She had asked us not to take notes, as in her tradition teachings are transmitted orally. Suffice it to say, this is the class I remember the most. I felt compelled to ensure that her words and her wisdom reach more people, especially women, so I proposed to interview her for Seismic Sisters. We met up at her office in San Francisco.
Dr. Leslie Gray is a Native American psychologist who has studied with medicine people and elders from various tribal backgrounds. Based in San Francisco, she is also the executive director and founder of the Woodfish Institute.
Q&A
Jessica Semaan: Can you share a little bit about your path to where you are now, specifically starting from a clinical fellowship at Harvard to practicing psychotherapy informed by principles of indigenous healing?
Dr. Leslie Gray: Though I was pursuing an education in social sciences, I had been around indigenous healing and always had both going on in my head at the same time. A turning point was when I read a book by H.F. Ellenberger titled, “The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry”, in which the author purports to trace contemporary psychiatry from shamanism to hypnotism to mesmerism to Freud. The book starts with the description of a great Kwakiutl healer. As I read on however, it began to dawn on me that what was being described was not an evolution but a de-evolution—moving away from a sophisticated application of the spectrum of consciousness for healing to a binary notion of "conscious and unconscious".
I presented a paper on shamanic healing in my first year of graduate school, and I was fortunate that the professor understood it because my classmates laughed nervously at what they perceived as primitive. Oddly, tolerating the temporary discomfort of their laughter seemed to clarify for me my own indigenous background and worldview. I decided then and there to seek out traditional healers and learn from them. I was lucky that the first healer I learned from was wise, gifted and highly skilled. That provided me with a standard that I applied in subsequent years of studying with elders and healers from other tribes.
Semaan: What does it mean for women to come into their power? Could you speak about how you define power in that case?
Gray: In this conversation we are limited by the English language, which makes it difficult to discuss situations with equal distribution of power. In English the word "power" is used equally for personal strength and for dominance over others, unlike the case in some other major languages. In the U.S. right now when a woman talks seriously about power, she is often responded to as if she were seeking to be authoritarian, whereas when a man talks about power he is simply responded to as an authority. And then women are made to fear the dreaded B word, and begin to behave in ways that weaken them in order to avoid being seen as controlling or dominant. In the West, fear of being labeled and rejected goes a long way toward stunting women's dreams and accomplishments, whether within the realms of business or healing.
Semaan: Many of our readers are actually women in the workplace. What do you have to say to them about their own power and how that could look?
Gray: That's where indigenous spirituality comes in. The indigenous relationship to spirit is immediate and personal. It employs a broad array of consciousness alteration techniques including contemplation, ritual movement, trance states, direct hypnosis, plant medicine, et al. that can allow ordinary reality to recede long enough to directly access spirit. Male controlled state religions basically tell you that access to that which is holy should be mediated by a cleric, a priest or guru or rabbi, etc. and those are usually men. With indigenous methods, a woman can strengthen herself directly, can receive power directly. When she has that rock solid center of spirit, she becomes less dependent on external approval.
Semaan: Do you think men are afraid of our power as women?
Gray: I don't think there is a shred of benefit to be derived from trying to look into male heads or hearts. You can't rely on someone identifying as a man, or having male genitalia, as accurate predictors of their respect for women's power. Nor can you rely on females to respect it. We need to make direct changes to a system which is permeated with misogyny. And we need to do so now. You cannot wait for an oppressor to take their foot from your neck, you must throw it off. On the societal level this means political elections and institutional promotions, but it starts with the individual woman getting in touch with her own ground of being and infusing the power that comes from that into her specific interests and abilities.
At the core of all that is finding your courage. Courage starts in the heart. The word comes from the French word for heart, "coeur". This is not something you acquire from academia or social ranking or work. You need to get to a still place in yourself to access the strength that is our inheritance from Mother Earth.
