Michael Dinan Gut Productions Midwest Integral Center

This has been a dream that has been close to my heart for a long time. Since I've been in recovery I have longed to live in a retreat/healing community like Findhorn in Scotland. My brother Steve worked for Michael Murphy for a few years at Esalen in Big Sur and I thought it was about time something of that scale came to the midwest...a Midwest Esalen. It seems to take about 30 years for healthy breakthroughs to trickle down from California to the curd chewing beer swilling cows here in the midwest. See frozen yogurt and smoothies. Now it seems to me that the time is right for a high quality retreat/spa/conference center in the heartland. My dream seemed to be closer to reality two years ago in the year of the Dragon (hence the cute blue dragons) when Alixsandra Parness, the founder and main teacher in the Inner Focus School of Soul Directed Healing that I was in, asked me to start looking for a retreat center for the school. Several years before, Inner Focus came very close to buying the Yahara Center where we first met, but the deal fell through at the last minute. This was very dispiriting, as it was gorgeous facility in the middle of a crane sancuary. My wife Kathleen and I were married there. Anyways, I was hyped for a while and I looked maniacly for a site. The coolest place I found was in Spring Green, WI called Wildwoods. It is a magical piece of land in a beautiful valley with sparkling quartz fairy dust in the soil. The buildings were built by Fritz Perls, a Frank Loyd architecht, but they have not been well maintained and are faithfully returning to the earth and the squirrels. It had a too high price tag (550,000) and would have required a great investment to get it highly functioning, but it could have been beautiful..

Then my wife and I got our first house and there weren't enough other Inner Focus people with energy for the idea and I chilled out. Lately I've been thinking about it and getting wound up again. I think for something on this scale to be successful it could not be wedded to just one group or ideaology, but would need to be an aquarian conglomeration of many groups that would utilize and energize it hence the term integral. I am looking for Madisonians who have a similar dream and would like to reify it. I would like to get a group started that meets regularly to brainstorm, write up a business plan, etc. I envison something with a spa/floation tanks (My wife kathleen is a massage therapist and Inner Focus graduate), recording studio, conference center and retreat housing that is also a demonstration of ecological buiding and alternative energy a la the book Natural Capitalism with geodesic domes and hydrogen fuel cells and giant vegetables puffed up by happy plant devas. If you are kindred spirit and are interested in helping with this or chatting about similar ideas, please e-mail me.