Leslie Fleming, MA, LMHC

My Background

I have studied with numerous teachers. Most notably, my mentor over most of the last two decades, Sandy D'Entremont and a 10 year rigorous course of study and practice with The Last Mask Center. Since 1996, I have been a guide for people to discover and align with their authentic selves through initiatory, healing, and transformational ceremony; trainings in self-defense, dance, ritual theatre, drum-making, and warrior/amazon archetype. I co-taught, with Sandy D'Entremont, year-long personal-mastery programs in Sacred Medicine Shields and Sacred Firetending.

I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Acting with a Dance Minor from Ithaca College. I completed my Master of Arts in Psychology with a Specialization in Systems Counseling at the Leadership Institute of Seattle, Saybrook University. I served my internship hours for my degree at Seattle Counseling Service, specializing in working with the LGBTQ population. I use this education in contemporary psychotherapeutic modalities and in accessing the body's innate wisdom to support the awakening and transformation that comes from shamanic practice and healing.

I have three years experience in crisis intervention as a leader and trainer for an anti-violence organization.

My Approach and Philosophy

None of us travel alone despite intense loneliness many feel when struggling. We all know or seek guides and allies whose wisdom and understanding reflects the learning and support we need whether it is in God/dess, Creator, spirit being, totem, creative muse, an ancestor we believe watches over us, or living beings – human, animal, insect, plant, stone, or Earth. In illness, it is easy to forget or deny those inner and outer guides exist or to believe we are abandoned. Separation from and devaluing of the natural and etheric worlds and denying our internal divinity keeps many people from realizing these guides at all.

As a guide and ally on your healing journey, I see the work as a collaborative dance between my knowledge and guides and your unique understanding of your self, the system surrounding you, and your guides. I believe everyone has medicine within them and their relationship to all that is for the healing that they seek. Accessing the power of those unique healing gifts is challenging. For many of us that knowing has been culturally dormant for generations. Powerful internalized messages of being helpless, unloved, not good enough, insignificant or unworthy silence it. Part of my work with clients is to help activate your creative and singular medicine, helping you to know your own power.

I support you in giving voice to that which is calling for change or healing, in clarifying your vision and goals, and encourage you to continue to say 'Yes!' to the hard work ahead. We creatively discover how you live and embody that vision, lighting the fire within that can fuel shedding the old way's skin and inspire joy and playfulness. I encourage expression of the emotional life of the problem and the internal landscape that supports it and discovering the gifts that the dark, as well as the light, aspects of self offer you in order to move toward an integrated state of being where a rejected part is not poisoning the well of the soul. We work on how to ground new understanding and wisdom and bring you and it into right relationship with your family and community. I seek to help you remember other guides and allies that you can lean into and learn from. I am sacred witness to the being that you are and that you are becoming, supporting you in reveling in the present moment and embracing your evolution.