-- BRUCE WOCHHOLZ

Sacred Spaces, Terrorism/trauma, Memberlinks

You must have a room or a certain hour of the day . . . where you do not know what was in the morning paper . . . a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are, and what you might be . . . At first you may find nothing’s happening . . . But if you have a sacred place and use it, take advantage of it, something will happen. — Joseph Campbell

WEB RESOURCES

What is Sacred Space? Maitrhea is a non-profit foundation dedicated to the reestablishment of sufficiency, beauty and balance in our homes, in our communities, and on our planet, through the making of sacred space designed for living, for self expression, for introspection, and for inner listening. The site also contains the Sacred Places Loop, a slide show of over 50 sacred places and an excellent set of links.

Elle Crystal's Crystalinks includes links to sacred places and teachings, allowing you to expanding your awareness as your soul guides. There are many files to help you discover your personal truths about reality and the changes that are about to take place in your body, mind and soul. The original version of Crystalinks went up on the Internet in August 1995. To this day it is, and always will be, a 'work in progress'.

Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe sacred places website contains text and images which examine the nature of the sacred and contains links to sacred or holy places found in different cultures, past and present, all over the world. One of the aims is to explore how and why places become invested with sacredness. In most cases, it can be shown that the sacredness of a place is linked in some way to natural objects and features such trees, stones, water, mountains, caves, and forms in the landscape. It can further be shown that these natural objects and forms lie at the root of the forms and shapes employed to mark or embellish a sacred site.

Places of Peace and Power are found all across the planet in the form of sacred mountains, healing springs, oracular caverns, enchanted forest glens, and places of divine revelation. Ancient legends and modern-day reports tell of extraordinary experiences that people have had while visiting such places. Different sacred sites have the power to heal the body, enlighten the mind, increase creativity, develop psychic abilities, and awaken the soul to a knowing of its true purpose in life. Martin Gray cites Jung to describe how "...As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional unconscious identity with natural phenomena...no voices now speak to man from stones, plants and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear...we have increasingly divided our consciousness from the deeper instinctive strata of the human psyche, and even ultimately from the somatic (bodily felt and known) basis of psychic phenomenon. Fortunately we have not lost these basic instinctive strata; they remain part of the unconscious, even though they may express themselves only in the form of dream images".

TERRORISM/TRAUMA

The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse Mincava Electronic Clearinghouse is a portfolio of information about one of the most widely used websites for violence-related resources on the internet today. The Early Responders Distance Learning Center at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia hosts a website with a large variety of links to subjects relating to response to terrorist attack and includes continually updated information. National Victim Assistance Academy is a site hosted by the Department of Justice which contains useful resources for trauma assessment and intervention. Disaster Psychiatry Outreach is a charitable organization devoted to the provision of voluntary psychiatric services to individuals affected by disasters, their site promotes education, outreach, and research. The premise of Lynn Prashant's Degriefing Process is simple. Grief creates a state of physical and mental disharmony. The body and mind are inextricably linked. Therefore, health care techniques that attempt to alleviate the effects of grief must include both physical and mental treatments.

AHP MEMBERLINKS

Al Siebert's resiliency center and partner site Survivor Guidelines , which provides helpful guidelines and resources on how to emotionally survive and recover from the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, help provide answers to questions like: How can someone know if they are resilient? Do people learn to be resilient or is it something you are born with? Can parents teach their children to be resilient? What does it take to be resilient? How can someone learn to be more resilient?

Sharif Abdullah and the commonway site also provides insight on coping with terrorism . The essence of our work is ridding ourselves, our organizations and our society of fear. The root of our problems lies in fear, and the stress, anger, hostility and violence produced by fear. Fear is simply another form of violence. We encourage people to cross the boundaries that separate us..

Rachel Miller's planting loving seeds web site contains links to ministers, churches, organizations, support groups and other web sites to help cross-dressers, other transgendered people, gays, lesbians and bisexual with christian support services.

BRUCE WOCHHOLZ, ahpweb Content Developer, is an AHP member who contributes his experience in health education, gerontology, and humanistic psychology and expert knowledge of web content and architecture to AHP publications. In addition to writing this column, he will also be helping AHP to explore "e-learning" and distance education opportunities.

Note: Members are encouraged to submit sites for consideration for Web Resources and AHP Memberlinks to Kathleen Erickson, at EricksonEditorial@att.net or AHP, 1516 Oak St., Suite 320A, Alameda, CA 94501. These sites and more can be reached through ahpweb.org. Click on Web Resources and Memberlinks. Your next issue of AHP Perspective will be a Somatics issue, so if you have submissions, please send them in as soon as possible. Sites for review in the Perspective must be primarily educational or informational, and relate closely to AHP’s interests. AHP member submissions for the Memberlinks section may emphasize current members’ services, books, workshops, tapes, or other commercial offerings.