The ISHAR Library is Live!

Dear ISHAR Supporters,

 

We are thrilled to announce the official launch of the Integrative Studies Historical Archive & Repository!  It’s been a long, complex, rewarding journey, but we are proud to present the world’s largest single source for academic information on Integrative Studies, including acupuncturemeditationyogaqigong and everything in between.  We hope you’ll enjoy browsing through ISHAR and share your thoughts with us so that we can continually improve the site.

The flame has been lit…

Votive candlesWe always knew it would be a challenge launching an academic library of research on some of the most cutting edge and misunderstood topics in the world, and on top of everything, for free!   We were not disappointed, but ISHAR has persevered.  In the process we’ve been asked numerous questions:

 

 

  

Building ISHAR: A brief journey and continued learnings through inception, growth and fundraising

soil with green shootThus far, it has been an incredible journey.  ISHAR formed just six months ago from a handful of problem solving discussions within a small community. Beginning with little more than an idea, support burgeoned from Deepak Chopra and the Chopra Foundation and spread across the globe. ISHAR, the planted seed, has taken root.

Our tiny operations team was flooded with support, more than we could handle actually. We received honorable mentions and champion videos from many notable figures in the mind/body community. Doctors, yogis, therapists, musicians, medical researchers, biofuel engineers and more found necessity in ISHAR.

How we discover knowledge influences how we understand knowledge

In order to organize ISHAR’s sources in an interconnected and comprehensive way, mindmapping is utilized to help categorize topics, establish relationships between them and get closer to a holistic understanding.

Below is an early-stage sample of ISHAR’s mindmapping in use while designing the Integrative Culture section.  This is just a tiny sliver of the vast networks this approach can reveal, and mindmapping is being used extensively in the design of ISHAR.

mind map

Integrative Studies Historical Archive and Repository: A library for the mind/body community

I.S.H.A.R. is an online digital library, the first of it’s kind, dedicated to the entire mind/body phenomenon and all of the integrative studies therien.

Mind/body’ is a very broad category – and includes everything from Integrative Health practices currently adopted by approximately 40% of US Hospitals, to  various forms of traditional and alternative medical systems and therapies, such as Ayurveda and Chinese medicine from which, a vast majority of common integrative procedures continue to derive.

Pages

Subscribe to ISHAR Online RSS