“Amber Gray is a passionate and compassionate trauma therapist and teacher/trainer, whose treatment model transcends disciplines. She has brilliantly infused and integrated Polyvagal Theory with its central theme of searching, obtaining, and maintaining somatic feelings of safety with movement therapies. Her work has had profound impact on survivors of torture, war and trauma by enabling them to experience safety and for their nervous systems to become sufficiently integrated to express love and trust of others.”
– Dr. Stephen Porges
Equally activist, artist, & clinician…
Dr. Amber Elizabeth Gray is a licensed human rights psychotherapist, innovative movement artist, board certified dance/movement therapist, master trainer and educator, Continuum teacher, and public health professional.
In her father’s words, Amber was born “dancing, fighting, and has never stopped”. Her life-long commitment to social justice and planetary, animal, and human rights; her passion for the natural world and everything wild; and her commitment to service have all inspired and shaped her work. An innovator in the use of somatic psychology and movement–based therapies (Dance/Movement Therapy, Yoga, Continuum) with survivors of trauma, torture, war, and human rights abuses, Amber has spent the last 20 years in service of her belief that, “Every human being has the right to inhabit their body in the way they choose”.
Amber’s expertise is represented in many published articles and chapters, keynote addresses, professional collaborations, and presentations around the world. Amber has provided clinical training on the integration of refugee mental health and torture treatment with the creative arts, mindfulness, and body-based therapies. Her work has traveled to more than 30 programs for survivors worldwide since the late 1990s.
Her professional path traverses education, social change, international relations, public health, deep tissue bodywork, cranial-sacral therapy, aromatherapy, and energy medicine. Clinical influences include somatic psychology, dance/movement therapy, eco-psychology, contemplative psychotherapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, somatic experiencing, and narrative exposure therapy.
Amber has originated a resiliency-based framework, The Poto Mitan Trauma & Resiliency Framework, a Restorative Movement Psychotherapy for mind-heart-body-spirit integration. Restorative Movement Psychotherapy integrates somatic, movement, dance, mindfulness and arts-based therapies. Poto Mitan is literally “center post” in Kreyol, meaning the center of all things. Working with survivors of trauma in cross cultural, low resource contexts, the Poto Mitan Framework synthesizes the wisdom of whole-body, moving intelligence of Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory with Haitian traditional medicine and spiritual practice. She is a Sevito Fran Ginee in the Haitian tradition, and has studied with mystics and medicine people in Samiland, Australia, Nepal, Guatemala, and the United States.
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