So it has to your inner world has to reflect your outer world the same way as if you're going through a breakup or a divorce or anything like that, which I just did. It's very hard to heal in the place that you were hurt. And the only way we can re correct our nervous system and create new neural pathways is if we do different things. So if we paint an accent wall, if we move a chair into a different space, if we add more plants, if we do something different to get every our system reset and reregulated.
00:04:39 Nazish: Absolutely. That is such a beautiful reframe. And you know, what you are naming is something so many people will quietly recognize because, you know, it is something that many of us feel, but we fail to put it into words.
00:04:54 Jodi Koch Peterman: It's hard. And I have been going through, oh my gosh, a healing journey since probably when I recognize it. Twenty fourteen, um, when I really started doing the work was twenty nineteen. Um, where when a lot of people started waking up and realizing, you know, the collective, everything that we're going through, um, it's, it's very important and everybody's Path forward to healing is completely different. I, I, I went to Costa Rica and did ayahuasca. I did ketamine treatments. I did do meditation. I, you know, did all of these different things, these different modalities exist for us to, you know, use or not use whatever works, you know, for any individual person. And yes, seek medical advice before you do or decide to do anything, because you've got to really sit with it and make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. Um, and the way you can tell that is when you sit down and you're breathing in a calm space, create a little calm space and just have a breath. And if the thought of doing something makes you take a very deep exhale and just relax and feel very peaceful, then it's probably something that your body is wanting you to try or to do, or that it's needed. If saying something creates anxiety, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I have the money for that. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I know that's an ego mode and that's fear mode. And maybe you're just not ready to go down that path yet. So it's just sitting with intentionality and making sure what you're doing, you're doing out of intention, and you're not doing out of fear based mode or a mode that, you know, people pleasing mode or anything like that, if that makes sense.
00:06:41 Nazish: It does, it does make a lot of sense. And, you know, I believe uncertainty is there in every step we are going to take. But I believe when you feel something motivating you towards it, you have to do it. Having that awareness, being that mindfulness, it is so important. Yeah. And you have framed it perfectly for us because, uh, yeah, yeah. Because I think, you know, that many people will, uh, have that, uh, have the most diligent meditation practice and still feel very unsettled every time you they walk into a certain room, the body respond, and I think the body responds to its environment, whether we give it permission or not.
00:07:26 Jodi Koch Peterman: Absolutely. Even smells so even like the five senses. So like what you see, you know, the amount of natural light coming into your space, um, the, the sense that are going on in your space, um, the, everything that you touch, the texture you have going on in your space. So it's not always just visual, it's also tactile. It's what you're seeing, what you're tasting, what you're smelling, what you're feeling. Um, all of those play a role into, you know, our, I think everybody's end goal is to have a good, you know, healthy, calm, set nervous system. Because when we have a good calm, set nervous system, we can go out into the world being the best version of ourselves. And when we're the best version of ourselves, we're making not cutting people off in traffic. We're not, you know, cutting in front of people because we're in a hurry because we have to get somewhere, because we're going to disappoint somebody. We're making really intuitive decisions. And people can feel that energetically. And when they feel that energetically, then they pay it forward and then they do something nice for somebody else. Like it's just it's like an addiction, like you. Somebody does something nice for you and you're like, wow, you know, it's so rare. And it felt so good when they let me into my lane. I'm going to let somebody else do it. I've seen it when I've been driving, you know, I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, you want to get in, get in the lane, and then they'll let the next person in. And it just goes so on and so forth. So when we can heal our nervous systems and become the best versions of ourselves through meditation, through different practices, through different modalities, but also live and breathe it in our environments. It's the complete package where we can come be the best version of ourselves, because the collective of all of us needs it. We need all of us working together being the best versions so that this world can become a better place. Because then we can make better decisions, we can be more creative. We can be thinking of how how else can we be better, right? Because that's always the game. You know, it's transcendence. It's, it's the fifth dimension. It's, it's okay. This is the best version of me today. How can I get better tomorrow? Like, how can I get better than I was today? It's a game.
00:09:40 Nazish: I, I completely agree with you. You know, the word the word intentional is doing a lot more a lot of important work in your practice, you know, so what is the difference between a space that has been simply decorated and a place that has been designed with intention?
00:10:00 Jodi Koch Peterman: Right. I'll give you an example. I just was on the phone with a client yesterday and they are using me as a, um, they're, they're designing their own space, but they're using me as more of a guidance or a retainer, so they'll just ask me questions. So I got the cabinet colors picked out and all the backsplash and all the things for their kitchen remodel. But then they, their kitchen designer, um, who knows the cabinet line very, very well was designing their kitchen and they, we went over everything yesterday and I noticed that the stove that they had was bumped out two to three inches. And in my design it was supposed to be flat. And so I, I asked them, I said, you know, they didn't really give me a reason for bumping it out. They just said the cabinet designer did that. And I said, okay, but if you just bump that out and you don't add some pretty little decorative feet on the bump out and do a different type of molding around all of the base cabinets and island. It's called furniture molding. It's just going to look like you bumped it out, but there was no reason to bump it out because it it now looks like a piece of furniture where if it's recessed, it looks like part of the cabinet line and you can do regular molding. But if you're going to bump it out, you need to have a reason why it needs to be intentional. You don't just do something to do it. And so they were like, oh yeah, that's a good point. So I sent that back over to their cabinet designer and I'm like, if you're going to bump it out, then we need to put the feet on it, you know, feet on it and do the different molding so that it looks intentional. And she was like, oh yeah, well, I had to bump it out. She was thinking more function. She needed it to get the downdraft, you know, to get the components of the cooktop to work. She had to push it forward, but she didn't think about it all the way, how it was going to look whole in a room. So so when you just do one thing, you're and you don't think of all the rest of it, it. It makes it. You wish you would have done things different. For example, that's why I started the five D process because when I built my home, my contractor had me work off of allowances. Like you get five thousand dollars for cabinets. I know it's not that I'm making up numbers, but like three thousand dollars for lighting and all so forth. So they give you these, they take the whole number of how your how much it's going to cost to build your house, and they break it down in thousands of dollars. And then that's what you get for each thing. But then if you don't have it all designed up front, you're, you're, you're going through and you're going to pick out your appliances first for your kitchen remodel. So you pick out the appliances. Maybe you go over a little bit. You're like, well, it's only a couple thousand dollars. And then you're doing cabinets and you're like, oh, but I want nicer cabinets. I want the cabinets with the full extension glides and the ones that soft close automatically. Well, that's another five thousand dollars upgrade. We're like, okay, so now I'm over six thousand five hundred and you keep going and you keep going and you're over and over and over and over and over, and then you get really upset because you're like, now you've got to come up with extra money, right? And so that's not intentional design. That's designing as you go based off of random numbers that somebody gave you that mean nothing. It's just means like, this is the average price, but you might want to spend more here. It's just not an efficient and effective way to do it. If you want to maintain control over your budget and the end design to make it look intentional. The only way to make your design look intentional is if you pick everything out from the very, very beginning. Everything you need, all the details done, price that out, and then you can backtrack down or step it up if you want to. But it's like going on a vacation without a plan. You wouldn't just well, maybe some people would, but I wouldn't just fly to Thailand and not have a place to stay. Not know where I wanted to go because I wouldn't want to miss all the cool things. Like I would do research on it. So why would you go build a house or do a remodel which cost way more than your typical, you know, vacation and just go in and wing it? Like it doesn't make any sense to me to do that.
00:13:53 Nazish: Yeah, I mean, I agree you need to be aware and you need to have the proper facts in your hand before you proceed with anything. And, you know, building house sounds like something very close and something that is going to last so long.
00:14:07 Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. And it's a big investment. You don't want to make a mistake. Absolutely. People see things like. And the other thing is people will see things in the store. They'll see a sofa in a store and they're like, oh, this is great. It's comfortable, I love it. Bring it. Well, the store is huge. And you get into your apartment or you get it into your home and it doesn't fit right because you didn't do a, you didn't do a furniture plan to make sure what size sofa you should even be looking for. You go in looking for style and fabrics and all the fun things, but you don't really know exactly one hundred percent how it's going to fit, and the only way to know if it's going to fit is if you do a furniture plan. So you know what you're looking for, because that will rule out like half the sofas that you're going to be looking at. It will help streamline it, you know, like, so you're only looking at what what works, if that makes sense.
00:14:53 Nazish: Yes, yes, yes, it makes and I completely agree with you. And this is so it is so insightful as well because, you know, the process of helping someone understand their own definition of home feels almost like a form of self inquiry itself.
00:15:12 Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. You have to really ask a lot of questions because every know project I've ever done in twenty twenty two years is the same. I'm not a copy paste designer and not everybody is the same. And, and that's why designing upfront is so important because we'll, we'll, we'll talk to clients and we'll pull as much information as possible. But then we show them the plan, we show them the fabrics and then we show them, you know, everything. And then we say, this is how much this sofa costs. This is how much this wallpaper costs, this is how much this light fixture costs, this is how much the cabinet hardware costs. And so they can then go through and say, oh, I didn't realize that area rug was going to be so much. I would rather put more money into a sofa than into the area rug. Can you find a less expensive area rug? So until you go through and show people dollar amounts with items, they don't know whether it's worth it or to spend it or not. They want it, but they're like when they see it all in one clear picture intentionally, they see the beautiful design, and then they see the prices. Then they're able to say, okay, yeah, that looks great to me. I'm okay with that. Or no, I'd rather save some money and put it into wallpaper in six months. Let's wait on that. Then they can make really good educated decisions. It's like literally designers are just putting a plan together or should be. A lot of them don't. A lot of them just, you know, just wing it and just go with the builder or go pick things out with a client and which is fine. But to see the all over plan I think is super important.
00:16:40 Nazish: I completely agree with you. So I also want to ask you, like you have developed the e d process as a five step method to simplify design and safeguard budgets. But I want to ask you about the emotional side of this process. Like for a lot of people, their home carries layers of history, memories and difficult association. So how do you hold that emotional complexity when you are working in that space or Space. Like space.
00:17:11 Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah. So it's different for every client. Um, some people are attached to spaces. Some people are attached to antiques or family heirlooms and some people are just attached to, you know, the memories of certain spaces like moms and nurseries, you know, like their child's room. And now they need to turn it into something else. And if you're not ready to do that, you're not ready to do it. But it's just asking those questions as you're going through to help people prioritize, um, you know, and, and give them a way to showcase their individuality that still feels pulled together and intentional. So for example, one of my clients collected a lot of a Native American artifacts as well as a lot of artifacts from ancient China. And so we were like, okay, how do we blend all of this together? And so what we decided to do was to make a, um, a take a space that they weren't really using very well. And we opened it up to the kitchen to make it part of the kitchen area with, um, a couple of tables. And then we did a big built in cabinets with glass. And so that's where they could, it was almost like walking into a museum when you walked into that space, there was all sorts of different artifacts and different things and kind of blended all together. And then we pulled colors out of that to make the rest of the house pretty neutral. And then they had specific artwork that they had collected over the years. So we made it more like a museum for them. But really, and, and the wife wanted, um, Florida coastal. So we really see Florida coastal Native American and, um, you know, different artifacts from, from ancient China. So it was a fun one to put together and really bring their personality out as well. So it's just, yeah, they get really emotional about pieces. I had another client who inherited a ton of different pieces from her mom, who had passed their grandma. That had passed. And a lot of people, a lot of, you know, children, her children and grandchildren, they didn't want those pieces. They didn't even want to take them and paint them or do anything to them. They just didn't want them. So she has all these things and she's holding memory and space for them. But, you know, she didn't want to give them all up either. So we went and sorted through them and we had must have worked into the design. So we did that. And then there are some she wasn't ready to part with yet. So we put those in storage and other ones that she was ready to part with. But we took pictures of them and put them in a photo album book for her, you know? And sometimes we can repurpose pieces as well, turn them into different things, you know? So but yes, it's just holding space and let people have given them space to have their emotions and to really sort out the reason why they're getting so emotional behind it. Because sometimes it's, you know, they feel guilty. It's not out of like, I really, really, really want it and I need to figure out how to work it in. Sometimes it's you feel guilty for letting it go, you know? So there's lots of different things. I always say that I should have my psychology degree being in this field for twenty years, twenty two years.
00:20:22 Nazish: Absolutely. And I think you do a lot for your clients, like not just professionally, like work wise, but like also emotionally. And I believe that is a very rare find.
00:20:34 Jodi Koch Peterman: Yes. I had one client who everything, you name it and it went wrong. Everything was going wrong for her. It's like she was manifesting all of this negativity. And so I'm like, I'm coming over to sage your house. So I went and bought some white sage and I was cleansing her house. I cleansed the house she was staying in, I cleansed her, I cleansed her dog. We just cleansed everything while we were over there.
00:20:58 Nazish: That is so that is so that's actually meaningful. And that is so beautiful. I'd say. So, you know, I want to ask you for like people who want to connect with you, learn more about your work and, you know, uh, listen to your podcast, where can they find you and what is available for them right now?
00:21:16 Jodi Koch Peterman: Yeah, I'm super excited. So I am on everything. I'm on everything with, for my business and personal. So I have a business and personal TikTok. I have a business and personal LinkedIn. It's Elizabeth Aaron designs is everywhere and it's Jodie coach K o c h and that's everywhere you're able to find me. Um, if you can't, you can always DM me and I can find you or get get it over to you. But Instagram, Facebook everywhere. So it shouldn't be too hard to find that. And otherwise you can reach out on the website, on the website. We're getting ready to do two things, which I'm really excited about. I haven't even told anybody about this yet, but I'm having a meeting right after your our podcast. I'm meeting, I'm doing a what's called a decision confidence toolkit. And people are going to be able to buy it to help them intentionally figure out how to do stuff. So if they're not really ready to engage a designer or a contractor, you're just in the beginning phases and you want to do things intentionally. Um, that's going to be available for purchase, um, from the website, which is Elizabeth Aaron e r I n designs dot com. And then you can find my podcast there and my podcast is on Apple, it's on Spotify, it's called designing in five D. You'll find lots of different information there, from design tips to trends to a lot of healing processes and a lot of people going through a lot of different things. Um, it's kind of an eclectic mix of a lot of things.
00:22:42 Nazish: Absolutely. That sounds like a perfect pack. And I will make sure to include all these details into the show notes so that a lot of people can reach out to you. And you know, Jodie, if there is something that I am going to take away from this conversation with myself is that your home is not just where you live it. It is where you also heal and making Even one corner of it feel truly yours is already an act of self-care.
00:23:09 Jodi Koch Peterman: Yes it is.
00:23:11 Nazish: Yeah. So thank you so much, Judy, for this beautiful conversation. You know, this reminded me that healing doesn't only happen on the inside of us. It also happens in spaces between us and the world. It's like in the chair we sit, the light we let in, the object we choose to keep close.
00:23:32 Jodi Koch Peterman: That is beautifully said. Thank you. Nisha.
00:23:36 Nazish: Yeah. And to your listeners, if today's conversation stirred something in you, you look around the room you are in right now and ask yourself one honest question. Does this feel like me? If the answer is not quiet, that might be exactly where your next step towards inner peace begin. We will be back soon with more inner peace, better health, and until then, come home to yourself in every sense of the word.
