Fierce Medicine, Ana T. Forrest

Introduction​

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This is a good book, but it’s more of an autobiography and self help book than focused on yoga.

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Yoga and native American medicine is the focus of the book

Listen to your body speaking to you.

Design the life you want to live.

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General Notes

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Ch. 1: Stalking Fear

Beaten as a child, rods in legs, drunk from age 4.

Face fear and speak up—stopped mom from beating her, stopped horses in stable, etc.

5 Steps:

1. Identify the fear=> find the origin

2. Turn around, hunt it, talk it.  Find the source of fear.  Dig deep.  Don’t kill it just find it.

3. Stop making decisions based upon fear. Do not kill the firefighter

4. Find healing within the fear.  Set path to solve the fears in society.

5. Snuggle up to your fear

Make a fear journal.  Record all your fears, big and small.

Inversions help with fear.

4 basics of Forest yoga:

1. Breathing (fear holds back breath)  Keep your tailbone down, engage core

2. Tracking Through Feelings.  Tighten muscles when hold breath and release.

3. Active feet and hands. Root down feet with energy, especially when fearful.  Lift toes.  Spread fingers, weight equally with the palm and fingers.

4. Relaxed neck.  Relax neck towards shoulders.  Do no push the neck, relax it.

 

Ch. 2: Walking Free of Pain

Nursed horses back to health, which helped Anna.

Body locks in trauma.

Several types of pain: physical, emotional, spiritual.

Cannot live without breath.  Can life without most other things.   Take 5 deep breaths.

Soul pledge: stay alert, conscious, and aware.

How to change bad behavior (spiritual):

1. Catch what you are doing and realize it’s bad behavior.  Pain is a barometer. 

2. Take 10 deep breaths.  Change physical posture.

3. Reward yourself for catching the bad behavior.

4. Take one step towards healing.  Send breaths towards pain.  Put hand on pain and ask the pain, “what do you need from me?”

Healing emotional pain.  Let go of anger, fear and resentment.  Feel Greif.

 

Ch. 3: Truth Speaking:

Humans and animals prey on the vulnerable

Truth speaking feeds and brightens the spirit.  Speak from the heart with honesty and compassion in context.  Do not gush.  Think with heart, feel with the brain.  Connect with the trees, houses, etc.  Love yourself and others.  See problems: in bits is partial (seeing the elephant’s trunk as a snake); seeing in whole comes from intuition.  What is the most healing action I can take? 

When speaking the truth breath in from the core and ground your feet.  Talking circles hold sticks.  Good way to listen and bond but not to solve issues. 

Share your personal truth 

If abused, get professional help.  Do not try to solve it yourself.

Ujiayi Breath.  Brightens the bioeneretic fields (aura). Focus inward.

Good poses: core strengthening, camel, lunge with lion’s breath, and chest openers at the wall.

 

Ch. 4: Fiercest Medicine:

Attempted suicide at 17 but landed on sand not rocks. 

Runs energy via toughing others and sends energy to others.  Others deploy where they see fit.

Visited people dying “what do you most care about right now?  How can I make you proud of your death?”

Death meditation: meditate on day of death, hours of death, last minute and seconds of death.  Goal is to figure out which leaves to drop in the fall of your life so that you can live within the most important part of your tree. 

Meditation: You will die in 12 hours.  Write down answers to these questions: Write down regrets you have??  Behaviors you regret?  What is unfinished?  What do you want to say to others?  What am I imprisoned by? How have I lied to myself?  How have I sabotaged myself?  What needs to fall off the tree and die now so that you can focus on the important leaves?  What do you really love?   “You now have your life back, feel energy coming back.”  Now that you are not dying what on your list will you change?

 

Ch. 5: Choosing Life:

Sold horses for all of her worth ($500) and attended yoga teacher training in Mexico.  Gave up all alcohol and drugs. Detoxed.

Discovered own desires and what yearned for. Set a daily intention.  Practice, study, or teach every day.

What must I do to become the person I want to become?  Give yourself small wins.

Change friends.  Avoid fearful people.  Have friends who are curious about life.

Meditate on a mantra.  Do not move.  Do not expect insights, just give yourself 5 minutes of mystery.

Brahmari breathing (bees breath): inhale via nose, exhale visa lips buzzing.

Try 2 fingers over each eye and thumbs covering ears to activate the 6th chakra at third eye.

Right hand under left armpit and left hand under right armpit to active 4th or heart chakra.

Push genitals into the seat and apply a bit of lower ab pressure to active the 1st chakra.

 

Ch. 6: Hunger Pains:

Anna became bulimic

She studied with Iyengar, who hit, spit, and screamed at students.  She did not like him or learn much.

She admired intuitive healers.

You teach what you need to learn.

Patterns follow addiction with learnings.

Feel the body: what are you hungry for?  Why do you crave that?

How feed the starving self?  Take deep breaths.  What do you really need?  If endorphins, then laugh, sing, and dance.  Consider a bath with oil or a massage. 

Am I eating a way that helps me become the person I want to become or am I feeding an addiction?  Will eathing this brighten or diminish my spirit? 

What can I do right now to trump over bad behavior?           

What do I really want to feel good?  Hug others and breath with them.  Practice self massage.

 

Ch. 7: Walking with Good Red Road:

Rosalyn, Navajo healer was one of Anna’s teachers, who runs energy through someone’s body to pull out pain.  Feel where the energy is stuck.  She learned how to draw energy from the earth with her feet, run it through her heart, and out the hands.

She senses the energy of bodies and smells of the the body.

Body energy can flare (which means it needs to be let out), sink hole (which needs to be woven together with a catchment system), cancer is like maggots, and envious system is like a woosh.  

Don’t eat trash covered in whipped cream.

Anna became a pipe carrier and participated in native ceremonies.

Notice all you can include people’s energy.  Quiet the mind, body, and energy, breathe deeply. See what you feel when near them!  Linked with other’s energy, breathe like them.  

What does my intuition tell me about this situation?  Feel the now and respond to the now.

Prayer helps listen to the one’s insides, especially with gratitude and centering.

Pray to the sacred ones (dead ancestors of all) for energy, time, and space.  Be specific in these prayers.

Breathe to know differences between pain from somatic release and an injury.

Do your best.

All living creates are linked.

 

Ch. 8: Embody the Spirit:

Healing is the goal for Anna.

Stay out of automatic mode, the spirit lives on the breath (inhale into the heart).

When connected with the spirit, ask “What can I do for you today?” “What does my heart want to do for my life’s dream?”

Change away from a victim mindset and away from a judgement (this is good or bad) to a curiosity that sees the truth.  Feel the cat’s fur.

Do not share only your problems.

Avoid smoggy, negative thinking.

Best ethics is to explore how you life to be treated and explore the sources of ethics.

Wiser self meditation look around at the temperature, air smells.  Someone is ahead of you on the path.  That is your future self.  Walk with your future self.  What looks better about them?  Match your strides, match your breath.  How do you feel?  Do you like your future self?  Make your future self your current self.

Endarkenment is to sit with poor posture, engage in negative thoughts, and shallow breathing.

 

Ch. 9: Turning Shit Into Fertilizer:

Be anti-authoritarian and help people

When hard times come, hold onto what is precious.

What shit and make fertilizer.

Ask yourself, “What can I do differently to change shit into fertilize?” 

Never waste a good trigger.  True then not now.  Do your own dance! 

1 great meal and never eat again?  One great love and never love again? No.

Sun salutations are a good solution to alcoholism.

 

Ch. 10: The Power of Ceremony:

40th birthday, no gifts just bring stories to the talking circle.

Learn to ask precise questions.

Equinox and solstices: spring = plant, fall = harvest.  What needs to be balanced?  How have I/will I spend energy? What will I plant and harvest?

Nov 2nd is the day of the dead.  Alters with food, share stories.

Record your dreams with pen and paper.  Write down dreams immediately.  Use moon cycles (28 days) to reflect.  Spine straight, pose questions, Brahimi (bea’s) breath, let go with each exhale.

 

Ch. 11: Evolve or Die

Transitions are more important than poses.  Change is the only constant.  We must evolve or die.  Change creates rebirth. 

1. Recognize when you feel the winds of change

2. Reframe the changeà What will I get?  NOT what will I lose.

3. Disobey the dictator.

4. Expect the next change.  Breathe, meditation, water, and yoga.

Ceremony of release and letting go.  Examine your beliefs and others’.  Have a candle.  Focus on the web of issues, taking one aspect at a time.  Hold your breath and focus on the one issue.  Turn your head left and right, then center your head and exhale the false parts of the belief.

Older gives you less room for bad habits.  You need to breath more and drink more water and do more yoga when older.

Moon cycles are period, moon pause is menopause. Good poses are elbows to knee as blood is healthy. 

During menopause asking what do I need to let go of?  Sun salutations help.  Hot flashes is a cleansing.  Sing, dance.

We crave adventure and fun.

Ride the dragon.

 

Afterword: The Braid of Three Truths:

Forest Yoga’s mission is to: connect with the spirit; courage to walk with the spirts; and mending the hoop of peace.

Allow silence.

Speak the truth.

Avoid self-delusional thoughts.

Use sound to express emotion.

Build on your own strengths.

3 facts: 1. You are loved 2. You have the capacity to love. 3. Grattude.

 

Acknowledges Linda Loewenthal Literary agent. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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