GMC Founder
Kelly Pryde, PhD
I'm a Jungian depth practitioner and embodied mindfulness facilitator specializing in adult giftedness and multi-exceptionality. The heart of my work brings contemplative and depth approaches into relationship with the intensity, complexity and entelechy of gifted experience, supporting creative transformation and the journey of becoming.
I hold a PhD in Psychology and teaching transmission in Zen and mindfulness meditation, traditions that have shaped both my personal practice and professional work with gifted adults. My depth orientation is rooted in Jungian and post-Jungian clinical studies and embodied dreamwork, and continues to deepen through my current training as a Jungian analyst.
For the past decade, I have also trained and worked extensively in the field of giftedness and neurodivergence, including through my partnership with InterGifted. In 2019, these various strands of my experience came together in the founding of the Gifted Mindfulness Collective where we began exploring and crafting contemplative approaches to support gifted adults in living more fully with their intensity, complexity and gifts.
My Non-Linear Path To This Work
Following this strange pull has taken me through several fields of study and experience. I spent 10 years at the University of Waterloo in Canada where my studies moved through dance, creative movement, and holistic education (Honours BA Dance), mind-body science (MSc Kinesiology), and developmental and clinical neuropsychology (PhD Psychology).
Mindfulness and meditation became integral to my work and personal growth upon discovering giftedness and multi-exceptionality. Eventually I began focusing on the intersection of mindfulness and giftedness, gathering knowledge, skills and experience in ways that extended beyond traditional education. This was an experiential, embodied way of learning that I continue to work from in crafting contemplative practices for the multifaceted experience of gifted adults.
Over the years, my contemplative training has extended across a range of Buddhist and contemporary mindfulness approaches, including Insight Meditation, Unified Mindfulness, Mindful Self-Compassion, and trauma-sensitive mindfulness. My core practice is rooted in the Zen tradition where I have received teaching transmission in the lineage of Tongdosa in South Korea. My work has also been deeply informed by Joanna Macy's Work that Reconnects, along with the engaged ecological teachings of Macy and Thich Nhat Hanh. These traditions and influences continue to shape my approach to contemplative practice as inherently relational and participatory.
As this work deepened, I became increasingly drawn to feminine psychology and to dimensions of experience that were not always well held or acknowledged in traditional mindfulness spaces. This opened explorations of embodiment, instinct, the imaginal, and ways of knowing that are often excluded from conscious life.
My own meditation practice became more imaginal around this time, bringing me into territory for which I did not yet have an adequate framework. Jungian psychology offered a way of understanding what I was encountering. Jung's explorations of the unconscious, dreams and symbolic life, James Hillman's revisioning of psychology, and Marion Woodman's work with the body and the feminine became important influences for my understanding of psyche and its place in gifted development and contemplative practice.
Today, this work finds expression through both the Gifted Mindfulness Collective and my private practice. To support its life and growth, I am currently training as a Jungian analyst, furthering my understanding of psyche and the soulful lens I bring to gifted development. This continues to weave my contemplative and depth orientations into deeper relationship, informing an approach centered not only on how we live well with gifted intensity and complexity, but also on how these traits shape our becoming through the process of individuation.