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.