Helen Graham Park, was a successful international architect and life-long student of consciousness, healing and the mind-body connection. Mrs. Park worked closely with C.V. Starr, an international insurance magnate and philanthropist with strong ties to East and South East Asia. In her free time, she devoted herself to the study of cross-cultural models of consciousness with a particular interest in Buddhism, Jungian psychology, quantum physics, and the medical traditions of China, Persia, India and Tibet. Mrs. Park maintained an avid interest in Tibetan Buddhism and spent a year in India in the 1940’s collaboratively researching Tibetan medical texts with her partner Theos Bernard, an internationally acclaimed scholar of India and Tibet and a pioneer in the study of Hatha yoga. She left behind an extensive archive of writings and personal papers documenting her exploration of consciousness and healing and exemplifying, through her own life-story, the potential for humans to heal themselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. These papers articulate a powerful and prescient vision of how the modern sciences and the ancient wisdom traditions of the world can be brought into meaningful dialogue to help humanity resolve the challenges of the 21st century.
The Foundation honors Mrs. Park's legacy and supports her vision through a series of ongoing programs designed to promote dialogue between the modern sciences and the wisdom traditions of the world to facilitate collaborative solutions to the challenges of our era. The Foundation is also initiating plans to archive the complete Helen Graham Park Collection. The collection includes Mrs. Park's personal diaries, journals and papers, a number of unpublished essays and personal effects of Theos Bernard, and a rare collection of valuable Tibetan paintings, texts and artifacts. The completed archive will be made available to scholars for research and the Foundation's rare Tibetan collection will be made available for exhibit at museums and cultural institutions.
