“Before I came to camp I felt broken and alone. After camp, I found hope that I can heal.” – C.T. 2016
Our Mission
The mission of the Center for Earth-Based Healing of AIWP is to provide trauma-informed ecotherapy programs that promote holistic healing — psychological, physical, emotional, and spiritual — for trauma survivors.
We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is locally governed and operated but part of a larger national organization called The Association for the Integration of the Whole Person. AIWP, founded in 1979, is committed to supporting spiritual persons to serve their communities in ways that assure psychological and educational self-empowerment, leading to peace and goodwill.
We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that is locally governed and operated but part of a larger national organization called The Association for the Integration of the Whole Person. AIWP, founded in 1979, is committed to supporting spiritual persons to serve their communities in ways that assure psychological and educational self-empowerment, leading to peace and goodwill.
Our Staff
Daily operations, camps, and program development for the Center for Earth-Based Healing are currently administered by two year-round staff members, and for our camps, we bring in additional staff members with specific expertise that support our trauma-informed ecotherapy approach.
Michele Zehr
Executive Director
Email: michelezehr@earthbasedhealing.org
Office: 434-277-5001
MICHELE ZEHR, M.Ed., M.A., is the founder of the Center for Earth-Based Healing. She has worked with survivors of sexual and domestic violence in various capacities since 2009. As a Sexual Assault Response Team coordinator and advocate for survivors of sexual violence, she provided the full range of direct services for survivors at the Sexual Assault Resource Agency in Charlottesville, VA. As staff, she taught the cultural competency module at the Virginia Victim Assistance Academy, and served as Program Coordinator for the Community-Defined Solutions to Ending Violence Against Women grant at the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. In this role, she led a multi-disciplinary team of state-level stakeholders dedicated to creating systemic change by offering training conferences that brought law enforcement officers, Commonwealth’s Attorneys, and advocates together to learn how to better coordinate survivor services.
Michele has worked with ecotherapy modalities over the past decade, attending programs at the School of Lost Borders, Tracker School, and the Ecology of Awakening program, and is currently working on her certification as a Somatic Experiencing practitioner through Dr. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute. Her academic credentials include training in instructional design and two Master’s degrees in adult education and social justice education, focused on women’s and gender studies. She also completed business-related training at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, the Center for Non-Profit Excellence, and the Community Investment Collaborative in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Michele also founded We2: Women’s Experiential Empowerment in 2013. She offers women’s self-defense classes, one-on-one empowerment coaching, custom-designed professional development trainings, and transformational talks. She has spoken by invitation at Quadruplicity: Charlottesville’s Professional Women’s Conference, UVA’s Women’s Midlife Health Symposium, and was interviewed on Speaking of Travel with radio host Marilyn Ball.
Michele is a former U.S. Marine, backpacked the entire Appalachian Trail (2,175 miles), and in her downtime, loves connecting with nature, reading, and composing and playing music on her piano, saxophone, and ukulele.
Executive Director
Email: michelezehr@earthbasedhealing.org
Office: 434-277-5001
MICHELE ZEHR, M.Ed., M.A., is the founder of the Center for Earth-Based Healing. She has worked with survivors of sexual and domestic violence in various capacities since 2009. As a Sexual Assault Response Team coordinator and advocate for survivors of sexual violence, she provided the full range of direct services for survivors at the Sexual Assault Resource Agency in Charlottesville, VA. As staff, she taught the cultural competency module at the Virginia Victim Assistance Academy, and served as Program Coordinator for the Community-Defined Solutions to Ending Violence Against Women grant at the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. In this role, she led a multi-disciplinary team of state-level stakeholders dedicated to creating systemic change by offering training conferences that brought law enforcement officers, Commonwealth’s Attorneys, and advocates together to learn how to better coordinate survivor services.
Michele has worked with ecotherapy modalities over the past decade, attending programs at the School of Lost Borders, Tracker School, and the Ecology of Awakening program, and is currently working on her certification as a Somatic Experiencing practitioner through Dr. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute. Her academic credentials include training in instructional design and two Master’s degrees in adult education and social justice education, focused on women’s and gender studies. She also completed business-related training at the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, the Center for Non-Profit Excellence, and the Community Investment Collaborative in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Michele also founded We2: Women’s Experiential Empowerment in 2013. She offers women’s self-defense classes, one-on-one empowerment coaching, custom-designed professional development trainings, and transformational talks. She has spoken by invitation at Quadruplicity: Charlottesville’s Professional Women’s Conference, UVA’s Women’s Midlife Health Symposium, and was interviewed on Speaking of Travel with radio host Marilyn Ball.
Michele is a former U.S. Marine, backpacked the entire Appalachian Trail (2,175 miles), and in her downtime, loves connecting with nature, reading, and composing and playing music on her piano, saxophone, and ukulele.
Morgan Howell
Program Director & Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher
Email: morganhowell@earthbasedhealing.org
Office: 804-482-0630
MORGAN HOWELL, RYT-200, began her professional career in the sexual and domestic violence field by serving as a community organizer for The Blue Bench, the only rape crisis center in Denver, CO. She canvased Denver-metro community neighborhoods and knocked on the doors of homes in the community, encouraging a deeper level of awareness about sexual violence and listening to the stories of survivors. A poignant moment in Morgan's training was when she learned that before the age of eighteen, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men were affected by sexual violence in the state of Colorado, but it was hearing the personal stories of community members that made those statistics real on a heart-level. This experience awakened a passion in Morgan that guided her to her current career path. Since community organizing in Colorado, Morgan has worked as a Client Services Coordinator for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse at the James House in Prince George, VA and then transferred to Hanover Safe Place in Hanover, VA where she worked her way up from Case Manager to Shelter Manager, eventually becoming a member of Hanover Safe Place’s Leadership Team.
Even though she knew working in the sexual and domestic violence field was her path, how Morgan’s gifts fit into the field has been an ever-evolving exploration. She started her own personal yoga practice in 2013, and after experiencing a deeper connection to her own body, she realized the powerful potential of yoga as a healing modality for survivors of sexual and domestic violence—many of whom report experiencing a lack of connection to their bodies. She started yoga teacher training in 2014 and completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training (YTT) at Om On Yoga with J Miles and Kelly Kostecki. Knowing her goal was to specialize in teaching yoga to trauma-survivors, she searched for additional training to support that aspiration. She completed a level-one Yoga for Resiliency and Trauma training with Anna Ferguson and Becca Odom of Sacred Roots Wellness and has since completed all three levels of this training. She started offering yoga support groups for survivors at crisis centers and yoga studios around the Richmond, VA area and continued to expand her understanding of trauma by reading the work of Bessel Van Der Kolk, training with trauma-informed yoga teachers such as Jay Fields and Dana Walters, receiving on-going training in trauma from the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance and Project Yoga Richmond, and she has become a certified Yoga for 12-Step Recovery Leader. She has stepped away from her full-time work in traditional crisis centers and feels excited to be teaching both private and group yoga sessions at Hanover Safe Place, leading trauma-informed outreach programs for Project Yoga Richmond, and working as the Program Director and trauma-informed yoga instructor at the Center for Earth-Based Healing. She is also happy to have joined the training team at Sacred Roots Wellness.
Morgan practices yoga regularly at home and in community at Project Yoga Richmond, and she is continuously learning from yoga teachers Izzy Shurte and Marni Sclaroff. Outside of yoga and her work with trauma survivors, Morgan's interests and passions include an on-going study of grassroots folk herbalism with her teacher Laura Baum as well as spending as much time as possible outside; listening to On Being podcasts, meditating, participating in 5Rhythms dancing—a movement meditation practice—attending community potlucks, and enjoying vegetarian cooking. She also loves, loves, loves to read, and Morgan is grateful to be a life-long learner.
Program Director & Trauma-Informed Yoga Teacher
Email: morganhowell@earthbasedhealing.org
Office: 804-482-0630
MORGAN HOWELL, RYT-200, began her professional career in the sexual and domestic violence field by serving as a community organizer for The Blue Bench, the only rape crisis center in Denver, CO. She canvased Denver-metro community neighborhoods and knocked on the doors of homes in the community, encouraging a deeper level of awareness about sexual violence and listening to the stories of survivors. A poignant moment in Morgan's training was when she learned that before the age of eighteen, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men were affected by sexual violence in the state of Colorado, but it was hearing the personal stories of community members that made those statistics real on a heart-level. This experience awakened a passion in Morgan that guided her to her current career path. Since community organizing in Colorado, Morgan has worked as a Client Services Coordinator for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse at the James House in Prince George, VA and then transferred to Hanover Safe Place in Hanover, VA where she worked her way up from Case Manager to Shelter Manager, eventually becoming a member of Hanover Safe Place’s Leadership Team.
Even though she knew working in the sexual and domestic violence field was her path, how Morgan’s gifts fit into the field has been an ever-evolving exploration. She started her own personal yoga practice in 2013, and after experiencing a deeper connection to her own body, she realized the powerful potential of yoga as a healing modality for survivors of sexual and domestic violence—many of whom report experiencing a lack of connection to their bodies. She started yoga teacher training in 2014 and completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training (YTT) at Om On Yoga with J Miles and Kelly Kostecki. Knowing her goal was to specialize in teaching yoga to trauma-survivors, she searched for additional training to support that aspiration. She completed a level-one Yoga for Resiliency and Trauma training with Anna Ferguson and Becca Odom of Sacred Roots Wellness and has since completed all three levels of this training. She started offering yoga support groups for survivors at crisis centers and yoga studios around the Richmond, VA area and continued to expand her understanding of trauma by reading the work of Bessel Van Der Kolk, training with trauma-informed yoga teachers such as Jay Fields and Dana Walters, receiving on-going training in trauma from the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance and Project Yoga Richmond, and she has become a certified Yoga for 12-Step Recovery Leader. She has stepped away from her full-time work in traditional crisis centers and feels excited to be teaching both private and group yoga sessions at Hanover Safe Place, leading trauma-informed outreach programs for Project Yoga Richmond, and working as the Program Director and trauma-informed yoga instructor at the Center for Earth-Based Healing. She is also happy to have joined the training team at Sacred Roots Wellness.
Morgan practices yoga regularly at home and in community at Project Yoga Richmond, and she is continuously learning from yoga teachers Izzy Shurte and Marni Sclaroff. Outside of yoga and her work with trauma survivors, Morgan's interests and passions include an on-going study of grassroots folk herbalism with her teacher Laura Baum as well as spending as much time as possible outside; listening to On Being podcasts, meditating, participating in 5Rhythms dancing—a movement meditation practice—attending community potlucks, and enjoying vegetarian cooking. She also loves, loves, loves to read, and Morgan is grateful to be a life-long learner.
How You Can Support Survivors
The Center for Earth-Based Healing spends $900 per survivor per program, and we need your support to continue offering our healing camps. Survivors are never charged to attend because we believe a lack of financial resources should never be a barrier to healing. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, making your contribution tax-deductible. Please consider sponsoring a survivor at a level that suits your financial situation, or see our in-kind donation list on the DONATE page. Thank you for your generosity.
You will be taken to an external website to make your donation. Please list CEBH of AIWP in the Comments box.
Photo Credits: Karen L. Mulder & Jennifer Lee | Logo Design: Karen L. Mulder