TM Believer
Courtesy Nancy Cooke de Herrera
By Wendy Jalonen Fawthrop
The well-coifed owner of an antique-filled house perched high in Beverly Hills
is telling how she participated in a seminal episode of '60s counterculture.
Her life—in which Nancy Cooke de Herrera becomes an ambassador of
transcendental meditation to the celebrity subculture of California—seems like
a prototype of Eat, Pray, Love.
I've never been a flower child, de Herrera says. I don't know anything about
rock 'n' roll. But I do know about meditation.
De Herrera was in Rishikesh, India, studying with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968
when the Beatles arrived. She decorated their rooms and became their liaison to
the Maharishi. In YouTube videos, she strolls the ashram as the Beatles strum
guitars along with the marigold-bedecked Mia Farrow, Beach Boy Mike Love and
singer Donovan. Her son, Rik, was visiting her at the time. John Lennon wrote
The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill about the day Rik shot a tiger.
De Herrera, then 44, had already lived a couple of lifetimes. Having grown up
in Piedmont, Calif., Nancy Veitch studied bacteriology at Stanford but put to
more use what she'd learned in speech and drama classes. Leaving college before
her senior year to marry into a prominent family in Hawaii, she became a
hostess to Pacific Fleet admirals and a performer in shows for the troops.
Later she would travel to 15 countries presenting American fashion. There,
she says, is all my training on the stage at Stanford.
She met the Shah of Iran and King Hussein of Jordan. She went on a camel trek
with Sir Edmund Hillary, discussed yeti lore with the Dalai Lama and posed, in
a bathing suit, with Esther Williams. She had three sons (including Starr
Cooke, '69). She divorced, met and married race-car driver Luis de Herrera,
moved with him to Argentina and had a daughter. Luis de Herrera died in 1955 of
leukemia. On vacation 20 months earlier, they had been in an area in southern
Utah downwind during an atomic test.
His death sent de Herrera searching for life's meaning. She found it in
transcendental meditation—a path to inner peace through a repeated mantra. But
she balked at the asceticism many teachers demanded. I just love my Western
life, she told them. I really don't want to give up anything.
The Maharishi took such students, and de Herrera became his spiritual devotee,
making 38 trips to India and escorting him at times as he traveled in South
America to spread the word on TM. Over the years de Herrera has provided
lessons on meditation to Greta Garbo, Madonna, Sheryl Crow, Rosie O'Donnell and
Lenny Kravitz, among others. She says that when rocker clients learn to
meditate, she notices their lyrics shift to more peaceful language and images.
I teach that there is no such thing as a coincidence, de Herrera says.
What's going to happen will happen. And for her, it all has.
WENDY JALONEN FAWTHROP, ’78, is a senior copy editor at The Orange County
Register.
On Wed, 4/30/14, cardemais...@yahoo.com cardemais...@yahoo.com wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Greta Garbo, a TMer??
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2014, 8:47 PM
Famous TMers, from an Estonian site:
Kes maailmakuulsustest mediteerib?
Nende hulgas, kes on õppinud TM-i, on teiste seas
Greta
Garbo (pildil), Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Burt
Reynolds,
Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Carrey, Elizabeth (Liz) Taylor, David
Lynch, Merv
Griffin, Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Jim Donovan, ansamblid
Beatles ja
Beach Boys, Bill Ford (Fordi firma president),
Al Gore (endine USA asepresident), Hans
Selye (stressi avastaja), Buckminster
Fuller (kuulus leiutaja), Astrid
Lindgren (maailma populaarseim
lastekirjanik).
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226 --
#yiv9225057226ygrp-mkp {
border:1px solid #d8d8d8;font-family:Arial;margin:10px
0;padding:0 10px;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-mkp hr {
border:1px solid #d8d8d8;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-mkp #yiv9225057226hd {
color:#628c2a;font-size:85%;font-weight:700;line-height:122%;margin:10px
0;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-mkp #yiv9225057226ads {
margin-bottom:10px;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-mkp .yiv9225057226ad {
padding:0 0;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-mkp .yiv9225057226ad p {
margin:0;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-mkp .yiv9225057226ad a {
color:#ff;text-decoration:none;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-sponsor
#yiv9225057226ygrp-lc {
font-family:Arial;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-sponsor
#yiv9225057226ygrp-lc #yiv9225057226hd {
margin:10px
0px;font-weight:700;font-size:78%;line-height:122%;}
#yiv9225057226 #yiv9225057226ygrp-sponsor
#yiv9225057226ygrp-lc .yiv9225057226ad {
margin-bottom:10px;padding:0 0;}
#yiv9225057226
