Scaravelli yoga
I discovered the Scaravelli-inspired approach to practice quite by chance back in 2019. I had felt called to the Isle of Lewis to visit the Callanish stones and while there attended a yoga class at the Uig village hall where the teacher suggested I might like the teachings of a Scaravelli-inspired teacher called Sophie down in Littlehampton.
So I went and visited Sophie and was blown away by this approach to practice which was so very different from the vinayasa practice that had shaped my life for many years. I couldn’t quite understand what had happened but I left that first session feeling a sense of mind-body connection, peace and aliveness that I had never experienced previously. I read and watched all I could of this approach to practice and in this way connected with Diane Long, who was primary student of Vanda Scaravelli herself. I saw that Diane was teaching a workshop in Findhorn with another teacher called Louise Simmons, so I made contact, knowing that I couldn’t afford the time away from my boys, but desperate to feed my immense curiosity in this practice. Fortunately Louise offered online lessons and was happy to teach me.
In those earlier days I would practice with Louise and then do my real yoga practice afterwards, this because I was still very much caught up in the need to exercise and perform postures in a way that had been conditioned into me after years of attending trainings and workshops in the Vinyasa, dynamic, Anusara, Ashtanga and Iyengar traditions.
It was during the pandemic that I finally let go of my need to practice in such a rigid, masculine and disconnected way, and that I adopted the Scaravelli-approach to practice and started sharing this approach in my classes, which sent my students into quite a spin. Many of them dropped away as it was too big a shift, although fortunately many did stay and have benefitted by committing to the practice and others have been attracted back again, seeking deeper connection and freedom.
It wasn’t until I visited Louise in Findhorn in early 2024 that I committed to her as my teacher – I’m inn this for the long run! I have visited her many times since and always return to Guernsey inspired and passionate to deepen into this practice and become a better teacher because of it. What appeals to me the most about this approach to practice is that it has gifted me increased freedom, not only in the body but in my mind too. There is a feeling of aliveness, quietness and calmness that arises and abides for some time after the practice. I love its complexity and yet its simplicity, its demand for attention and yet its softness, its sacred connections between resting and lightness and that it is always changing – there are no rules, no training, no authority outside the practice.
I also love its artistic, poetic and paradoxical nature. I also love that it can free us from the rigidity of ingrained and often unconscious habits, conditionings and programming’s which limit our deeper connection and get in the way of our alignment to truth. I like that it is counter-cultural and encourages our vibrancy and ability to rest more easily into uncertainty let alone the manner in which is heals on a very deep level. Every day I am amazed by this practice and by the profound intelligence of my body and potentiality of my breath , which asks only that I keep getting out of my own way and let go of over and fixing and making myself right.
Scaravelli-inspired practice
Scaravelli-inspired yoga is suitable for everybody from those new to yoga to those who are in their eighties and beyond. This radical practice works deeply with gravity, breath and awareness to re-awaken the potential of our spine and allow a new harmony, freedom, and fluidity in our body, mind and life generally. In time our body reveals a whole new language of movement, born from the spine, and expressing itself in a whole-body approach, healing and releasing deep tension and allowing us to truly be in each moment as it arises.
Everyone can benefit, from those who experience physical discomfort and ailments, to those who wish to increase vitality and wellbeing, to those who need to heal, to those who wish to deepen their existing practices and experience of yoga.
This is a hands-on session in which I work intuitively and compassionately to support and guide your body in discovering new ways of being, relating and connecting, working from the inside out
General classes, intimate classes and private sessions are available. Please contact Emma at emma@beinspiredby.co.uk for more information.
“Is it possible to have a different attitude in which a new intelligence, not imposed by authority but born from interest, attentions and sensitivity, will emerge and in which body and mind, fused in one single action, are collaborating together? It is just this revolutionary attitude that we are going to discover through a new discipline in the practice of yoga”,
