A PRICELESS RELATIONSHIP

When I met Vanda Scaravelli, I had been practicing yoga for many years in Florence, Italy.

Encountering her and being accepted as a private student slowly led me into a completely new, revolutionary, and intense world of Yoga.

Pushing and straining were banished. I was an ignorant pioneer, attempting to follow Vanda, a trailblazer, who had discovered and charted unexplored territory. It was and continues to be an approach that frees the body that is not “harnessed” or forced to follow instructions that go against its natural flow.

A long transitional period followed for me, involving a process of “undoing,” as Vanda would say, in which my body was invited to use the force of gravity to free the spine. This was combined with the discovery of breath, which, when listened to, revealed a new kind of wave-like movement and unveiled the body’s ability to teach and learn.

Her energy and message have endured a surprising number of years after her passing, and her book, Awakening the Spine, first published in 1991, remains a classic.

People, not only Yoga students, are still interested in her unusual and friendly approach and hunt for more information about her teaching.

In 2024, I discovered in some of the notes that I had taken over the many years when I studied privately with her, I had recorded her exact words, which are still valid today. This prompted me to recognize the importance of sharing her teaching, and for this reason, I wrote Yoga What I Learned from Vanda Scaravelli, in which her exact words appear in blue italics.

Her energy still remains forceful even now when reading them.