Donna Karan Launches Urban Zen Wellness Project

See her project here: Urban Zen

Read the press release below--it's fascinating in itself. Look at the scope of her initiative, and the celebrities from fashion, publishing, health and wellness she has rounded up for the cause:

Donna Karan Launches Urban Zen's First Initiative, THE WELL-BEING FORUM

A Two-Week Workshop to Explore A New Model for Wellness and Patient Care

NEW YORK, April 26 /PRNewswire/ --

"Imagine if Eastern Philosophy harmonized with Western medical practice
and if we treated the patient with the same passion with which we treat
the disease ... When my husband Stephan, and best friend Lynn Kohlman
were stricken with cancer, so much was missing from their care. They
needed the powerful science from Western medicine, but they also needed
the healing that can only be accessed from the heart, spirit and
alternative approaches. Out of my frustration with the care they
received at even the best medical facilities, a commitment was born. My
mission is to create a working environment where the worlds of
conventional and alternative medical practices unite to create new ways
of healing, health and well being, focused on the total human and
medical needs of the patient." Donna Karan

Determined to support a new approach to care and treatment for
patients, Donna Karan will host a ten day Well-Being Forum at the Stephan
Weiss Studio, 711 Greenwich Street, NYC, from May 14th to 24th.

The forum will unite the world's foremost leaders in Integrative and
conventional Medicine, the most respected yoga instructors, as well as
healthcare leaders, nurses, patients, and spiritual teachers. They will
conduct hands-on workshops that will push the boundaries of how we think
about Integrative Medicine and patient care.

More here:Press Release

Yoga 2009: 10 Highlights

What happened last year?

Did it pass like a kidney stone or like savasana? Lots of subtle changes for me personally, and a big leap into the blogosphere for Yoga Nation. Part of me wishes I had a time machine to go back ten years (if I knew then, what I know now...) and another part looks forward to the madness and the mystery of a new year.But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's see what happened in 2009....

1. Fierce Club opened in Nolita. Sadie Nardini, of Bon Jovi yogi fame, not only opened her own kick-ass studio in Nolita last March, but later in the summer she also joined up with YAMA, an agenting enterprise for enterprising yoga teachers. Yes, folks, the future is here...

2. The movie, Enlighten Up!: A Skeptic's Journey into the World of Yoga, launched to mostly positive reviews (and some grumbling from yoga teachers) proving that yoga can entertain Americans for at least an hour and a half on the big screen. Director/yogini, Kate Churchill, and skeptic/subject, Nick Rosen, tussle and tumble around the world looking for the truth about yoga

.3. Inappropriate Yoga Guy "Edited" Yoga Journal. Yoga Journal spoofed itself in this 5-part online mini-series in which the unforgettable, and wildly inappropriate, Ogden, took over the inimitable magazine offices as a hazardous (and sometimes naked) "guest editor." Went live April Fool's Day.

4. Sri K. Pattabhi Jois passed. One of three Indian grandaddies of modern, Western yoga, 93-year-old Pattabhi Jois, passed away in May, and was fetted through the early summer. The memorial held at Donna Karan's Urban Zen headquarters on June 14 in the West Village created even bigger buzz than the first ever NYC Yoga Journal Conference in May.

5. Licensing Issue ravaged New York---and is not over. Should yoga studios pay large sums of money to New York state to be "licensed" to train yoga teachers? Widely seen as a pitiless money-grab, this proposed legislation threatens to shut down many tiny yoga studios that rely on teacher-training programs for basic income. (For this issue, yoganation was also a momentary guest-blogger on the illustrious YogaDork.)

6. On the other hand, Brent Kessel made clear that yoga and money can live happily together. Financial advisor and long-time ashtanga-yoga practitioner, Kessel wrote a practical, inspiring and possibly profitable book called It's Not About the Money (which it never is: it's always about the junk in your head). Read my interview with him on Frugaltopia.

7. The inaugural Wanderlust Yoga and Music Festival rocked Lake Tahoe in July. This ingenious festival blasted open indie minds and took over taste-making in the yoga world. Who said yoga can't be radically cool? Driven by yoga and music-exec power couple from Brooklyn, Wanderlust will happen in three locales in 2010. Thank you, Yoga Journal (San Francisco), you may now hand over the reigns. The young uns' (uh, Brooklyn) got it from here.

8. Celebrity Yoga Teachers---Problem? In late August, YogaCityNYC sent me to report on the Being Yoga conference upstate. The question: Is a media-friendly yoga teacher the natural outcome of yoga’s presence in America’s consumer culture? The peaceful yoga crowd at Omega had a lot to say. READ my final article. .....(One source said: “I've never had a PR agent or invited myself somewhere. Everything has happened because of the shakti manifesting in me.” The next day I got a message on Twitter inviting me to review her latest DVD.)

9. BKS Iyengar turned 91. Really, you need to see Enlighten Up! the movie just for the scenes of Iyengar talking about the meaning of yoga---not empty New Age spirituality, but real internal work, with a few beads of sweat and social service thrown in. For his 91st birthday, this tremendous force of a man requested that students hold a fundraiser to benefit his ancentral village of Bellur. If everyone gave $3, more people could eat.

10. The Yoga Clothing Wars continued with lots of news about LuluLemon throughout 2009. Their stock was up, their stock was down. We loved them, we were peeved. Mostly we were conflicted about the giant success of a giant "women's activewear" company. Good news: they have excellent yoga clothes for men. More good news: they are inspiring small yoga clothing companies, too. More good (-ish?) news: they are EVERYWHERE. Planet Lulu!!

HAPPY 2010, yogis and yoginis! Here's to a happy, healthy, inspired, productive, restful, and OM-ing new year.

Pattabhi Jois Memorial NYC, June 14, 2009

Entering Urban Zen for P. Jois Memorial

Jois the father

Jois teaching

Videos of Jois

Memorial

Sunday, June 14, ashtangis and the greater yoga community of New York City gathered in Donna Karan's gorgeous Urban Zen space in Manhattan's West Village for an evening of remembrances celebrating the life and legacy of Shri K. Pattabhi Jois. The white space was hung with long yellow scrims that caught the late afternoon light and brightened the windowless space. The black cushions on the floor were strewn with the petals of red roses, and garlands large and small framed sepia-toned pictures of Guruji at the front of the space. Food was served the back--delicious spicy popped rice with chutney, and samosas and chai. Four hundred people had RSVPd. Those who came were a good-looking bunch, with a lean, clean, healthy glow. Many had young children with them.  It was a grown-up yoga community, one that has weathered their initial zeal for yoga and matured into seasoned practitioners. Representing the yoga world were Alison West (Yoga Union), Leslie Kaminoff (Breathing Project), Michelle Demus (Pure Yoga), Hari Kaur (Golden Bridge), Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman (Urban Zen), James Murphy (Iyengar Yoga NY), Carlos Menjiva (Jivamukti), and someone from Bikram yoga. On the walls around the space, photos of Guruji, his family, his students, and his travels over the years played in a continuous loop. After Eddie Stern, Jois' long-time student, director of Ashtanga Yoga New York, introduced the evening, three Hindu priests changed a part of the Upanishads, 18 minutes of piercing, passionate sound meant to disperse the elements back into the world, to help Guruji on his journey. In the background of this austere music, was the sound of children chirping and playing.

"When a great person is born into the world, he affects everyone," said Stern. "Regardless of whether they follow his teachings or not."

Other speakers mentioned Pattabhi Jois' generosity as a teacher, the inclusiveness of his sangha, and his "sympathetic joy"---his availability to all who had even just a flicker of interest in trying yoga.

"He took complete delight that someone was growing through their yoga practice," said John Campbell, long-time student.Ruth Lauer-Manenti, a senior Jivamukti teacher, relayed the story of how she first went to Mysore to practice with Pattabhi Jois. "Sharon Gannon [director and co-founder of Jivamukti] had just come back from Mysore. She was thin, thin, thin. She looked kind of green and she had a dislocated shoulder. She said, Ruth, you gotta go. So I went the next day."

" 'Yes you can' was his message---it's what so many of us took from him," said Lauer-Manenti whose practice helped her to heal from a near-fatal car accident." He always wanted you to do your best, including making it to his birthday every year."

Jois believed---in fact, he lived the idea---that yoga is the science of transformation: 1% theory, 99% practice. Yoga is mind control: controlling your helter-skelter thoughts and practicing love (plus a 2hr, 6-days-a-week, demanding asana practice) instead. As he famously said, "Do your practice and all is coming."

Urban Zen gets some Luv

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.

First NIH Yoga Week

The National Institute of Health initiated its first annual Yoga Week, May 19 - 23, in Maryland. The press release says, "Highlighting the science and practice of yoga, this five-day series of events will serve NIH employees and the public. Participants will not only learn about the benefits of yoga but also experience them first-hand through stretching and practice. "Speakers include Alan Finger, John Schumacher, Timothy McCall, an assortment of doctors, and representatives from Burt's Bees, and appearances by Weight Watchers, Honest Tea, Whole Foods, and the Alzheimer's Research and Prevention Foundation.Reminds me of Donna Karan's Urban Zen project.