Lipman

The latter, explains Lipman, is not at the home's entrance, as some might assume, but rather at its center, acting as the home's axis, to harmonize with the universal laws of nature. "If we look at the things nature established, from largest to smallest, they each have a central core, and all the activities move around it. For example, a galaxy has a black hole; a solar system has a sun; cells in the body have a nucleus. This is one way nature maintains coherence. And when we use those same principles in architecture, we experience greater coherence in our houses."

Another important Vedic distinction, says Lipman, is the spatial relationship of each room to the others. "For instance, if you were to say you want your living room to be 24 by 36 feet, we might adjust those numbers to something like 23.9 by 37.5 feet so they'd resonate with the laws of nature and the solar system," he says. "Think of it as like tuning a violin. When a violin is perfectly tuned, the strings have this wonderful harmonic relationship, and if one string is slightly out of tune, it just doesn't sound right." When the rooms in a house are perfectly tuned, he adds, "It just feels better to live in."

Although studies suggest as many as three million Americans meditate daily, and at least 60 percent of the U.S. population has experimented on some level with alternative sources of medicine, convincing home buyers and builders to think Vedic has been a challenge, especially considering the lack of documented evidence to substantiate claims of better health, greater family harmony, or increased financial prosperity. Nevertheless, there are some preliminary studies to suggest Vedic's orientation hypothesis might be right on target.