The yoga room in the iconic residence of architect Lorenzo Calma overlooks the swimming pool and the sculptural tropical foliage. The gentle sounds of water gushing from the spout of the roof can be heard while his daughter, Lorena, chants Om and sacred Sanskrit verses.

Her hatha yoga class is all about relaxation—lots of meditation in repose, traditional poses held for a minute with coordinated breathing and thoughtful pauses between each position.

 

Weary of the intense materialism in America, designer Lorena Calma chucked in her Balenciagas and Blahniks for ashram cottons and scrubs. She gave up her position as design director for Gap International, handling the UK and Japanese markets, to become a hatha yoga proponent.

 

It was but logical for her to develop her own yoga line.

 

“Yoga is my life. I totally transformed in the past four years,” says the younger Calma, wearing a yellow bamboo T-shirt which she designed, plus off-white drawstring pants.

 

Top houses

 

Calma acquired a degree in fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology and studied tailoring and art at Polimoda in Florence, Italy. She worked as assistant designer for top fashion houses such as Calvin Klein, Kenzo, Valentino menswear and Emmanuel Ungaro and, finally, as design director for Gap.

 

“Designing in Corporate America was not what I had in mind,” she says. “You’re confronted with the reality that it’s a business, not art. Students in fashion are not made to understand that. The reality of fashion in America is that you need to survive—to sell and to merchandise. I wasn’t excited about that part.”

 

She also ventured into organic clothing under her label. “It was a small market. Organic back then wasn’t too popular. I used hemp and bamboo, but they were still rough. Now bamboo feels like silk and it’s resilient.”

 

Although she was earning well and living comfortably, she felt empty inside.

 

“I was in an unhealthy place where ambition and accumulation were my driving forces. When you’re young, you want to conquer the world with expectations. But life slaps you with situations that tell you something else. If you don’t learn from that, it will come back to you again. That was the lesson: to stop planning your life because it never turns out the way you plan it to be.”

 

To cope with stress, Calma would take bikram yoga classes. In New York, yoga studios were on every block to cater to high-achieving residents like her.

But the classes tended to be too competitive and egoistic, with practitioners vainly looking at themselves in the mirrors.

 

One day, Calma had an awakening. “Something told me,   ‘Your soul is dying.’ That’s when I dropped everything. I’ve learned to finally let go. That’s why I went deep into yoga.”

 

She unloaded her collection of runway and editorial clothes and vintage pieces from Madame Gres and Balenciaga. Her fashion shoes were likewise sold off through eBay.

 

Certification

 

She searched for solutions in spiritual books and ended up taking a two-month residence at the Sivananda monastery in upstate New York. The routine followed a cycle of waking up at 4:30 a.m., meditation at 5:30 a.m., satsang or singing spiritual songs for an hour, praying from the sacred scriptures called the Vedanta, hatha yoga practices, karma yoga or helping out in the maintenance of the place, and evening yoga.

 

“You live in a bubble where time stands still. You face yourself,” she recalls. “It tests you on focus—how crazy your mind is. You are confronted with not much to do. Here, you are given so much entertainment—the gadgets, the restaurants, the malls. There, it was the chores, prayer and meditation. I tried hard to  keep myself still. The more you do it, the more you realize that you are teaching yourself to clear your mind. Then you become calm.”

 

During her stay, Calma worked on her certification to teach hatha yoga.

 

According to a study published in the Asian Journal of Sports Medicine, people who practiced the sun salutations (a cycle of poses from standing to floor and contracting and releasing) for six months, and with no other resistance training, built up overall strength. They could bench-press and do more push-ups and pull-ups.

 

The word hatha means “discipline.” Hatha yoga ascribes to a series of physical postures or asanas, created to align the body and to open the channels or chakras so that life energy can flow. It also balances polar qualities such as strength and flexibility. In every pose, one balances effort and surrender.

 

Yogis view hatha yoga as a means to self-transformation. The practice calls for attention to breathing, while keeping unnecessary thoughts at bay and being mindful of each moment. By focusing inward, one learns to be aware of habitual thought patterns and be discerning over which ones are productive or not.

 

Letting go

 

“Yoga is supposed to be about letting go. I want to share this in class. The more you let things out, the more you tune inside.  The ego drops. Fashion is so caught up with the physical. When I discovered yoga, I discovered that the true sense of creativity comes from a non-egoistic place, and it’s an endless source,” says Calma.

 

When the reality of living expenses kicked in, Calma ventured into developing her yoga wear called AHM which stands for Awakened Heart and Mind.

 

After 15 years of fashion, she was picky about fabric and fit. Most of the yoga brands fell below expectations. The fabric was either too heavy or the designs were too busy.

 

She sourced cotton and bamboo fabric and had the clothes made in Hong Kong. The designs echo her architect father’s trademark strong clean lines and restrained palette.

 

“When I lived in a monastery, the mind was quiet, in tune with the Source. All the unnecessary stuff didn’t bother me—stress, deadlines. Now that I’m getting back into this business, it’s more important to make this practice strong. I don’t want to fall off the ladder again.

 

“Being an entrepreneur is  no joke. It’s all the commercialism—the selling, trade shows, delivery and production. But the difference this time in getting back on the mindless rat race is the perspective. You  stay true to your own path and not allow the world to bog you down.”

 

 

Lorena Calma is offering yoga classes in South Forbes Park till February. For details, e-mail [email protected]. For details of the AHM yoga wear visit www.ahmworld.com.