Welcome to episode 237 with Beatrice Birch, who is a Hauschka Artistic Therapist and the founder of Inner Fire, a proactive healing community that offers a choice for adults to recover from debilitating and traumatic life challenges with minimal use of medications. Beatrice has worked as an artistic therapist and consultant since 1986 and over these years she has worked in schools, hospitals, rehab facilities and prisons in the United States, England and Holland, and has lectured as far afield as Taiwan. Inner Fire, founded by Beatrice in 2015, creates a framework for deep and lasting healing, through an intensive program that first stabilises a person in crisis, gradually replaces medication with holistic healing practices, addresses the core issues and develops skills for growing beyond these issues. In this episode I chat to Beatrice about her early work as an artistic therapist, how she came to work in this space and the events and experiences that led to starting Inner Fire. We chat about the Inner Fire approach to recovery and healing, what an average day looks like, how it all works and the process behind it. We chat about the role of choice, the importance of rhythm and how these things support the process of tapering medication and we chat about working with clay and water colours, the creative spirit and why Beatrice feels that mental health is a reductionist term for soul health. We all know the stats around mental health and they aren’t getting any better and if we want things to be different then we need to do things differently and Beatrice is doing exactly that, and like she’s says during our conversation, her work is simply about offering people a choice. It’s exciting to know that places like Inner Fire exist and it was wonderful to learn more about this incredible space and how it came to be. Learn more at INNER FIRE | Residential Healing Community | Addiction Recovery Without Medication You can connect with me on social media @propermentalpodcast or via www.propermentalpodcast.com. You can support the show and help me to keep it independent and ad free by buying a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/propermental Another great way to support the show and spread the word is to rate, review and subscribe on whatever platform you get your podcasts from. If you or anyone you know needs to find support in your local area, please go to www.hubofhope.co.uk Thanks for listening!