Build a holistic healing and educational center

My name is Michelle Fleming, and I was told in my twenties that I would be in a wheelchair by age 30. A terrible accident in childhood, combined with scoliosis and a severe car accident had damaged my spine so badly, that I was told I was a lost cause and soon wouldn’t walk. Through my study and practice of yoga and holistic bodywork, I proved all of those doctors wrong and am now called a “miracle’. I believed in the power of the healing I had found so deeply that I opened a center in my hometown called The Sanctuary where people of all ages and all walks of life came to heal their minds, their bodies and their spirits. Having clients, like a high school girl with a severe eating disorder whose Mom was told “there is nothing left to do, take her home to die”, to a kindergarten teacher who were told there was no hope for the neuralgia that paralyzed half her face, to a roofer who carried around his MRIs like a cross desperate to be rid of the back pain keeping him from supporting his family, I have helped people regain their health and their hope with healing and education.

Now I want to do it again, only better.

So I am doing the hardest thing I have ever done, I am asking for help.

I am building a community based, truly holistic healing center on the pristine beach where I have run healing retreats for the last 9 years. On this little piece of Heaven on the Pacific Coast, I have created a place where people come to learn and heal, and leave healthy and EMPOWERED.

So together with my partner Wyly Brown, we are building a healing and educational center. Wyly is an architect, Wash U professor, and pioneer of sustainable building and design practices and wants to save the world through bamboo construction. We know that every place we touch, we have an impact on, but if we are thoughtful, we can make that impact a positive one.

We will begin by building an open-air community classroom to create a shared space where we will further my model of holistic healing to include healing our Mother Earth and our communities; a place where all people can come to heal and learn and regain hope. Building with sustainable bamboo, a building product that removes toxins from the soil, sequesters huge amounts of carbon from the air, and actually benefits from harvesting, we will create a center that is truly ecologically friendly and preserves the natural beauty of this pristine beach. By building in conjunction with the local community we will create jobs for people who desperately need them and hugely change the impact of the construction rapidly coming to this spot where endangered sea turtles come to lay their eggs.

We believe healing on all levels is possible and that holistic health doesn’t stop at our skin.

We believe in the power of community to do great things.

We believe that everyone should have access to healing and education, no matter their economic status.

And we believe that by coming together, with hope and with love, anything is possible.

So I am asking you to reach into your hearts, and into your wallets and do what you can to support our efforts. Together we can build a Sanctuary where we can all come to heal and learn and grow and evolve.

Every little bit helps and I bow in gratitude to you just for reading this far.

Maybe you can donate, maybe you can share the fundraiser so other people will, maybe both, do what you can and share in the love. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. -Michelle