2026 Plenary Speaker Bio - Dr. John W. Price
Our speaker, John W. Price, is an experienced therapist in the Jungian tradition, with more than 28,000 hours spent working with clients. Just as important, he is a lifelong student of human consciousness.
John is deeply interested in what the mind can do—and in how our awareness proves to be wider, stranger, and more powerful than conventional science tends to acknowledge. Again and again, his work returns to a simple insight: something meaningful is stirring beneath the surface of everyday life, asking for our attention.
Out of this curiosity, John created The Sacred Speaks, an interview series that explores how spiritual practice, ritual, discipline, and even experiences that may initially seem “impossible” can shape healing and transformation. Through these conversations, he brings together religion, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and sacred medicine. His focus is always on lived experience, not just abstract theory.
A key influence on John’s thinking is Carl Jung’s distinction between the spirit of the times and the spirit of the depths. Clearly, John feels most at home in the space between science and religion. It is a place where familiar ways of seeing the world may need to fall apart so that a holistic way of living can emerge.
John’s openness to mystery has earned the respect of leading thinkers. One such well-known scholar is Dr. Jeffrey Kripal, a Rice University professor and an authority on the paranormal, and the possibilities of human awareness, who has spoken warmly about John’s work. As Dr. Kripal says: “John Price is the presence and voice I go to for psychological insight, cultural healing, and—I do not mean this lightly—spiritual uplift…. John is part of the future that I hope for us all.” (Dr Kripal spoke at our 2010 FCRP Conference).
John’s path into this work was not a straight line. Before founding the Center for Healing Arts and Sciences in Houston in 2014 with his wife, Leila-Scott Price, he spent many years as a touring musician. After the birth of his son, he stepped away from life on the road and into a new chapter shaped by parenting, religion, psychology and art. This transition continues to inform his sensitivity to life’s turning points and thresholds.
Today, John holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology and a doctorate in Jungian psychology. He teaches and lectures on a range of subjects, including parenting, childhood trauma, the work of William Blake, the psychology of fame, and The Depths of Vision: Jung, Psychedelics, and the Practice of Integration, a course he recently taught at The Esalen Institute in Big Sur.
As we move deeper into 2026, John’s work continues to be guided by questions many of us share:
What do we do with our suffering—and with the simple fact that we are hurting?
How do we make meaning from what breaks us open?
Can we live in ways that are both grounded and sacred?
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