om body
C
olleen Saidman Yee, a
celebrated yoga teacher in
the USA for over 20 years,
has faced up to some tough
issues in her life, including a
heroin addiction when she was younger.
Along with famed fashion designer, Donna
Karan, and her husband, Rodney Yee, she’s
also behind the Urban Zen Integrative
Therapy Programme, a pioneering scheme
that provides yoga and alternative care to
hospital patients throughout the USA. Here,
she talks to Cathy Margel about her journey
from addiction to a life of wellbeing and the
incredible power of yoga.How did you first discover yoga
I’ve always been into sports, mainly to
run away, and to feel like I’m somehow
worthy, that I could achieve something. I
was obsessively exercising. And that almost
became my addiction, from every step
aerobics class to boxing to running, and just
everything that I could do physically. And
at that point, a friend wanted me to take
a yoga class with her. I thought that yoga
would be stupid. But I agreed to go with her,
and I felt amazing afterwards. So I went withher, and there were so many things I couldn’t
do, mainly because I’d become so bound up
muscularly. I walked out of the class and felt
amazing, just felt like I was present. And it
was almost a high in and of itself.
But I didn’t just stick to yoga, I threw it into
my repertoire. And then I ended up having
back surgery in 1994. I was in the middle of
a step aerobics class, and literally my legs
buckled and I couldn’t stand up, so I had to
be carried out. And, in a modelling job in
Santa Monica, they brought me to the hotel
and laid me down and called the doctor,
who shot me up with steroids. In the middle
of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom
and fell and scraped the whole side of my
face. The next day, I was working for Avon
Fashions, actually doing bathrobes. They
still propped me up, made up half of my
face and did profile pictures of me in the
bathrobe, so I finished the job.
So I ended up horizontal for three months,
and then I finally went and got an MRI and
they said it looked like I’d jumped off the top
of the Empire State Building and landed on
my feet. Surgery was necessary. So I had
the surgery. And even though I’d already
been doing yoga for probably nine years atthat point, it became my be all and end all.
I stopped all of the other sports; I had to.
Since then, it’s just all been about yoga. It’s
my life, it’s my love, it’s everything to me at
this point.What do you love most about
teaching yoga
In some ways, I don’t think I was a born
teacher, honestly; I had no intention of
teaching. And then I got thrown off the cliff
by my own teachers; I feel like I didn’t even
plan it. I just feel like it opened itself up. I
became a teacher, in some ways in spite
of myself.
One thing I love is the community. I’m still
not in one place, we travel way too much,
but I feel like there is a community. And I feel
like it’s a community where we, in some ways,
understand each other and want to do good.
But also, I want other people to feel the way
that yoga has that transformative quality.Tell us about the Urban Zen initiative
Donna Karan’s husband spent seven years
before his death with lung cancer. Donna
has always been into alternative health, be
that essential oils or Reiki or yoga – she’s a