Meet Your Instructors

Dr. Luna & Dr. Grayshield

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Dr. Lisa Grayshield, Ph.D hunga meh’heshi’- Washiw dah’mo’mo’, di’ gum di’yah Lisa Grayshield – leh’leh’ wel mel ti’ gum tah’nu’.  I am a member of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California.  My parents are Clenta and Frank Grayshield; my Grandparents on my Mothers side are Gladys and Joe Essary, and; on my Fathers side they are Louise Jackson and George [Doggie] Holmes.  I want to recognize all my relations, mi’lew di’yea’yeh’low.  Those that have gone before me, those that are with me today, my three beautiful daughters and the sons they brought into my life; all the generations that have come, and; all that are yet to come.  It is an honor to walk this earth journey with all of you.

My father once told me that I am the end result of all the choices that were made by those that came before me; essentially, I am all of those that have come before me, plus the experiences that are unique to my specific life journey.  As I pay honor to all my relations in the proper Native way by naming my parents, my Grandparents and sometimes even my great Grandparents, I am reminded that I come from many Nations of people, most of whom I know little about.  My Mother recently completed her genealogy and found that she was more than 50% Scottish Irish, so that means I am 25%–the same as my Washoe blood quantum, according to my Certificate of Indian Blood, and not including the other Nations of Paiute and Quchan that also make up my Fathers Blood lines.  It has always made sense to me that while culture and cultural survival are critical in this time of colonized minds, even more salient is the critical call to recognize that we are all Indigenous!  And certainly, our physical forms are extensions of all of those that have gone before us; we carry the genetic expressions of those which are our ancestors in one form or another.  After a lifetime of research, teaching and service, I have come to the most simple, yet profound conclusion about health and wellness, I could not have imagined that the field of study which I devoted my life to was faulty because it omitted the most basic understanding of life’s vitality essentially halting all psychology theory–rendering it largely inconsequential, to the  importance of the relationships that we establish with the earth.  Now after a lifetime of study and experience it all comes down to this; “food is medicine”, that is, unless it’s not, in which case it becomes toxic, not only to our own physical form, but to the earth with it’s chemicalized additives; packaging; marketing; transporting; and indulgences.  

I Graduated with my PhD in 2005 and immediately began my career as a professor at New Mexico State University.  I spent my career researching, teaching, publishing and presenting at conferences about the Indigenous healing paradigm [IWOK] and its importance in our understanding of what it means to be well.  Throughout my tenure, I became a student of plants and herbalism; I learned to appreciate the nutritional, medicinal and psychological benefits of plants in their most natural form.   I also sought to introduce to our counseling masters and doctoral students the importance of ceremony in the healing process.  I must admit that in the beginning, this line of “research” posed some serious ethical concerns for me as a Native person and I found myself pondering the depths of my soul; not just the meaning of life in general, but the meaning of my life.

In 2017, I took a sabbatical and further time for personal reasons, namely to join the plight of the water protectors at Standing Rock North Dakota, where the largest gathering of Native Americans on record occurred.  I was inspired by the hundreds of thousands of people who showed up in person or threw their donations and prayers in support of clean water, and in protest of a pipeline that was making its way under the cannonball river.  There was no returning to work after this experience, I was ready to move on from my experiences researching and raising awareness of Native and Indigenous constructs in counseling to actually living what I most truly believed in.  I was entering my Grandmother stage of life, and I desired to be closer to my family; to live a more simple life close to nature; to be of service to my Tribe in any way that I can, and; to pursue my own healing practices. I furthered my understanding of wellness with training in nutrition; yoga; meditation; Rekki; Ayurvedic counseling; polarity therapy; energy healing; cranial sacral, and most importantly, ceremony of numerous forms.

I want to thank you all for reading this book, it is my sincere hope that it will produce a positive result on your life, and your life's work.

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Dr. Laura Luna, Ph.D. “Ana”

Greetings! Saludos!Ometeolt! My name is Laura Liliana Luna and I was born in Banning, Riverside County, in California, situated on Cahuilla ancestral land between Palm Springs and Los Angeles. My mother was born in Michoacán, Mexico and came to the United States  in 1979. My father was born in Barstow California in 1952 and he and my mother met in 1980, in San Bernardino, the same year they were married. My maternal & paternal grandparents were born in Mexico in the southern states of Michoacán, Zacatecas, Jalisco & Aguascalientes region. On my mother’s side, we have Purepecha heritage tracing us down to Peru, South America. On my fathers’ side we are of Mixteca-Chichimec Indigenous descent. Being that we are from the Americas, I consider myself Indigenous to the Americas while also acknowledging the mixed blood heritage I carry and the loss of ancestral land and culture as a result of colonization. At this time, I have spent almost two decades recovering my ancestral memory and healing with Indigenous ceremonial practices and have discovered the immense power in connecting with and honoring the land as sacred.

I grew up in San Bernardino, in a traditional Mexican home environment and my family emphasized an education as the gateway to success. I was a very devoted student and early on decided I wanted to become a psychologist, to help people. I didn’t know what a psychologist was at the time, but I excelled in my studies and pursued one degree after another without taking a year off in between since kindergarten! I completed most of my education in California up through the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Psychology. In 2008 I moved to New Mexico to study at the doctorate level completing my Phd in Counseling Psychology in 2014. After completing all my formal education and reflecting on my experiences, I realized I had experienced varying degrees of discrimination and oppression at different moments and in different ways throughout this time. All of the trauma I had experienced in my childhood including discrimination in school and outside of school, seemed to smash me in the face altogether in the first year of my doctorate program and I went through a deep awakening experience that really lasted several years. I met Professor Grayshield, during an open house at New Mexico State University in 2007 and then I was assigned my first summer class in 2008, Psychology of Multiculturalism and I dove deep into critical thinking reflexive practice with Dr. Grayshield as my professor. Being away from my California home and in New Mexico, I learned the differences between Hispanic and Mexican and Native and Indigenous and I learned the language to describe the oppressive bubble I had been living in, without consciously realizing it. 

I even learned the difference between a doctoral student and a master’s student and the never ending hierarchical programming embedded in the academic system and socioeconomic system. It was quite a culture shock all around. This and a complexity of things I experienced in the first year of my program, including the murder of one of my uncles–seemed to flood me with what I now think of as Complex Stress Disorder or “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” or Post Colonial (Dis)Stress. The stress levels were so impactful that I began experiencing pain after each meal and I couldn’t pinpoint why. Thankfully there was a Traditional Chinese Medicine & Acupuncture doctor locally in Las Cruces, NM who determined (conducting a muscle test) I had a gluten and dairy allergy or sensitivity. In 2009, and in New Mexico, no one really knew anything about gluten free, there were very limited options as far as alternatives so I started reading labels, learning about gluten and figuring out what I could eat that would not cause me excruciating pain. It is here that my journey with Food as Medicine began and I had to think about my food consumption differently. It is also at this point that my journey with Plant Medicines began–and with Indigenous medicine and ceremony, with energy medicine like Reiki & Shamanic Practices–I’ve also studied yoga (500 hour RYT) and Ayurvedic Counseling–my self healing journey has intertwined with food, plants, Indigenous wisdom–my teachers–allies, friends, sisters, all wrapped in a big medicine bundle that includes so much wisdom and I am grateful for all the teachers who have shared with me. I am grateful for all of my experiences that have taught me the wisdom to trust and be open to learning, growing and loving myself more fully and deeply all the time. I hope that you each get to activate a deeper power within you that allows you to dive deeper still into self-discovery that will allow you to be at your fullest expression and continue a vital & harmonious life! Tiahui! Onward! Tlazokamatli.