Dechen is a holistic healer based in New York City. He is an Advanced Certified Jivamukti Yoga Teacher at the New York Jivamukti Yoga School as well as a Certified Ohashiatsu Instructor. Dechen creates a delicious sense of playfulness in his yoga classes. His method of healing is derived from these revered schools.
He’s the brother of Uma and the son of Robert. He played Guildenstern in Michael Almereyda’s „Hamlet“ movie and Patrick Bateman in Gerald Fox‘ Bret Easton Ellis film. But more importantly, his unique form of bodywork – as in Yoga and massage – has won international praise in the last couple of years.
Growing up, 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. A paramount time in Dechen’s life as he learned to cultivate his meditation practice with the help of these brilliant scholars. He first met His Holiness the Dalai Lama at age seven in Dharamsala, India.
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. Alongside his work as a Jivamukti Yoga teacher and healer, Dechen is an accomplished actor in film and theater. He has appeared in films such as The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Hamlet, Zoolander and Gods and Generals.
