The earth beneath us and the pull of gravity are constant companions in our practice of yoga.  We are invited to give the weight of our body down so that we might take up its support offered from beneath, and in turn receive a gentle upward push.   The earth answers back, and the less busy, the quieter we are, the more we become aware of this tiny movement traveling through us, releasing and elongating the spine, putting us in touch with that which is above.

The spine, our structural, nervous and energetic core of the body loves to be given space, loves to be free.  When we take away competition, judgement, comparison and ambition and instead tune into the play of the incoming and outgoing breath and begin to move in relation to its rhythm and the earth, it begins to undo and conveys an important message.   It says life flows freely and strongly and that we are happy to be here.   Then the poses come.

So it is not about appearances - the shape we are making or how far we are stretching.  It is not a method.  It is the staking of our whole being to the present moment, that allows us to feel our wholeness and how we are in fact not separate at all from all those who, and that which surrounds us.   It is an act of love transforming and inviting us to see our beauty and experience our aliveness. 

ABOUT VANDA SCARAVELLI

Vanda Scaravelli came to yoga in her early 40's when Iyengar, who taught daily classes to J. Krisnamurti in Switzerland, where Vanda rented a chalet each year,  was 'so kind as to give (her) a lesson each day as well'.  Several years later at Krisnamurti's invitation T.K.V Desikachar came and was to teach her the importance of the breath.  He described Vanda as the teacher who best captured the spirit of his father, and father to our modern day yoga, Krishnamacharya.

She studied privately with them both for many years and then after they stopped coming continued to practice, in her words trying to make things easy and to find a way without effort.  Seeing yoga as a 'blessed state of receptivity'  and not as something that was imposed on the body, she emphasized the importance of making its practice simple and open, as with our attitudes in life.   She spoke of how what was needed was a friendly approach to our bodies involving patience, care and attention - describing attention as interest, rather than concentration, so that we might be open to discovery.......... to something new happening, and to our going beyond ourselves.

Vanda Scaravelli described this new attitude in performing asanas as being like an initiation, and resisted naming her work in the belief that in doing so it might become systematized and thereby closed to further exploration.

Vanda with Mary Stewart