About Dr. Leslie Gray


Dr. Leslie Gray

Dr. Leslie Gray, executive director and founder of the Woodfish Institute, is a Native American psychologist who has studied with medicine people and elders from various tribal backgrounds. She advocates (and embodies) a new vision of health care—the integration of ancient healing and modern medicine.

Dr. Gray has a private practice in San Francisco, California, teaches workshops and seminars worldwide, and conducts travel/study programs to ancient sites. She has lectured at various universities including the University of California at Berkeley and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She consults with individuals and organizations on the practice of ecopsychology, and her work has been featured in such periodicals as East-West Journal and Re-Vision Journal, as well as in the book Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. Dr. Gray has served on the board of directors of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology, and is currently an Associate of the Milton Erickson Institute of the Bay Area.




Founder's Statement

My passion is to foster and promote what I call "reciprocal transformation." The idea is, wherever possible, to make the inevitable encounter between indigenous systems and technological systems mutually enhancing. Conventional analyses have primarily acknowledged the manifest poverty of contemporary indigenous cultures in comparison with the obvious material wealth of industrial-technological societies. In the 21st century, however, the specter of planetary destruction forces us to also see "wealth" in wisdom about how to live sanely on the earth, in practices of sustainable land use and in evolved knowledge of community-building -- all of which exist in the traditions of autochthonous peoples. Correspondingly, mounting evidence of imminent environmental catastrophe forces us to see "poverty" in the underdeveloped ecopsychology of the technoculture.

I believe it is possible for the interaction between indigenous and technological worldviews to generate solutions to many of our world's current grave dilemmas. Woodfish Institute was founded with this idea of synergistic enhancement in mind. The guiding vision in all of its projects is to go beyond a unidirectional model of aboriginal education to create learning situations that are reciprocally transformative.

Leslie Gray




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