In today’s show I am thrilled to offer you Ana Forrest and her partner Jose Calarco. Many of you know Ana from her life’s work in yoga and her book, Fierce Medicine. For those of you who don’t know her life partner, Jose, he is a pioneer in world music, from Descendance Aboriginal Dance Theatre in Australia. These days, they are combining their work. They are combining their yoga and their music and the traditions from aboriginal tribes. They are inviting wisdom leaders from various cultures to come and do a ritualistic practice.

This is a super fun conversation. We go all over the place from ritual to diet to breath practices. I think for those of you who’ve followed Ana’s work, you’re really going to enjoy this conversation, and for those new to her and new to Jose, enjoy!

Ana Forrest’s New Book

In Fierce Medicine, Forrest tells her own story of healing from the scars of abuse and physical handicaps, and reveals the proven practices that enabled her to move beyond her past into a life committed to helping others reconnect with their bodies, cultivate balance, and start living in harmony with their Spirits.

In her unique, powerful, and inviting voice, Ana Forrest reveals how to:

• Learn to stalk fear and break free from it instead of running from it.
• Be attentive to your body, discovering its own inherent healing properties.
• Speak and act from a place of honesty and compassion.
• Cultivate an open heart that is feeling, responsive, and reflexive and able to embrace change.
• Harness your intuition and the courage to live in alignment with your Spirit.

I rap with Anna Forrest and Jose Calarco about:

• Their experiences creating a space for spirit to come to life in our lives through using music, yoga, and ceremony to connect to the “continuity of consciousness”
• The various ways we can use kinesthetic orientation to cleanse a space and experience so that clients can be ready to create their own healing
• The value of beginning a yoga class with sacred ritual–the value of blending spiritual exercise with physical exercise with emotional/mental exercise.

What you’ll get out of tuning in:

• Tap into a deeper understanding of the ability for rituals and yoga practices to breath life into our lives and open us to letting go of the toxic and embracing the beauty of life.
• Understand the value of experimenting with traditions and being open to what is possible so that we can better serve.
• Gain a sense of the power of ceremony and its tools – yoga, breath, music, ritual, sensory experience.

Links:

• Ana Forrest Yoga
• Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit

Show Highlights:

• 14:00 – From connecting with the first peoples such as aboriginals, we can re-learn how to live in balance with nature and gain maturity as individuals and as a people.
• 16:42 – There is a spiritual bereftness to people today. This can be changed through ritual, ceremony, and bringing alive ancient traditions.
• 19:41 – Tune in here for Jose’s drawing a connection between the “Aboriginal Dream Time” and Universal Consciousness and savasana.
• 26:58 – Ever wondered why rooms are smoked out with incense or other offerings?
• 30:52 – One of the most value parts of spiritual practices such as yoga and sacred ceremony is the development of deep focus that we can use to cleanse our systems and find freedom in how we direct our awareness in our lives.
• 40:06 – Ceremony reminds us to be on our best behavior…but how do we keep reconnecting to ceremony to make that deep change?

Favorite Quotes:

• “We are going back into the past of these ancient peoples and trying to bring the spiritual connection which is lost in this middle class nothingness” – Jose Calarco
• “We often start doing yoga from a superficial place, but all of a sudden, we start to wake up.” – Cate Stillman
• “It’s amazing to me how many of our people carry this deep, toxic belief system that’s poisoning them from the inside.” – Ana Forrest
• “We try to make it so people walk out with a sense of hope and a spring in their steps. And we do it religiously. Every time, we are trying to create that experience.” – Jose Calarco
• “With yoga, do it every day, it is your time to sit in ceremony, and that allows you to make deep changes in your life.” – Ana Forrest

BIO:

Ana Forrest has been changing people’s lives for nearly 40 years.  An internationally recognized pioneer in yoga and emotional healing, Ana created Forrest Yoga while working through her own healing from her life’s trauma and experience.  With thousands of licensed practitioners around the world, Forrest Yoga is renowned as an intensely physical, internally focused practice that emphasizes how to carry a transformative experience off the mat and into daily life.

By teaching asana, breath and an awareness of the movement of energy through the body, Ana teaches yoga from an intuitive and highly developed understanding of the human body and psyche.  With her meticulous guidance, Ana’s students cultivate an acute awareness of their own practice and life process, resulting in an exhilarating journey into self-discovery, cleansing and healing.  For Ana, this is her intent.  “In teaching Forrest Yoga, I am doing my part to mend the hoop of the people – to inspire people to clear through the stuff that hardens them and sickens their bodies so they can walk freely and lightly in a healing way, in a Beauty Way.”

Ana took her first yoga class at age 14 on a dare and became a certified instructor at age 18.  Her extensive study and clinical application of healing modalities, including homeopathic and naturopathic remedies, anatomy, reflexology, pressure point therapy, craniosacral therapies, Shiatsu, chiropractic, polarity and hands on healing, always informs her work.  In her life-long pursuit of becoming a better teacher and healer, Ana has undertaken intimate studies in Sweat Lodge, Pipe Ceremony, Vision Quest and Sundance with various Native American and African healers.

Ana is an ordained practitioner of Native American Medicine, a Reiki Master, a Certified Regression Therapist, and a graduate of Anthony Robbins Master University.   She is a Faculty Member at The University of Bridgeport College of Chiropractic and sits on the Boards of F.A.R.E. Play (Foundation for Athletic Research and Education) and Earth & Sky Circle (organization for Native American Ceremony).  She is the recipient of a Los Angeles Mayoral Commendation recognizing her outstanding teaching and healing work in the community, the first time a major U.S. city bestowed such an honor on a yogi or yogini.  Ana is a regular contributor to Yoga Journal and a consultant to the USAF 48th Fighter Wing (RAF Lakenheath, UK), Exalted Warrior Foundation (Tampa, FL) and hiwecanhelp.org (Newcastle, UK).

Ana has generated extensive worldwide media coverage.  She continues to teach throughout the year around the world.  Her book, Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit, (HarperOne) was released May 2011.