Seeing Forrest

6 months ago, I thought Forrest Yoga was a movement born from the hippy-dippy tree hugging culture, possibly involving a lot of tree poses.  I got turned onto this style thanks to my German-born instructor, Anke.  (I even thought it could have been a type of yoga started out in the Black Forrest).

Well, thanks to Google and Anke's amazing teaching, I finally took my interest one step further and explored it on the web.  Alright, it was named after the creatrix herself  - Ana Forrest.

I read her book - Fierce Medicine - and was completely blown away.  Being a pharmacist, anything with the word "medicine" holds my ADD-riddled "modern" mind.  Being a new yorker and of a certain temperament, the word "fierce" preceding "medicine" will definitely seal the deal.

What is Ana like?  My initial impression after barely a week with her is a mixed bag - and so it should be with dynamic personalities.  She is not boring.  Yet, she is not flighty or flaky.

There are times I find myself wondering how the heck I'm finding pleasure (pleasure was yesterday's morning lesson) waking up before dawn to take a yoga intensive from 6 to 9am every flipping day - weekends included.  And then she'll say something so off-kilter, I'll find my pleasure howling with laughter.

Let me illustrate her sense of humor.  There's an exercise in which students are identified and grouped according to numbers.  The instruction was something like this, "As we go around the room, say your number from one to three."

Well, the way the students were spouting off numbers was just horrible in tone, pitch, etc... I'm one of those ultra - sensitive types that can't stand horrible voices.  A man would be better off bald and fat than have a bad voice.

And what is really a turnoff is a yoga instructor who walks in and starts talking with flat affect in her own voice.  We have one at the gym who has such a lame voice,  I stopped going to her class.  "Is she happy to be here?" I 'd wonder.  "Maybe her true calling is to be a postal worker?.."  If I no longer attend a yoga class, it's mostly because I can't stand the voice.

So we trainees are spouting off "1, 2, 3..." etc.  The noises that were being uttered would make the lowings of a cow sound like Mozart.  Ana interrupts and starts to go into a well-served tirade about being responsible for our own voices - especially those of teachers.  (I remember slipping out of a professor's class during 7am Pharmacology.  I will buy the notes that will be sold after the class, I thought.  There is no way I want to hear her grating voice 7 in the morning).

Ana explains how she is weary of these low vibrations in our voices.  Her final word on the matter:  "Just stop putting that sh*t out into the world."  I died laughing.