Scaravelli-inspired yoga workshop: earth, breath and our living spine

Vanda Scaravelli built her approach on three principles: gravity, breath and the wave of the spine.

The spine doesn't need forcing into shape. It lengthens on its own terms once gravity, met by breath, is allowed to do the work.

Gravity here is something to yield to, not fight. We're taught to pull up, hold, engage. Scaravelli asks the opposite: let the weight of the body find the ground, and length appears as a result, not an effort.

Breath makes that yielding possible. It connects gravity below with lightness above, and it's what lets the spine move instead of staying fixed. You feel the difference between a spine that's held and one that's breathing.

The wave is what happens once the first two are in place: a slow, sequential movement through the spine, one that arrives rather than one you make.

But we will add an extra principle to understand this process: fascia, the connective webbing through muscles, joints, body and spine. It helps explain why Vanda Scaravelli's approach works and gives us a practical way to notice how the body links together, how something in the feet shows up in the spine.

You don't need to study fascia to feel it, but for those who want the mechanism: fascia responds to slow, sustained movement rather than force, which is part of why the wave works as it does.

It also matters for flexibility and agility at any age.

Sitting and inactivity stiffen the tissue around the spine in desk workers in their twenties just as much as in people who've simply lived longer.

What the body's connective tissue wants is the same for all of us: gravity into the earth, breath to ease movement.

Vanda Scaravelli kept practising this way into her nineties.

"There is no age for yoga; you can start at 70 or 80, because if it's done with gravity and breath, you receive rather than go against, and you will never damage the body." Vanda Scaravelli

Session outcomes for participants

• An afternoon of exploration, movement experiences, meditation, and breathing.
• Develop a bodily connection, a sense of grounding, and easier breathing over the course of the session.
• Release tension and stress in the body by working with gravity rather than against it. Discover lightness and freedom.
• Ease stiffness in the back, neck, shoulders, and major joints.
• Feel the difference between a spine held rigid and one moving freely.
• Discover that yoga can be a playful, intuitive practice rather than a rigid one.
• Work somatically, with attention on sensation and movement rather than on thinking your way through a pose.
• Spend a calm, unhurried autumn afternoon away from the day's usual pace. This workshop is for you.
• Leave with something practical you can return to in daily life.

Welcome to everyone

This workshop is open to everyone. All ages, all levels, all bodies. You don't need any prior yoga or Scaravelli experience to take part, and there's no assumed level of fitness or flexibility.

If you have an injury, a health condition, or anything you'd like to discuss before booking, contact me directly so we can talk it through.