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Dechen Thurman

In the year of the Water Rat, under the light of a Winter Solstice full moon, along the Hudson River, ninety miles north of New York City, Dechen K. Thurman was born. Dechen's father is Robert A.F. Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa scholar of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Cloumbia University. The first westerner to be accepted into the Tibetan Monastic community.

While growing up in western Massachusetts, Dechen's family was a multicultural pioneer in hosting such luminous Tibetan refugee scholars as Geshe Wangyal, Lama Govinda, Tara Tulku Rimpoche, Dr. Yeshe Donden and Gehlek Rimpoche. He first met His Holiness the Dalai Lama at age seven in Dharamsala, India. The Thurman family also harbored Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees. They were also active in the antinuclear protests of the late seventies and early eighties.

After two years at Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and a year at NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing, Dechen worked as an actor, producer and bodyworker, founding TELEOTHEATER NYC, a collaborative collective that refurbished decaying performance venues to defray the high cost of putting up new plays in New York.  
Dechen is an accomplished actor who has  appeared in over two dozen films from 1995-2004, including The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Hamlet, Zoolander and Gods and Generals. Having developed his own style of bodywork derived from Tibetan techniques, Dechen formally began training at the Ohashi Institute in 1997.  In 1999, his massages received international praise in the form of print articles (July'99 Vogue, Elle, Paper Magazine) and an appearance on the E! channels' MIND BODY AND SPIRIT HOUR. Dechen graduated with distinction from the Ohashi Institute in 2004 and was immediately accepted into the Certified Ohashiatsu Instructor training program.

Dechen's first taste of Jivamukti Yoga came at the age of nineteen.  His dance teacher at Playwrights horizons, Maude Karlsonn (nicknamed the "Swedish Mistress of Pain" by classmates), gave him a flier with a photo of Sharon Gannon in side crow position and told him to go to 2nd ave. and practice there.  It was love at first class. He frequently attended class, initially as a warm-up for acting rehearsals, later for refuge from the pressures of his identity. Jivamukti Yoga was instrumental in bringing Dechen home, so to speak, back to his family's deep roots in Buddhism. Many inexplicably good things would happen to him on such a punctual basis associated with Jivamukti that his life literally depended on it. The psychospiritual investigation that Jivamukti stimulated was fundamental to his success in acting and massage.
Dechen is a certified Jivamukti Yoga Teacher. He was very honored to train among such a dedicated and distinguished group of teachers including Yogeswari, who is his mentor in the Advanced training program.

Dechen looks forward to the journey of teaching Jivamukti Yoga, an enlightenment system that draws deeply from past wisdom, is planted firmly in the needs of today's yogis and yoginis, and predicts a bright future eventually unfolding through Non-violent motivation, Positive vibrations, Ecstatic gyrations, Scriptural resuscitations and Meditative contemplations.

Photos by Daniel Francisco Valdez: http://superluminal.zenfolio.com