Ananda Forest

ANANDA FOREST was born George Emery Vaillant in Boston in 1959. He went to Andover, Oberlin, and Yale Law School and later taught English at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn. In 1994, he left the city for upstate New York, where he worked as a carpenter and mechanic and started seriously following his bliss. For the next twenty-five years, he worked as a carpenter but never stopped teaching: twelve years guiding students of shamanism at Spirit Hollow, the nature and spirituality center he co-founded, and the last thirteen years and counting as an adjunct instructor of anthropology, history, and mythology at the Community College of Vermont.

Ananda now teaches remotely from northern New Mexico where he lives in a yurt with his wife, iishana, in a small intentional community, the Rio Grande Refuge, along the banks of the river. He includes as his teachers 12-step groups, shamans Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman, and the gurus Neem Karoli Baba and Amma, as well as the Earth herself. He has done multiple vision quests in both Vermont and the Southwest, and has been pouring water every month in lodge for over twenty-five years.

He is available to speak to groups about his insights and experiences.