George Leonard, a former journalist who foresaw the countercultural tides of the 1960s and helped define the human potential movement at the Esalen Institute died Jan. 6 at his home in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 86.

The cause was complications of esophageal cancer, said his wife, Annie Styron Leonard.

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.

Shedding the conventions of objectivity in his reporting, he became a voice for an emerging new consciousness.

At 47, Leonard started practicing the martial art of aikido, achieving a fifth-degree black belt. He wrote 13 books and developed several self-help programs that apply the discipline’s techniques to real-life situations.