Dearest Friends,
Brooke Medicine Eagle and Linda Heron Wind will be leading a women’s retreat, Women of Beauty, Light and Power, at Feathered Pipe Ranch from June 9 to 16. Brooke and Heron share the visions that led them to their current work in the world, as well as their eagerness to reunite in teaching the importance of embracing the Divine Feminine to heal ourselves and the planet.
AV: You two have distinctly different backgrounds. Can you tell me a little bit about your evolution as healers and teachers?
Brooke: I was raised on the Crow reservation in Montana, in a half-breed ranching family. Since we lived far in the backcountry and native ceremony was a federal offense until 1972, I didn’t learn traditional things until later in life. When I was 29 years old, I was studying with a Cheyenne medicine woman—doing a vision quest in South Dakota. I had been on the mountain for several days without food and water when I had a visceral encounter with many
grandmother spirits, dancing around me and with me, and I was told that it was time for the women to step forward and be empowered. It was time for us to use the feminine power—the love, the nurturing, the caring—as spiritual warriors to address the destruction, damage, hatefulness and harm going on. That vision set me on a lifetime path.
 Several years later, I began working with Joan Halifax who brought me to The Feathered Pipe Ranch for a retreat with her and Joseph Campbell. She wanted me to get people outside—to soak in the power of the land, the richness of the oasis that is the Ranch—so I took
people hiking, did ceremony and danced. My work really began to take off from there, and for nearly 10 summers I did six Eagle Song Camps at Blacktail Ranch in Wolf Creek, MT. I also worked with Jean Bolen to do the same thing on several Feathered Pipe Ranch retreats. My work has grown and shifted over time, but I’ve really come full circle back to the work of the Feminine.
This is the only retreat I’m doing in the U.S. this year. I’m working a lot in Europe and the UK focusing primarily on women’s empowerment work. Women around the world are awakening to the rising Feminine—if they aren’t aware before I get there, they certainly are when I finish sharing! It’s deeply satisfying and encouraging.
 Heron: Everything in my life that I’ve ever learned, I’ve taught. When I learned to swim, I taught swimming. When I learned to fly, I taught ground school. So when I got my PhD in Psychology, I began teaching and helping to develop a
psychology program at a liberal arts college. In 1985 I fell very ill and was sick for about a year. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me but I had always been a long distance runner, and I could hardly work in my garden for five minutes without becoming totally exhausted. Since the conventional medical system had no answers, I turned to alternative practices like yoga and meditation, and after a while, I learned that what I was doing was shamanic journeying. I was finding the answers
to heal myself, and I began incorporating those methods into my therapy sessions with clients and teaching them how to journey.
After meeting Brooke in the late 80s, I began offering workshops on spirituality, and I founded a not-for-profit organization called CIRCLE—Community of Individuals Revisiting and Celebrating Life on Earth. I follow what spirit tells me and currently I’m being led to do this work for women, to balance the feminine heart and masculine heart within each of us so we can then balance as a society.
AV: So you’ve known each other for almost 30 years. How did you meet and begin working together?
 Brooke: Heron came as a guest to one of my retreats in Massachusetts then to the Eagle Song Camps I led at Blacktail Ranch. I liked her so much that I asked her to be one of my staff members for the camps and then we decided we wanted to be sisters, so I
formally adopted her in a native way as my sister. We’ve worked together on and off for years, on both sides of the country. I love to learn from her—she’s always got something going on that I haven’t heard about yet.
Heron: When I was very ill, I turned to alternative reading such as Medicine Woman by Lynn Andrews, which led me to some of Brooke’s song CDs. The first workshop with Brooke was in 1988 and we had a connection from the beginning. Our teaching styles complement one another and we really enjoy working together. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her—I’m looking forward to the reunion!
AV: How do you describe the Divine Feminine and why is it important to teach this as a women-only retreat?
 Brooke: As women, we possess enormous magic; the ability to have life come through our bodies is immense, and as a society, we haven’t been taught to embrace or tap into that power. There are wonderful Native teachings about the power around our moon
time, our menstrual time, that woman feel and begin to understand once they’re taught. I’ll also be teaching about the ancient brain: the old, wise, powerful brain that has carried us to where we are today. Women naturally respond to creativity, so we use arts like ceremony, dance, song, natural beauty and the reverence for the land to learn how to deal with some of the trauma in their lives. We want to help women find what they need in order to be healthy, happy and strong—and
not strong in a push-and-shove masculine way, but strength that’s rooted in love.
Heron: When we look at the feminine path, there are some natural things that grow out of it: compassion—women desperately need to work on self-compassion; collaboration—people tend to view independence as masculine and dependence as feminine, but it’s an interdependence that we know as women that makes us strong; connection—women who have grown up in our culture tend to be competitive and judgmental with each other, so it’s really about
cultivating a sense of connection and community. All the psychological issues that I help people with boil down to one cause, and that is being disconnected—from each other and from nature. You don’t hurt somebody or something that you feel connected to.
 In a group of women, when you can be seen and accepted and loved just as you are—that creates transformation. I can do that individually with people, but I’m sure some end up thinking, “Well I’m paying her, so of course she’s going to be nice.” When you’re in
a group, those people don’t have to show up any certain way, but you hear everyone else’s stories and it reflects your own. True transformation happens in groups in a way that can’t be replicated in individual sessions.
AV: It’s amazing to see this type of work taking off in the world today.
Brooke: It’s really what gives my life hope and meaning. In the critical and challenging time that we’re in, the harmonizing, supportive and loving ways of the feminine are what I am clear will heal the world. Our ability to create and to tap into a unified field, to be in union with nature and communicate with all things—that is the deep feminine. And scientists are finally catching up with wisdom that native people have known and taught for
centuries!
 Heron: I started this Divine Feminine work because I had a vision from my grandmother spirits, but I’ve since run into people who also have the same idea of moving into heart consciousness, where both feminine and masculine hearts within each of us
can live in balance. It’s great to not only have confirmation, but to see the idea spreading.
Brooke: We look forward to being with an amazing group of women for a transformative time at beautiful Feathered Pipe Ranch!
We invite you to join us at the Feathered Pipe Ranch this summer, June 9 - 16, for Women of Beauty, Light, and Power: Healing Ourselves and the Earth.
*Special thanks to friend and freelance writer Andy Vantrease for this wonderful interview
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An Invitation to Immerse within the Divine – Alie McManus
As many of you know, these days in my yoga practice and in my life I’m really working on cultivating my relationship with myself, and being my own B.F.F. It’s a conscious intention. In doing that, when I’m clear and having a true experience of Yoga, I’m cultivating my relationship with what I like to call the “divine within and the Divine without.” Guiding me in this journey are two qualities that I
have recognized as essential to who I am: curiosity and self-trust.
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Paschimottanasana – Marla Apt
When I first began yoga, I took a class in which the teacher asked us to perform Paschimottanasana. When I pulled my head down to touch my legs, my teacher told me that I had reached the goal of the pose. Even in my sophomoric state as a yoga student, I knew that there had to be more to it.
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Contact Us |
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Feathered Pipe Foundation
P.O. Box 1682
Helena, MT 59624
(406) 442-8196
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