George Burr Leonard

Biographical Information
George Leonard died in 2010. "Mr. Leonard, as an editor and writer at Look magazine, was one of the first journalists to predict the tumult and idealism of the ’60s when he wrote a January 1961 cover article called “Youth of the Sixties: The Explosive Generation.” A year later he predicted, accurately, that the youth movements would first manifest themselves in California... In 1965 Mr. Leonard met Michael Murphy, a co-founder of Esalen, in San Francisco, where Esalen was opening a learning center. Soon Mr. Leonard was visiting Esalen’s main campus, a seaside complex in the redwood-studded area of central California known as Big Sur... He went on to become the president of the institute’s trustees for many years and an important figure in expanding its concerns to include issues of social justice...

"Mr. Leonard led many Esalen workshops, including one on how to approach life like a samurai warrior. Another forced participants to confront their own racism. He wrote “Education and Ecstasy” (1968), which became one of the first popular manifestos of the human potential movement.

"He also helped start an exchange program with the Soviet Union that included a visit by a future Russian president, Boris N. Yeltsin, in 1989. In an interview, Mr. Murphy said that Mr. Leonard, who wrote 13 books, became “the philosopher of the movement.”...”

"George Leonard co-founded Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) with Michael Murphy. He was the author of numerous books on human possibilities and social change, including Education and Ecstasy, The Transformation, The Ultimate Athlete, The Silent Pulse, The End of Sex, Mastery, andThe Way of Aikido. The 1995 book, The Life We Are Given, co-authored with Murphy, reports on a two-year experimental class in ITP created by the authors for realizing the potential of body, mind, heart, and soul. ITP Groups are now practicing not only throughout the U.S., but in other countries as well.

"From 1953 to 1970, Leonard served as a senior editor for Look magazine. He produced numerous essays and special issues on education, science, politics, the arts, the Civil Rights Movement, and foreign affairs...

"George Leonard received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina (1948) and Doctor of Humanities degrees from Lewis and Clark College (1972), John F. Kennedy University (1985), and Saybrook Institute (2003). He was a past president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology; during his tenure, the Association's membership reached its all-time high. He was President Emeritus of Esalen Institute. Leonard's adventures along with the human frontiers of the 1960s are described in his 1988 memoir, Walking on the Edge of the World. He was married to the artist Annie Styron Leonard, and left, in addition to his wife, three daughters and six grandchildren."

Affiliations

 * Past-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology
 * Former President of ITP International
 * Integral Institute

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