When I was in high school (in order to protect, well, myself I won't say how long ago it was) I did a walkathon. I remember taking that little sheet and asking for pledges for each mile I walked. I remember the blue shorts I wore. I remember copping out 15 miles into the 32-mile walk (but telling people I made it to mile 25). I even remember never collecting the pledges. (My parents wrote the check for the whole amount.) But what I can't remember for the life of me is what the walkathon was for.

It was too early for AIDS (there, I went and dated myself). It was too late for March of Dimes. MS? Cancer? I have no earthly idea.

And this is a point that would not be lost on Alexander Dunlop.

"When we don't know what to do about something, we have a walkathon," he said. "They have become so commonplace that they are almost meaningless."

So Alexander has come up with an alternative event: The Walk to Prevent Walking. Not really a walk at all-in fact the only walking involved is probably the walk from the subway to the event-the Walk to Prevent Walking is actually an event September 14th in Tompkins Square Park to promote wellness.

"According to traditional (Ayurvedic) medicine, the most important thing you can do for your health is to rest and relax," he said, citing Deepak Chopra's book Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. "Chopra wrote that when people come to him for cancer, he puts them on a regimen of good nutrition, rest and mediation. It's fundamental. If you want to make your body stronger, you need to give yourself the strength and space to do that. So we thought if we could create an event that is a day in the park for people to rest and relax, then we are not only raising awareness for holistic health, we are getting people to do that primary thing that is good for their health."

The idea came to Alexander, co-founder and co-director of the SanaVita Center for Holistic Cleansing, in an ironically angry moment.

"I used to live in Yonkers and I was taking the train home late one night, trying to stay awake, and I missed my stop," he said. "I am standing on the opposite platform waiting and waiting for the train to go back towards Manhattan. As I am looking around, I see that there are several different signs for walkathons: a walk to prevent this, and a walk to prevent that. I thought that there are just too many walkathons and we needed a walk to prevent walkathons. The idea came when I was pissed off and angry and out of all of those negative emotions, I got a great idea to do something proactive."

The basic concept behind the Walk to Prevent Walking is raising awareness for holistic preventative care. According to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank founded by former President Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta, about 70 percent of deaths and costs in the US are attributable to chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer "diseases that can be prevented." In its 2006 report, it wrote: "The US is plagued by preventable disease that have a devastating impact on health and contribute to the nation's soaring health care costs. Proven preventive services remain largely unused and the promotion of healthy communities and lifestyles is undervalued."

In fact, according to the Surgeon General's office, seven of the 10 leading causes of death can be affected by our own behavior and 50 percent of premature mortality is behavioral.

"We are really trying to shift our whole policy as a culture," said Alexander. "We want to lift the veil of ignorance. Instead of having a walkathon to deal with a disease, we can prevent it the first place."

The event in Tomkins Square Park on September 14th will include music, guided mediation, Tai Chi, yoga, and speakers. It will be capped off by DJs and dancing.

"There are a lot of holistic health fairs out there with booths and exhibits and but they don't actually promote good health. They just talk about it," said Alexander. "And while there will be booths at our event as well, the core of the event is the meditation, the yoga and the dancing-actually doing some of the things that can give you good health."

So why the name? Why pick on walkathons? After all, they do raise a lot of money and awareness. According to BusinessWeek, walkathons raise about $1 billion a year and draw in more than 10 million participants.

"When we resist something we give it power and as we try to resist a disease we give it power," said Alexander. "We try to resist disease with walkathons but walkathons give the disease more power. Most walkathons are created with and by non-profit corporate entities, with a board of directors and a paid staff that exists exclusively to have that walkathon. They have created a corporation around the disease-a corporations whose employees' livelihood is based on that disease existing."

While it may be a stretch to accuse a nonprofit designed to fight a disease of actually promoting the disease in the name of job security, Alexander has a point. In the long run, treating the cause is more effective-both on a health and financial basis, than treating the resulting condition.

"After that train ride, I sat on the idea for a while," said Alexander. "When I pitched it to people, I got a mixed reaction. But then when I explained it was to prevent ever even needing walkathons, people got it. I could have called it a holistic health fair but I wanted it to have a catchy title so that it would spark people's interest, and after all, that's how the idea first came anyway as a Walk to Prevent what was seeing as a growing trend in society."

Alexander looks towards a paradigm shift where both individuals and their insurance companies attack the cause of disease and cover alternative remedies, such as nutritional counseling, colonics, yoga or meditation classes, and detoxes. He even imagines that eventually the Walk to Prevent Walking becomes a nationwide phenomenon and, like with walkathons, people even start pledging money, in this case, for preventative health services.

"If these services were covered by insurance, they would be more accessible to people," he said. "The reality is, a lot of these holistic health services take disposable income to pay for. We want to make them more affordable and they way to do that is by raising awareness and educating the public."