Seeing everyone gathered together for the Urban Zen 10-Day Well-Being Forum in my husband, Stephan Weiss' sculpture studio was emotional for me and my family. I really want to thank everyone who came. It meant a lot to me. For me, the studio was a place that was filled with a lot of love, creativity, and spirituality. Stephan was totally about how to make a difference in this world. Through the way he lived, through his illness, and through his passing, he modeled how to live and how to end one's life.
One of his yoga teachers, Lindsey Clennell, a senior Iyengar teacher, used to come by regularly during the years my husband was ill. He told us that "Stephan knew how to allow us to be with him in his illness, and his approaching death, while always carrying it fully himself and never burdening anyone with it. I was supposedly the teacher, but he was truly the teacher. I miss him."
So on the eighth day of our forum our topic was death and dying. You can read more about the wonderful wisdom that was shared that day at Alison Rose Levy's blog.
To tell you the truth, I could not even bring myself to touch anything in the studio after Stephan died in 2002. Everything stayed the same until we began to get ready for this forum.
A whole group of wonderful people spent hours and hours day and night making the studio ready. But even without Stephan's sculptures, with everything reconfigured and set up for us to sit comfortably and listen and talk, all that he created is still here to support us energetically and make things work.
This new health care initiative is a way for me to move on, a way to give back for all the blessings, and a way to share and ground my hope that the death and dying process can be better supported for all of us. I want to answer a need that I experienced and I know everyone has to face when you or a loved one becomes ill and faces death.
We know that many people find themselves or their loved ones dying in a hospital structure centered on healing, not dying, so what happens? You feel lost, confused, empty -- and very, very helpless.
From my practice of yoga and other forms of Eastern spirituality, I know that there are other ways to handle this. Ancient systems can offer things that help both the dying person and the family and loved ones. Let's find ways to bring those in.
As part of our program here, we've been educating 70 yoga teachers that will help facilitate and care for people in the hospital system. That's one of our first offerings.
Yoga is more than exercise. I'd like to see yoga in schools, yoga in hospitals, and everywhere people need that support. We need yoga and other spiritual disciplines to be right there at the center of it all.
Still, there are so many diversities and I don't want to contribute to that. I want oneness. There is no black or white. There is no yogi and doctor.
I want this Urban Zen initiative to be a platform for humanity. I want to create unity and to use both Eastern and Western practices in health care.
My dear friend Lynn Kohlman's illness also touched me deeply. Lynn is someone I love and her fortitude and tenderness throughout her illness and on into her recovery have been so inspiring. At the forum, Lynn told us that:
"Death is very personal. It's more about the fear of something unknown than anything else. We really have to realize our own power and ability to embrace the unknown and not be fearful of it.
Practice has made it easier for me to have death always there by my side without being fearful. I've learned how to have death there every day when I wake up without being fearful.
One time I was flying with Donna and some friends on an airplane. There was a lot of turbulence and we were fully aware that this might be it. We reached out to each other and held hands and started mediating.
But I must admit that I opened my eyes and peeked.
And every time I did, I saw Donna, I saw Gabrielle, and some of our other friends. And each person I looked at, I just started grinning. I was feeling, "What a great person to die with!"
I looked out the airplane window. There were sunny blue skies above us, and white beaches below us. It was so beautiful, so I just started laughing and soon we were all laughing."
As Lynn reminds me, that was such a great moment -- and I want to always have that kind of fearlessness that Lynn has, though to be honest, I'm not always able to be in that place.
I guess that's why it's all about practice.
The day we addressed Death and Dying was the day of the forum that I had long dreamt about. It was so great having the conversation with some of the wise and caring people who came to have that conversation, so please read what they have to say here.