In this conversation, Dr. Amber Elizabeth L. Gray asks a series of questions, which deepen us into the question of embodiment and its function to sensitize us to one another and cultivate respect and reciprocity within the more than human world.
Dr. Gray is a Dance/Movement Therapist, Somatic & Human Rights Psychotherapist, and long-time yoga and Continuum teacher. She works with survivors of war, torture, human rights abuses and historical trauma and oppression, in the US and in active and post conflict zones, refugee camps, and disasters. Equally activist, artist, advocate, author, mystic and therapist, her clinical, healing, educational and organizational work endeavors to promote reciprocity and empowerment and incite meaningful change. She brings her Polyvagal, Heart & Spirit-informed Right to Embody somatic human rights framework and Body of Change eco-somatic regenerative retreats to communities of therapists, artists, global citizens and change maker world-wide. Amber originated Polyvagal-informed Somatic & Dance/Movement Therapy through 25 years immersive mentoring and exploration of Polyvagal Theory. This work is a survivor-centered, multi-cultural & social justice framework that reflects many years of co-inquiry with her clients to understand how Polyvagal Theory promotes restoration and healing in the body-heart-mind-spirit for survivors of egregious human rights violations. She has been teaching this work globally since 2003 and is the inaugural member of The Polyvagal Institute’s Editorial Board.