Writings by Joan Forest Mage

The following is an excerpt from a paper I wrote about my experience doing massage therapy for the recovery workers at Ground Zero in New York in October 2001. I wrote this paper for a class in the graduate program at DePaul University's School for New Learning. It is written in the third person, but is a record of actual events I experienced.

Case Study

Joan Forest Mage is a shamanic practitioner living in Chicago. In June, 2001, she began a deep healing process. This process of change and transformation began with a series of Rolfing bodywork sessions, which released great emotional distress at a mysterious and cellular level. During the last of ten sessions, in particular, Joan began screaming and crying, and had feelings of nearly uncontrollable anger and fear.

Neither Joan nor her Rolfer therapist could identify the nature of this emotional distress. It was obviously connected to some old psychological and energetic wounds, almost certainly from childhood but possibly from past lives or the collective unconscious. The therapist said that she did not feel qualified to help Joan with this level of healing, so Joan began designing a program of healing for herself.

From June to August, Joan carried out this program. It included doing her own shamanic “journey” meditations; healing sessions with two fellow shamans, Tom and Althea; recording and interpreting dreams; sessions with several intuitive counselors and energy workers; and Buddhist chanting.

Through all this work, Joan accomplished much healing. For example, in a session with Tom, she realized certain parts of the distress that were related to situations from her childhood, such as understanding the fact that her parents really had not particularly wanted to have her. Joan was able to bring this knowledge, and her feelings of anger about it, to the surface. At the same time, she had a deep spiritual revelation: her existence, her reason for being alive on this planet at this time, was much bigger than whether her parents had wanted her or not. This understanding helped resolve the conflict for her.

Yet there were obviously other layers to this enormous energy passing through Joan. Althea was able to guide Joan through a session in which Joan finally was able to release the intense expression that had been wanting to come out. It came out as ten minutes of what can only be described as death screams. Both Joan and Althea agreed that this was too intense to be related to anything in this lifetime – it had to be past life, or some kind of tapping into the collective unconscious.

Tom also gave Joan great insights into the themes of this healing. For example, he said that this situation was about suicide in some form, and that the heart of the answer to this issue was forgiveness and letting go of wanting revenge. Joan also had a “journey” meditation in which she experienced dying as a soldier in war, and coming back with a murderous spirit of vengeance. In this journey, Joan also tapped into the mentality of sacrifice: how people sacrifice plants, animals, other people and themselves to all kinds of kings, gods and causes. She was able to see the destructiveness of sacrifice, and to let it go. All of this rang true on a personal level, but there seemed to be another layer.

By the last session with Tom, August 3, much of the distress had resolved itself into wonderful, positive energy. Tom had the insight that Joan might need to go on some kind of pilgrimage to gain even deeper understanding of the meaning of all the experiences that she had been going through this summer; to help her come to a new level of spiritual connection and empowerment. Joan realized that there was more transformation to come, and waited for the opportunity to present itself.

Also in August, Joan read an extraordinary book called The Walking People, by Iroquois-Oneida teacher Paula Underwood. The Walking People is the oral history of the tribe stretching back for more than ten thousand years, from the time before they crossed the Bering Strait. It details the tribe’s survival through earthquakes, tidal waves and crossing the entire North American continent. It tells how hundreds of generations remained faithful to fulfilling the vision of an ancient leader, who said they should keep walking till they arrived at an Eastern Sea (the Atlantic). It shows how a people endured and prospered, and lovingly passed on their wisdom from generation to generation. Joan felt a stabilizing influence from this book: it gave her hope that people are capable of surviving unimaginable challenges and changes. She felt that reading this book was a piece of the puzzle she was trying to solve.

On August 24, Joan had a vivid dream. In it, a man picked her up and threw her down the stairs of a subway. She tried to grab on to the railing, but suddenly there was nothing to hold on to: the stairs, the walls, everything disappeared. It was so frightening she woke up. She described it as a precognitive (predictive) experience rather than a dream. The dream was obviously a warning, and Joan became alert for any such situation that might present itself in her life.

Two weeks later, on September 11, the U.S. suffered the worst terrorist attack in history. Five thousand people died when the World Trade Center imploded, and in attacks on the Pentagon and an airline crash on Pennsylvania. Suddenly, Joan understood the precognitive and collective nature of the visions that had been coming to her. The themes of suicide, vengeance, sacrifice, death screams, the walls disappearing, fear, anger and war all made sense.

The awareness came to Joan that her personal healing was somehow interconnected with this global chaos. She felt that there was a great insight and learning that she was being given to help the planet at this time. It was about passing on to others important wisdom about forgiveness, letting go of vengeance, and the inviolate value of one's life, whatever circumstances one was born in, or opinion one’s parents or others had about oneself. It was about taking a strong stand and speaking from a place of deep wisdom and life experience about the current issues. Joan’s intention was to understand more fully how her personal experience would help formulate a message which could guide people toward creating peace, healing, happiness.

But how to achieve this insight? What was the next step in her healing process which would help her understand the significance of her visions, and to be able to express this significance to others? For real healing is about discovering and changing the problem one did not realize one had.

Joan, like many people in the first weeks after the attacks, felt utterly immobilized and distracted. The changes in the world seemed too big to process or comprehend. At the same time, she wished there was something she could do to help the victims of the tragedy.

Then Joan received an email from a friend in New York, Martha. Martha told Joan about an opportunity to volunteer as a massage therapist/bodyworker for the victims and rescue workers of the World Trade Center. Joan felt drawn to do this. She remembered Tom’s advice about going on a pilgrimage to help her gain insight and empowerment. It dawned on her: going to New York would be her pilgrimage.

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