About Leigh

My path has been eclectic to say the least (a log of studies, etc. on the journey is below).  If you browse the list you’ll see I’ve hit lots of traditions and teachers and practices and I have yet to land on one specific path.  I have a mind that tends to synthesize material so for all these years I’ve been working to reconcile the many paths into one that suits me.  So far, to be honest, I haven’t figured out how they all fit as some teachings contradict one another.  I’ve been piecing it together as I go and sometimes I just hold more than one thought.  All that studying and practicing and synthesizing have resulted in a greater level of depth than you might expect from so eclectic a path — I think depth has to do with how you approach the journey more than whether you “sit in one chair”.

You’ll notice over time that my posts will wander from New Age thinking to Buddhism to health matters to mixes of several ideas and that kind of reflects the meandering path I’ve been moseying down.

The credentials:

B.A., history and M.A., sociology from Northwestern University and J.D. from University of Washington School of Law.

I hated law school and I was miserable practicing law. In 1985, in the midst of the misery post law school and pre job, my friends started asking me whether I had considered seeing a therapist and I finally realized I needed something. My instinct went straight for a transpersonal psychologist a friend of mine was seeing who had therapies like exploring past lives and meditating among her tools and it was following my gut that changed my life. She started me with Jane Roberts‘ Nature of Personal Reality and introduced me to Shirley MacLaine‘s writings (got to take one of her weekend workshops – amazing) and Shakti Gawain as well.

I started taking yoga near the same time and wound up getting a teaching certificate from the Temple of Kriya Yoga and taking other classes there while studying for five years with teacher Bill Hunt (later of the Oak Park Yoga Studio, now retired).

Eventually the contrast between my abject misery at work and my great happiness in yoga class or meditating or working on personal growth made it clear that I needed to get out of law. Haven’t regretted walking away for a minute.

I took classes with a local psychic, Ruth Berger, and through her met Arthur and the late Ann Cataldo and went off to Florida for a week long workshop with them. They met Gay Luce and sponsored her at a workshop in the Chicago area, asking me to be a contact person in exchange for a free pass for the workshop. I knew as soon as I met her that I wanted to go to Nine Gates Mystery School.

Nine Gates blew me away. I fell in love with Huna and took another workshop with Serge King as well as reading most of his books (at the time–I’m not up to date) and all else I could find on Huna (in those days, not much). I moved to the Bay Area to be closer to the teachers and the friends I made. Then I followed some other friends to the Fisher Hoffman work of Nine Gates teacher Ellen Margron and spent nine months on the most intensive exploration of my beliefs combined with emotional release work that I can imagine.  I went on to take her Emotional Mastery class, which has been a big influence.

I also wound up studying briefly with the Sufi teacher from Nine Gates and doing Right Speech practice with some other graduates. I worked part time at the Institute for Noetic Sciences which gave me access to lots of books and info that led me into Buddhism, starting with Jon Kabat-Zinn.

When I moved to Kentucky, I meditated for a while at the Shambala Center, attended the Unity Church where I arranged for some Insight Meditation teachers to present a class on vipassana for six weeks and then sat with a local vipassana group for a little over a year. At the same time I studied for about two years with a Hopi Elder.

Other teachers whose workshops I’ve gotten to attend for a day or two: the late Brugh Joy, Richard Moss, Venerable Kendra Rinpoche, Jean Houston, Goswami Kriyananda, Panache Desai.

Currently I’m attending weekly Gayatri with Deva Premal and Miten on line and weekly satsang on line with Krishna Das.

Around 2000 I started teaching workshops on various spiritual topics from “The Journey to Peace” to “Being Positive in the Moment” and “Right Speech” and also taught hatha yoga.

I’ve now created a series of classes combining Robert Masters’ Psychophyiscal Method with yoga.  I taught this for some years here in Lexington but am not teaching at the moment.  Current plans for this work include offering private sessions via Skype and having online classes (videos).  As that evolves I’ll update here.

That’s 35+ years of the journey in a nutshell. I’m not a master but in those years I’ve learned a lot, studied and contemplated and practiced a lot, and I think I have some wisdom to share… I hope I can help somebody.

Related articles

• Nine Gates Mystery School and Gay Luce (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• The eclectic path (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• Right Speech (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• Thoughts on cellular memory (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• Kundalini and me (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• Aloha International