Ana T. Forrest - Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit

FIERCE MEDICINE

Breakthrough Practices
to Heal the Body
and Ignite the Spirit

ANA T. FORREST

This is dedicated to the people who gave me a compelling reason to live and, most important, who first taught me how to love: my students.

To the people who connected to how precious Forrest Yoga and Mending the Hoop of the People are to me and who now help spread this teaching in the world: my Forrest Yoga teachers.

To the people who have pledged to be the Guardians of the legacy of Forrest Yoga and to continue to educate the Forrest Yoga teachers and students long after I die: Kelley Rush, Colleen Millen, Heidi Sormaz, Ann Hyde, Christine Raffa, Brian Campbell, Sinhee McCabe, Suzi Zobrist, Steve Emmerman, Bridget Foley, Panther Cat (Catherine) Allen, Erica Mather, Cheryl Deer, Talya Ring.

To the people who have helped move me or my book forward in life: Nick Angelakos, Morris Netherton, Heyoka Merrifield, Debbie Finley-Justus, Brooke Medicine-Eagle, Arwin Dreamwalker-Larkin, Tom Yellowtail, Rosalyn Bruyere, Eric Perret, Linda Loewenthal, Cindy DiTiberio and all the people at HarperOne, Betsy (Elizabeth) Rapoport, Lynann Politte, Panther Cat (Catherine) Allen, Maria Pappas, Susan Missner, Rani Kamaruddin, Michael Metzler, Ellen Heed, Bonnie Argo, Dr. LeRoy R. Perry, and Gary Karten.

Contents

Sacred Ones, how can we dance with what is immovable in our lives? Help us to weave our life into a masterpiece. Help us to use our healing breath to bring new life to cell tissue so our cells reorganize in a healthy way. I pray we learn how to make the dream of our life come true, knowing that we must be flexible and quick enough on our feet to accommodate how our life changes as the dream comes into being. I will dance with the dreams I have for this book in ways I cant conceive of yet, but I pray that Ill be quick afoot enough to dance in beauty with it. Aho!

RAGING THUNDER , crackling lightning, and ferocious winds have followed me throughout my life. And Im not just talking about high-energy weather disturbances, but the abuse that drove me to alcohol by age four, cigarettes by age six, weed and pills a few years later, and the raging storms inside my body: epilepsy, migraines, paralysis, and bulimia. Those storms ravaged me, left marks deep inside me, until I figured out how to use them to scour myself clean and turn their energy toward my own healing. I learned to give voice to the truths of the thunder and lightning within my body and spirit.

Now I understand that some of my gifts are to induce cataclysm and to be a Truth Speakersomeone who is committed to speaking about difficult and hidden things, to revealing the beauty in the world in order to teach and heal. In seeking to heal myself, I had to first learn to surf all that violent, chaotic energy in my own life. I discovered that I was a pathfinder to other peoples truths, that I could help them navigate the storms in their lives and seek a way out of pain. My souls work is to guide other people through dramatic transformations.

My quest for the teachers and the tools that would help me on my path has taken me to the great masters of India, to caves in the Himalayas, and to Native American Medicine circles. To see whether the wild promises held true, I sought out and mastered nearly every advanced, freaky, esoteric practice the ancient sutras and the healing arts had to offer. I have no loyalty to concepts that arent true for me. Although I studied Yoga with B. K. S. Iyengar himself, the most important lesson I learned from him was to disobey the dictator if you dont find a mans character congruent with his teachings. I learned more about true healing and wisdom from a humble woman who ministered to the poor of India and from that countrys sadhus wild and saintly women and menthan I did from people with outsized reputations and followings. I spent almost six years on a Native American reservation where I first learned to call the storms my friends. Training as a Pipe Carrier and Medicine Woman, I learned the power of ceremony. I studied energetic healing techniques with internationally acclaimed Medicine Woman and healer Rosalyn Bruyere. I discarded what didnt work from both ancient and modern wisdom traditions and braided in the wisdom from my years as a horse whisperer to create the unique approach I call Forrest Yoga. I have been learning and teaching Yoga for more than thirty-six years. What I present here are tools for life transformation, forged in the cauldron of my own experience and tested on the hundreds of thousands of students Ive taught in that time.

This book lays out a system of practices founded in Yoga and Native American Medicine. This system specifically addresses the challenges and stressesphysical, emotional, mental, and spiritualthat all people face. The Lakota Medicine Man Black Elk lived through the shattering of the spine of his people. Describing the desperate spiritual bereftness he saw around him, he said, The Rainbow Hoop of the People has been broken. The Rainbow Hoop refers to people living harmoniously just as the colors of the rainbow lie side by side. The People he speaks of include the other inhabitants of the earth, including the animals. I created Forrest Yoga to do my part in Mending the Hoop of the People. This is my lifes calling, my Spirit Pledge.

A lot of people come to Forrest Yoga because theyve got a storm brewing inside them. Many are in painalthough sometimes they dont even recognize what kind of pain. Theyve tried numbing out with food or TV or sex or work or alcohol or drugs, and they want to find a different way. Others come because they dont feel anything boy are we good at numbing ourselves outand they want to live inside their bodies again. Still others come because they want to connect or reconnect with a deeper part of themselvesa yearning they havent even learned to name or articulate. (Of course, some come because they want a Christy Turlington Yoga butt, and I help them too.) The first thing I do is help all these people learn to listen to what their bodies are trying to tell them.

This is the work I do: help people recognize those moments when the body speaks from a deeply profound level, then guide them in getting the work done through growing, healing, and evolving. The transformations are often dramatic, and though the details change, Ive seen personal revolutions happen.

Growth often starts in quantum leaps, and these are precious, often terrifying moments. When that leap presents itself, can you recognize it? Are you willing to take it? The sweetness of midwifing that kind of transformation is what continues to fuel me. Its why Im writing this book.

Although our struggles are unique, each of us dances with many of the same monsters: fear, pain, resistance to change, collapse in the face of failure, reluctance to open the heart. Ive tangoed more than a few times with each of these soul-twistersIm dancing stillso in each chapter Ill share my own story and what Ive learned from it, how Ive used my lessons to help others through the same difficult places, and how you can apply them right now.

Ive built these lessons around what I call a Spiritual Focus and a Physical Focus. These arent quick-fix platitudes and pretty postures (because, as Sun Bear, one of the elders on the Washington reservation, used to say: If it dont grow corn, it aint worth shit). They are specific spiritual and physical exercises that anyone can engage in, so long as theyre willing to put in the work.

Ive shared my story with my students, and I share it here in this book because although the details differ, most of us are looking for the same thing: not just healing, but a connection to something greater than ourselves. I call it Spirit. Now that Ive tasted the sweetness of my own connection to Spirit, I want to embody it, walk its path, and show you how to do the same. Doing this requires uncovering and feeling through the experiences long buried within our bodies so the traumas can clear, and it involves reexamining the decisions we have made from our fear and trauma. This work can help us digest our experiences and glean wisdom from them. Our bodies tell our stories, and they always tell the truth when we listen. I want to help you hear your bodys story and then teach it to speak its truth.