Published on November 22, 2008
Care of the UK’s Daily Mail comes news of an American ex-Vogue model turned yogic healer. Yogi Cameron, based in NYC, will travel anywhere in the world to give a 24-hr treatment of yoga asana, ayurvedic massage, health and life counseling.
It’s true that many people need to take care of their health basics much, much better. We’d all be better off for it. But the fee to fly Cameron from NY to Hampstead, England, for a 24-hr private, according to the UK rag, is 20,000 pounds (about $40,000 US).
‘Scuse me while I spit out my soup. Uh, wa?
in Celebrity and Health.
Published on November 14, 2008
Walking is something Johnathan FitzGordon got interested in years ago–I remember him chatting about this after one of his fun and exploratory classes at the old Brooklyn Yoga space. Now the NYTimes caught up with him–as, it seems, have some others concerned with pain management, health, and basic skills of life.
FitzGordon, who just can’t follow a line of teaching if it doesn’t interest him, is a deeply curious guy. And usually he is spot on about anatomy. I like how, in the quoted passage below, we see him looking at his students not just on the mat, but off, too. Ideally yogis bring awareness to everything, not just to class.
“Few of us think we need a course in walking any more than we’d need a course in breathing, but Mr. FitzGordon insists that most Americans don’t have a clue how to step, a problem he first noticed among his yoga students. “People would enter with terrible posture,” he said. “Then they’d do beautiful yoga, and listen to everything I said about alignment. As soon as class ended, they went straight into the bad posture.” ”
Read it in the NYTimes.
in Health and Trends.
Published on November 1, 2008
The NYTimes, my hometown paper, which appears perhaps a little too much on this blog, reported last week on the much-deserving organization, Urban Zen.
The initiative is forward looking (read article here). As the Times says, “the Karan-Beth Israel project will have a celebrated donor turn a hospital into a testing ground for a trendy, medically controversial notion: that yoga, meditation and aromatherapy can enhance regimens of chemotherapy and radiation.”
“Karan” is of course Donna Karan the fashion designer, whose husband passed away of cancer in 2001, and whose colleague and friend passed away this past September.
Her organization, Urban Zen, wants to bring otherworldly kinds of healing to very sick people. Rodney Yee and his wife Colleen Saidman will oversee the 15 teachers who will bring yoga to cancer patients. Karan pays their salaries.
We’ve all heard a story or two of yoga miracles and cancer miracles. Mind over matter, positive thinking over negative diagnosis, the power of practice, can all be powerfully healing impulses. As well, a deep resolve to be in tune with change, rather than resist it—as the late Iyengar yoga teacher, Mary Dunn, wrote in her online cancer-journal— can make one’s situation easier to accept, and sometimes even, sweeter.
There will be skeptics to this Urban Zen project, but with any luck there will also be many beneficiaries.
in Health and Trends.
Published on November 1, 2008
This feature of mine, “Off the Couch and Onto the Mat,” was just published by Conscious Enlightenment Media.
The piece looks at the influences of yoga on psychology and vice versa–how psychotherapists are using yoga techniques in their practices, as well as how more yoga teachers are getting degrees in Western psychology in order to better help their students. It’s a new trend!
The piece s running in CE’s 5 magazines: GAIA (NY), Conscious Choice, (Chicago & Seattle), Whole Life Times (Los Angeles), and Common Ground (San Francisco). It’s the same article, but with a different sidebar for each city. (NY: there is no link yet but you can pick up the print copy at a yoga studio.)
in Health and Trends.
Published on September 24, 2008
… and continues to do stunning yoga moves to the amazement of the media, and awe of his children. Read about this medication-free Indian grandpa in the Chicago Tribune.
“If someone asks me, ‘How old are you?’ I always say, ‘I am 18 years!’ “
in Health.
Published on September 21, 2008
Published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, these stories are refreshingly spin free. Sweet.
“I moved to Minneapolis last August from Los Angeles with my husband and kids. I was very attached to my girlfriends, and I just got really homesick and was very depressed. My next-door neighbor said, “Hey, try that yoga place down the block.” “
in Health.
Published on September 14, 2008
Highly respected, foundational, inspirational yoga teacher Mary Dunn, died of cancer at age 66 in her daughter’s house in Westchester, NY.
Read the obits:
NYTimes
Yoga Journal
Ann Arbor News
Mary Dunn’s blog. This inspiring blog follows Mary’s thoughts during the course of her illness, up to a few days before her death
in Health and History.
Yogi Cameron
