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Yoga with marc woolford - moving from the core
moving from the core

awakening the spine...

  Vanda Scaravelli was an unusually inspired and inspiring woman who came to yoga relatively late in life, but through her own explorations realised something so simple that it is almost impossible to grasp - the force of gravity is the very thing that supports us upright, and that if are balanced, the wave of the exhale elongates the spine.
So is that Scaravelli yoga? Vanda would have been horrified to hear of such a thing, because to turn it into a method is to miss the point entirely.


a little about Vanda

awakening the spine Vanda was taught directly by Sri B.K.S. Iyengar (Iyengar yoga) for very many years, and later on she also took to heart the teachings of T.K.V. Desikachar (Vini yoga), as well as being a friend of and receiving spiritual advice from Sri J. Krishnamurti. These truly respected teachers, as well as the great Sri K. Pattabhi Jois (proponent of Ashtanga Vinyasa), had all themselves been instructed in the ways of yoga by Desikachar’s father and guru, Sri T. Krishnamacharya.

There are several wonderful teachers from very diverse backgrounds that have had the privilege of working with Vanda directly, and I will forever be grateful for the numerous opportunities I have had to work directly with many of them. She wrote a truly beautiful book titled “Awakening the Spine” that talks of the ‘song of the body’ and makes you want to drop everything and start listening to the breath. If you haven’t done so already, I strongly urge you to read it.


 
   
There was a kindness to her teaching that has been translated into the concept of working with the body’s tendencies to unravel them, which is also a method successfully employed by osteopaths, rolfers and the like. And the value of working with gravity instead of against it is obvious. It just makes sense, philosophically as well as intellectually -we can finally move away from the no-pain-no-gain paradigm, and towards a more Taoist sensibility of going with the natural flow of things. The beauty of her teachings burns bright in everyone she has worked with and inspired, but with Vanda there was a revolution - yoga ceased being the passing on of a tradition, and became the beginning of an open-ended, ever-expanding exploration of what is actually going on right now.
Marc Woolford


| Home | Classes | Workshops |
Retreats : Marsh Farm , Duncton Mill , YogaGypsys, Goa | Holidays : La Roane , La Gomera |

|
more about Marc | more about Vanda | about the anatomy | about teacher training | contact information | links |
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