Blanche DeVries Bernard, 92 dies
The Rockland County Journal-News, Wednesday, September 5, 1984
By Bill Vlasic

Staff Writer

Blanche DeVries Bernard of Upper Nyack, a pioneer in yoga instruction in America, patroness of the arts and an interior designer died Tuesday at Summit Park Infirmary in Pomona. She was to have turned 93 Friday.

Mrs. Bernard, who lived in the Nyack area more than 60 years, taught yoga and Eastern philosophy at the Clarkstown Country Club, a 160-acre retreat in South and Upper Nyack, that she ran with her husband, Pierre Arnold Bernard.

The religious club flourished for 30 years after the Bernards founded the community in 1918. Mrs. Bernard, known professionally as Ms. DeVries, taught there and in 1945 opened her own yoga studio, the Living Arts Center, in New York City.

“She was an absolutely beautiful woman who was the best example of what she taught,” said Dr. Viola Bernard, a close friend and a New York City psychiatrist. “She was beloved as a teacher and as a friend.”

Mrs. Bernard continued to teach yoga until she was seriously injured four years ago in a fall on a stairway in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.

Her talents included dancing and theater arts, and she headed “The Theater of Much Discipline,” which staged acclaimed dance, theater, and circus productions.

Mrs. Bernard also ran an interior decorating business that included designs of homes in Washington, D.C., and a student nurses residence in Cleveland, Ohio. She also designed the interiors of many of the Calrkstown Country Club’s 30 buildings, as well as the gardens throughout the property.

She was born September 7, 1891, in Adrian, Mich., to William and Elizabeth Shannon. A promising concert soprano, Mrs. Bernard came to New York as a teenager to begin a musical career.

In New York, she met her future husband, Pierre Bernard, an Indian-educated authority on yoga and Eastern religion. The couple founded the Clarkstown Country Club and operated an ashram until the mid 1940s. He died in 1955.

Mrs. Bernard’s last years were spent teaching yoga at her hom eon the historic Moorings Estate in Upper Nyack.

“Above all, was her tremendous caring and concern for those she loved,” said Dr. Bernard, the executor of her estate. “The problems, sorrows, triumphs, and joys of her multitude of freinds and students mattered deeply to her.”

Mrs. Bernard summed up her commitment to meditation and yoga exercises when she told a friend, “Yoga is a profound science for integrating body, mind and spirit into a harmonious whole.”

There were no immediate survivors.

Burial Friday is to be private. Arrangements were made by Hugh E. White Funeral Home, Nyack.