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WELLNESS: URBAN ZEN FOUNDATION


Donna Karan meditates: the fashion designer has long been an advocate of complementary therapies


In sickness & health Conceived by fashion designer Donna Karan, the Urban Zen Integrative Therapy


programme merges medical and complementary therapies and trains professionals in its own eff ective style of sickness and preventative care. Julie Cramer reports


W


hen renowned fashion designer Donna Karan launched her Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT) programme – aimed at helping acutely-ill


patients in health and social care settings – she’d already faced the trauma of losing friends, colleagues and family members as a result of terminal illness. As a rookie designer in the 70s, Karan


went to work for Anne Klein in New York and was promptly asked to finish her new boss’s collection, because Klein had terminal breast cancer. That tragedy was the catalyst that helped launch Karan’s career, but it was also the beginning of


44 spabusiness.com issue 2 2015 ©CYBERTREK 2015


many personal losses, including her best friend who died of breast and brain cancer and her second husband, Stephen Weiss, who died of lung cancer in 2001. Karan had always been a proponent


of the healing powers of complementary therapies like reiki and acupuncture and her own homes are known to be spa-like sanctuaries. She used what her husband called ‘woo woo’ therapies to help him in the final years of his life. After his death, she went on a quest to fill the gap missing between medical treatment of diseases and sympathetic care of the individual. Her search culminated in the creation of a 10-day Wellbeing Forum in 2007, to stimulate an exchange of ideas between


patients, doctors, nurses and yoga and alternative healthcare practitioners. Two years later, the first UZIT training programme was born and since then almost 500 UZIT practitioners from both medical and wellness worlds have been trained, with another 100 or so in the system. The progamme has been put together


with the help of Karan’s high profile associates, including yoga gurus Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman-Yee


EAST MEETS WEST UZIT’s mission is to integrate ancient healing techniques into western medical practices, as well as spread this work further through yoga, spa and wellness


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