There is an incredible light that emerges from the deep dark.

Meet Leslene

Meeting the shadow and the light

We often refer to the negative experiences in our life as "dark." As a sweat-lodge facilitator for women, I have learned that the dark is not a fearful place. In a sweat lodge, it is so dark inside that one cannot see one's hand in front of one's face. What I have come to experience sitting in this dark womb space is the incredible light that emerges from the deep dark — at times so bright, so luminous, that I couldn't tell that I was even sitting in the dark. I would like to offer that the dark is actually a nurturing place — just like the dark earth surrounding the tender seed, encouraging it, in full darkness, to sprout. If the seed is exposed to the light too soon, it will die. If the seed is not rooted in the dark, damp, rich soil, it will die. The darkness is necessary for life to take root! In that context, I would like to reclaim the dark, and refer to our negative experiences as something else — perhaps just "negative" — and let the dark emerge for us as the Dark Mother who holds us together and shapes us, just as a potter shapes her clay. The dark place of growth, Her womb, holds us and keeps us safe while providing us with nourishment.

Leslene is an author, poet, artist, shamanic practitioner, Nature lover, and truth seeker. She is a feminist philosopher and independent scholar. She was born and raised in the Bay Area in California. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1969 and embarked on a deeply spiritual path during the historic "flower child" era. During that time, she began her shamanic initiation into the realms of mind, body, and spirit and received many teachings and medicines from people, plants, and encounters with the spirit world. After traveling she returned to California where she made the decision to move to The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee, which became the largest intentional spiritual community in the United States in the 1970s where she lived for nearly eleven years. There, she gave birth to two daughters who have now become a moving force for women’s voices in music. Leslene also foster parented numerous children. She apprenticed in spiritual midwifery and later applied those teachings to her death midwifery practice, authoring a book on her philosophy and experiences.

After leaving The Farm, Leslene returned to northern California to care for her parents and settled in Sebastopol, California where she established a shamanic healing center. Her focus has been on healing the Sacred Female. A cousin of Einstein she has challenged mainstream beliefs in patriarchal religions, physics, and cosmology, authoring another book on a radical approach to female cosmology.

She has touched many people throughout the years and continues to be a beacon for holding sacred space for counsel, ritual, teaching, speaking, and writing. She is a midwife of the spirit, life, and death, and has served as a spiritual adjunct to the medical community of doctors and psychiatrists in the capacities of both colleagues, and healers, and to the psychological community of therapists in the same manner. She currently continues her work, balancing life with activism, joyful living, exploring Nature, gardening, and continued spiritual growth. 

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Testimonials

  • Leslene is extremely knowledgeable and experienced in both the traditions of women’s spirituality (Goddess traditions) and shamanic healing. The opportunities I’ve had to learn from her and partner in working with her have greatly enhanced my own journey of unfoldment, my appreciation of the earth and my understanding of the mysteries of women.

    Mary Murray Shelton, Senior Minister Huntington Beach Church of Religious Science

  • As an apprentice to Leslene, I have gone deeper in my own healing than with any other practitioner. She has also taught me how to go deeper with my own clients.

    Jacqueline S.Chapman MS, MFCC Transpersonal Psychotherapist

  • Several years ago I was very ill, and Leslene was part of a small circle of women who took care of me. I reached a place of not knowing whether I was going to live or die, a place in which the spirit was on its own journey. Because Leslene so deeply understood and respected the necessities of the spirit, I relied on her to speak, as it were, for my body – to tell me what I needed to do to preserve my physical self. One night she saw that I was slipping away, so she crawled into bed with me,cradled my head in her lap and sang my spirit back into my body. I was held by her compassion, her strength, andher skill. I’ll always be grateful for the gift of that tender and fierceloving kindness, which was the beginning of my healing.

    Joan Iten Sutherland Zen teacher, California Diamond Sangha

  • Leslene’s work empowers a woman to know and be herself, actualizing the fullness of her many possibilities. Leslene encourages each woman to claim the wisdom of her own experience and embrace her true feminine nature. She is courageous, honest, inspirational and capable of holding many divergent energies and points of view simultaneously. I highly recommend Leslene to any woman seeking a trustworthy guide on her journey.

    Anne Stine, MA, MFCC Psychotherapist, and Wilderness Guide

  • In my work with Leslene, I find that she understands and embodies the principle of good mental health as well as a deep understanding of the vast realms of consciousness and their potential for healing.

    Gary Bravo M.D, Psychiatrist