The Peaceful Warrior

She makes honey for Harrods, Selfridges, and Bamford. She takes on big oil companies without batting an eye. She produces 6,000 bottles of organic olive oil each year. She delivers formal addresses to the United Nations General Assembly. She cultivates organic wine on her Tuscan estate. She is a UNICEF Ambassador. She heads up her own production company, releasing award-winning films. She is a wife to rock-legend Sting, a mother of four, and in October, Trudie Styler presented the first of five DVDs in the mind, body, fitness series Trudie Styler’s Warrior Yoga from Gaiam, Inc.

With such a schedule of passionate involvement, it seems quite fitting that she would find a way to incorporate the courageous strength of a warrior to guide her through a lifetime of personal and professional achievements.

“In the ashtanga form of yoga, the warrior position is a very elongated pose with the legs and the arms out horizontally. It is quite an assertive stance,” Styler explains from her New York City home right before Thanksgiving. Just the day before, she demonstrated the power of such a stance at the photo shoot for this article, which took place in the yoga studio at David Barton Gym at Astor Place in Greenwich Village.

Warrior Yoga

When Lynn Powers, CEO of Gaiam, Inc., the leading distributor of lifestyle media, approached her with the idea for the DVD series, Styler’s first choice for a creative partner was naturally the man who has been her yoga mentor for the last four years, celebrity trainer James D’Silva. “James is a wonderful person,” Styler explains. “He is very calm, disciplined, nurturing, and hilarious. We have a great time together. He is just such a warm, inspiring man with a veritable army of devoted students and a very long waiting list of hopefuls.”

Styler and D’Silva went about developing the series based on the warrior pose. “From this one movement, we developed an entire workout in which we pay homage to the strength of a woman, because I do think that women are multi-tasking warriors who have to do a lot in life, particularly in this century,” she says. “From the homemakers to the career women to the fast-lane women who have to juggle home, family, and career, all while looking good—and in order to look good you certainly have to feel good—it is very much with them in mind that James and I created Warrior Yoga.”

The five-disc Gaiam series was filmed on location at Styler’s 900-acre Tuscan villa, Il Palagio. Styler credits the beauty of the estate as one of the main reasons they chose it for the shoot, where backdrops include the garden, the terrace overlooking the Arno Valley, and Il Palagio’s chapel. Although Styler does mention that it wasn’t just the scenic beauty that led to her decision to film at the villa—proximity to her husband, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Sting, played a part in her decision-making process as well. The Grammy award-winner makes several cameos in the eco-friendly lifestyle series, reflecting on the couple’s holistic way of life. Offering the support of his musical genius, the DVDs feature tracks from his classical album Songs from the Labyrinth, as well as interviews with the songwriter, Styler, and D’Silva.

“Creatively, Il Palagio seemed like a good choice for the location, but it also meant that Sting and I could sleep in our own bed at night, in the comfort of our own home. Since we have spent most of our lives traveling, I thought, ‘Why not?’ It was a wonderful time and that we could actually spend two uninterrupted weeks together made it a win-win.”

Il Palagio

The couple has owned the Tuscan estate for 11 years and has spent that time transforming the property into a self-sustaining, biodynamic farmland. More than 70 percent of the food comes from the land itself, including fruits and vegetables that take up a plot the size of a football field. They also produce Tuscan salami, and the aforementioned honey that comes from 100 families of bees who produce three different varieties of the natural liquid sugar. Their organic agricultural way of life is documented in the series with bonus material that includes a tour of the estate’s kitchen and gardens, and a behind-the-scenes peek into how they use the surrounding land to create an eco-friendly house that runs on bio fuels.

In 2010, Styler and Sting will release their first organic wine, Sister Moon, marketed after Sting’s 1987 song featured on the album Nothing Like The Sun. “I wanted to lend my support to what is going on in Tuscany vis-à-vis the wine industry, which, with the exception of the great Brunello and fine estate of Antinori Frescobaldi, is largely collapsing. Il Palagio has lent itself to being fairly sustainable, so we set about looking for a way that we could embark on this venture to convert the vineyards into biodynamic ones.” They found Sonoma County Benziger Estate enologist Allan York, who according to Styler has the best tasting wines because of their biodynamic nature that are processed with less sulfites.

Taking on Texaco

When she is not spending her time farming and practicing yoga, Styler is also recognized throughout the world as a change agent, heralding her support for social and environmental causes. She and Sting founded the Rainforest Foundation in 1988, which Styler reports has raised $30 million since inception. The cause for which she has earned much attention lately coincides with the release of the award-winning documentary film, Crude: The Real Price of Oil, which follows the epic legal battle of 30,000 Ecuadorian rainforest dwellers of the Amazon who attempt to hold Chevron (formerly Texaco) accountable for the contamination of their land, a disaster that has been referred to as “the Rainforest Chernobyl.”

“In my role as a UNICEF Ambassador, I was in Ecuador working on the child exploitation campaign when I heard about the case. Joe Berlinger was there with his movie crew asked if I would come to the rainforest and take a look at the terrible plight of the people whose lands had been destroyed by Chevron’s terrible practices,” she explains. “It was shocking. I have never seen such a heart-wrenching level of contamination. I spoke to mothers who knew the water they were giving their children to drink was poisonous, but they simply had no choice. It’s not like they could go a buy a bottle of mineral water. It is a horrific situation.”

Texaco pulled out of the area more than 30 years ago and reportedly allocated $40 million for the cleanup, but there is a legion of victims and supporters who report otherwise. The case has been tied up in the court systems for 14 years. “Chevron denies that the area is contaminated, but indigenous leaders who are in their 60s and 70s know very well there was no cleanup because they still live in this area that is so polluted that nothing grows there.”

Not resigned to only speak out, Styler puts action behind her ideas, partnering her Rainforest Foundation with UNICEF Ecuador and the local Amazon Defense Fund to raise money for tanks that collect and filter the rainwater. “I asked one of the Ecuadorian mothers what I could do to help and she begged, ‘Please get us some clean water.’ The tanks cost less than $500 each and last for 30 years, providing clean water for families, hospitals, and local communities.” In the final year of the two-year project, they have installed nearly 200 tanks.

“My mother was a hugely compassionate woman and I learned about caring for others from her. My social activism is really just an extension of that,” she explains. “I’m not afraid to speak out for what I believe in and I’m not afraid to be the spokesperson for people whose voices can’t be heard, even if that means going up against the fifth largest corporation in the world.”

Having just addressed the United Nations General Assembly on climate change on November 19, she expresses high hopes for what will come out of the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference, taking place December 8 to 18.

Film Career

And finally, after working out, working the Tuscan landscapes, working for the environment and human rights, she is also working at her job, as the head of Xingu Films, the film production company she founded more than 15 years ago in her quest to take control of her own career. As producer, she played instrumental roles in first-time writer/director Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and first-time writer/director Dito Montiel’s A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. The project that has been the buzz of 2009 is the psychological drama Moon from Duncan Jones, with an award-winning performance from Sam Rockwell. Styler proudly proclaims the film has already been nominated for seven British Independent Film Awards.

If 2010 proves to be anything like the previous Styler years, chockfull of action and achievement, this will certainly not be the last we hear from her.