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SEPTEMBER 2015YOGA & INSPIRED LIVING

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www.yogalife-online.comfierce love

from Ana Forrest

IS YOUR HOME geopathic stress-free?

KNOW YOUR DARK SIDE

MAYAN HEALING

FOR WOMEN

AUTISTIC BOY’S ASTONISHING

RECOVERY

AMAZONIAN HAIR

SECRET

Yoga therapy for menopause

+

FIERCE LOVE FROM A WARRIOR

na Forrest is infamous in the growing tribal universe that is yoga. Uncompromising too. Demanding. Direct. Many adjectives you wouldn’t normally attribute to a yoga teacher. But she’s also intensely focussed. Sure. Knowledgeable. Insightful. Compassionate. And

not a little mysterious. Above all she’s a born teacher, taking yoga to its far reaches by using it to help students recover from hard knocks, heal and go on to make the most of their lives. When you find out a bit about her journey – read her fascinating book Fierce

Medicine for all the gory, and glorious, details – these unconventional pieces fall into place and you realise not only how far she has travelled, but how far you could travel too.

Ana Forrest has been changing people’s lives for nearly 40 years. An internationally recognised pioneer in yoga and emotional healing, Ana created

Forrest Yoga while working through her own healing from her life’s trauma and experience. YogaLife’s Kish and Catharine Nicol met her in Hong Kong

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At Hong Kong’s Asia Yoga Conference earlier this year, we joined a packed room for her Freedom from Struggle class. While we know a Forrest class will never be a doozy, we were still taken aback by how much we, ironically, struggled. Forrest Yoga is renowned for holding poses for five to 10 breaths, or longer. While this is good for building strength, Ana wants us to “really feel the pose. You feel your body. You feel the workings of your mind. You have time to drink in the sweetness of the pose. For some of us that is a whole new and wonderful experience.”

There’s a lot of wrist work. Extremities are all expected to pull their weight, the class trying to imitate her famously flared toes. She leads tough abs series. She focusses on tucking the tailbone, telescoping the ribs, wrapping the shoulders, relaxing the neck. Oh, and breathing, breathing, breathing.

She also is unsurprised to see students have breakdown moments in her classes. “Sometimes you hit your shit. Your brain may tell you it’s time to quit. It’s not! Learning to ride the wave of intensity in a yoga pose in

a pain-free, struggle-free way serves you in every aspect of your life.”

Towards the end of her class our brain is telling us it’s time to quit. Our body too. But gradually we come to realise that the struggle we are feeling has been created by us, not by her. It’s a penny-dropping moment. One that many have had before us, we’re sure. She emphasises we should only push ourselves to the edges of our practice, so why are we aiming beyond? We relax our mental dialogue as the individual parts of our body, challenged and tired,

‘I help students bring their brain, mind and

heart into alliance’{ {

fall back into a more harmonious whole. And we finish the class feeling good.

THE BEGINNINGIt’s hard to imagine, but Ana started life out challenged physically. Renowned as the bad girl made good, shades of which many of her students can identify with, today in her 50s she’s strong, flexible and controlled. At the age of six, the physical problems she’d been born with that made walking painful and a lack of love at home resulted in her finding her first transformation at a nearby stable. She worked with the horses first to earn rides, rejoicing in the speed and grace of their four fast legs, then instinctively realising not only could she heal those with physical problems, mental issues, spirits destroyed, but they were healing her in return too.

Then a challenge from a girl at school led her to her life’s most

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serendipitous moment, away from her suicidal thoughts, drugs, cigarettes and alcohol to her very first yoga class. And imagine this: at 14 she couldn’t touch her toes. Yoga led to another transformation, continuing her physical healing, helping with her mental and spiritual pain and highlighting her natural instinct to teach. And so since then she has taught yoga, in various ways, now for over 40 years. A yoga that healed her, and now heals others. A yoga that has gradually turned into Forrest Yoga.

THE PRESENTFast forward to today, thousands of students later, and she leads her classes with her husband José Calarco, director of Descendance, the internationally acclaimed Australian indigenous cultural organisation. Together they bring an increasing sense of healing to their classes. “José and I are combining our forces to bring people many different ways to build a relationship with their authentic self and their

Spirit, though song, dance and Forrest Yoga. Our people are hungry for something that is real, raw, primal and authentic. Our yoga Ceremonies tap them into where they are real and raw and primal and authentic. It is so exhilarating!”

“José and I work with the didgeridoo adding ancient vibrational healing to remove stagnant energy and reogranise it. These healings also harmonise the electromagnetic fields of the body, putting order into reckless wave patterns,” she says.

“We [José and I, and my Forrest Yoga teachers] are giving our people tools — and the skills to use them — to transmute any craziness and anguish in their life,” adds Ana. “By walking this Good Medicine road we learn to respect ourselves and others. We are gleaning wisdom from our experiences, and that brings healing and a broader experience of the truth. As we heal, we get more generous of heart.”

Ana’s generosity, in teaching and healing, stems not only from horses and yoga, but also the Native

If you want to use yoga to heal emotional pain, you must find out where it resides in your body and learn to take your

breath there. I don’t teach yoga to help people to transcend. I want people’s Spirits to reside in their body. I literally want to help people

embody their Spirit, not go through life fragmented

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American Medicine Ways. Ana is also a Pipe Carrier, which is someone who has taken on the responsibility of the health and well-being of the people. Part of her mission in life is to teach others to become healers.

FINDING THE SPIRIT“I’ve had many realisations, not just one. I needed more than one epiphany. When I became involved in Native American Ceremonies and questing for my Spirit I came face-to-face with everything that kept me from finding my Spirit. When I finally did connect I was really happy, my heart broke open. But then I became complacent and lazy and lost that connection. So there were more changes in my life needed to help me embody Spirit. It was a constant learning process and a collection of breakthroughs.”

When Ana discovers things that work for her, she is compelled to teach them to others. While the anger she felt towards life, for example, could have just burned

her up, instead she taught herself to use her anger to her advantage. “Anger is about relieving that craziness, recognising something is insane, and tapping into your inner rebel. Why the f**k should I obey insanity? I refuse! Use anger against obeying stupidity. You may have been taught you’re worthless, but don’t make it true.

“I taught myself to take a stand for myself. Now I have learnt to take the time to prepare a beautiful meal so I’m nourished, to cuddle with my husband so my heart and Spirit is bright. I do these things because they are important and they nourish and build my luminosity. I am worth the time to nourish my Spirit, to rest, to feel worthiness. Because worthlessness is a common and awful feeling. Whatever has happened to someone, there is damage. But can you take a stance and ask: ‘What can you do to heal the damage?’ Move the stuff out of your life that’s hurting you. All that heaviness and stuff that isn’t you – get it out of the way. Connect to your authentic self.”

Ana’s generosity, in teaching and healing, stems not only from horses and yoga, but also the Native American Medicine Ways. Ana is also a Pipe Carrier, which is someone who has taken on the responsibility of the health and well-being of the people

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Ana has learnt the hard way and is therefore in a unique position to be teaching these life lessons. Wherever her students are, whatever they’ve been through, Ana’s way of using the bad to lead to good is a life-changing lesson. “Most of us run from fear. Or go numb. But facing your fear is real, it’s raw, it’s primal. It points to ways to connect with your authentic self. It is a deep, rich, spiritually nourishing road. You can work with it, choose to use it. If it’s too big and scary then work out what you can work with. For example, in a yoga class handstands might be scary for you. So try a Dolphin with one foot on the wall. Go into an inversion with support that is safe. Go up against your fear and you’ll start to transform it, it will start to change shape. Then you will begin to build courage.”

ONE OF MY GREATEST REALISATIONSHer own journey from feeling worthless to realis-ing she was the opposite was also one of numer-ous realisations. “One of my greatest realisations was that I could love, was worthy of love and am love,” she says. “Because in my past I wasn’t loved. I didn’t have the neurological connections and receptors to feel it. I started hunting and track-ing love through books, and they sounded like horseshit. I kept thinking, people talk about it. They sing songs about it. Why can’t I feel it?”

Several animals – horses and her Spirit guides – and people have shown Ana the pathway to love and in return she takes these teachings onto the mat. “I help students bring their brain, mind and heart into alliance. Learn what is worth fighting for and what isn’t. Identify the battle between heart and mind and stop it. I teach how to work with these elements together in yoga and everything else you do. I start in the science lab of being on the mat. Yoga is your time to vision quest. We’re working to help you break through.”

‘LEARN WHAT IS

WORTH FIGHTING FOR AND

WHAT ISN’T’

TIPS FROM ANA• Take deep breaths. This is one of the keys

to purifying your blood and mood and getting a little more into your power.

• Take physical action. Go for a walk. Do yoga. Whatever yoga. Go to a teacher or download classes online. Move your blood, oxygenise your blood. It clears the murk out.

• Eat clean food. If you are eating rubbish you think rubbish. It’s simple.

• Don’t drink, smoke, watch porn. Don’t do things that make you dull and stupid.

• Stop wasting energy with useless fighting.

• Read all you want. Reading is wonderful and engages you with people’s ideas. But then also get up and do something. Reading is one step. Then take action.

• Start to track your poisons.

• Anger can be a good thing. You can use it for putting fire under your own tail, to feed your life force.

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