Sacred Places To Visit

When we enter holy space, we have the capacity to become whole. Discover places you too can visit.

Landscape is powerful. It has the capacity to inspire like little else, to connect us to all that is sacred within and around us, as psychologist Sharon Snir recently observed. ‘People are often surprised to hear Israel is only one third the size of Tasmania,’ tells Sharon, ‘yet one half of this incredible country is desert. The Negev may appear to be miles of dry desert, however on closer inspection the rocks and mountains offer much more, reveal the shapes of wild animals, faces and creatures from another world. This is no ordinary desert. It whispers ancient wisdom.

Every city has places that quietly yet powerfully uplift us, enabling us to recalibrate, rebalance, move along. When we spend time in our city’s sacred places we help heal our fractured selves. We’re more awake to the world around us – to Nature, to others, to what makes our souls sing.

I never expected to fall in love with deserts. They’d always seemed so barren and inhospitable. Devoid of nurture, warmth and beauty of any kind. How wrong I was.

An anthropologist friend once told of how she’d gone to live with an indigenous group in the Australian desert and how challenging she’d found the experience, until the desert ‘began to sing’ to her, then her whole relationship with the desert was transformed.

We know when we need sacred space. We feel the ache of it deep in our soul. It often manifests as a profound restlessness. A need to break out or move on from the where we’re at right at this moment. We yearn for renewal. For a vision that will make every part of us soar. To feel ‘cleaner’ inside. To travel lighter and with more direction. More purpose. We need to be some place else.

Sacred places are holy places. Places that have the capacity to make us whole. Locations which lift us out of the everyday. Stretch our vision. Give us a new sense of ourselves and our world.

The ancients understood the importance of spending time in places which uplift the spirit. Places which heal. Give us clarity and the strength to continue on. Nothing has changed. Each of us needs to recharge, recalibrate, take time to expand our potential, to grow.