BROOKLINE — Inner Fire, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit healing community, recently completed the first phase of its $2.7 million residential therapeutic facility that it says is “designed to support healing of the mind, body, and spirit without the use of psychotropic drugs.”
Inner Fire's facility sits on a leased portion of a 43-acre site in Brookline and, upon completion, will include three main buildings along with an art and drama barn and several smaller therapeutic studios, gardens, paths, greenhouses, and workshop spaces.
The completed East Wing accommodates eight seekers/residents and one or two guides. It includes nine bedrooms, three baths, and a common area, a full basement for mechanicals and storage, solar panels, heat pumps, and a water sprinkler and alarm system.
Executive Director Beatrice Birch said in a news release that Inner Fire “was founded with the sole purpose of saving lives by offering the choice to avoid or to safely taper off addictive, psychotropic drugs. We are not anti-medications, but believe in choice.”
Birch founded Inner Fire in 2014 to help individuals seeking to be proactive in their healing process without the use of psychotropic drugs. Through her years of practicing, she said she had met too many young individuals who hated being medicated and chose suicide rather than to live in a fog of pain.
“It has been our dream to build a family-sized, fully-licensed residential facility that would be a healing, nurturing, comfortable, and safe environment with spaces for creative arts, gardening, forestry and more,” she said.
Birch is a leading practitioner of Hauschka Artistic Therapy and has worked in Europe and Asia in treatment facilities and training institutes. She said she has applied knowledge from 35 years of professional practice in prisons, inner cities, residential facilities, and her own private practice.
Inner Fire says it retains “experienced and dedicated professional staff and therapists and works with a homeopath and anthroposophical medical doctor as well as a psychiatrist and registered nurse who are all committed to facilitating the healing process through respectful, holistic, high-quality care for the participants.”
Inner Fire has raised more than $1 million to complete the East Wing, and soon will start on the West Wing. The entire campus is scheduled for completion by January 2021 with funds raised from donors all over the country.