There is an inner world waiting to be discovered through movement in the body. This is Scaravelli Somatics - Yoga experienced with kindness, freedom and gentle curiosity.
“I’m just starting out on my yoga journey, what do I need to know?”
Joining a Yoga class can be daunting. When you think you might try a yoga class, you might say to yourself “I would love to, but my body is sooo inflexible and un-stretchy”. I want to convince you that we can turn this way of thinking on its head (but not literally straight away).
DO I HAVE TO BE ‘GOOD AT YOGA’ TO DO YOGA?
The perception that yoga is only full of fit, young people with perfect bodies that bend at will can be hard to shake, it is all over magazines and television. This stereotype is simply wrong. It can encourage the false perception that even starting Yoga is an unachievable goal. Don’t believe the hype! Yoga can be awesome and is completely available for people with ‘real bodies’ just like yours and mine.
The classes offer an open, friendly and non-judgemental safe place where you can start to explore whether yoga is a thing that you might benefit from and enjoy. Every body is different, and the approach of the classes are personal and highly individualised, responding to what you need in the class. Nothing in the class should be 'too difficult’ as each movement can be explored at different levels. Everything is optional.
WHAT DO I BRING TO YOGA CLASS AS A BEGINNER?
You don’t need to buy any particular expensive yoga outfit or kit. Just come with an open mind and loose fitting or stretchy gym clothes that allow you to move about freely.
Beginner students who come to classes who struggle with their bodies on some level (aches, pains, past injuries, anxiety and stress) have found the classes particularly beneficial if they stick with it for a little while. Your body is beautiful with all its imperfections just as it is; this is most importantly what you bring to class.
If you want to talk more about this, then feel free to drop me an email.
“I’ve tried a few different classes in different styles and want to know more about this style of learning yoga.”
You might have said to a yoga teacher “I just tried [insert brand here] yoga and it was interesting/impossible/weird…what kind of yoga do you do?”. This is a challenging question to answer if the teacher doesn’t belong to an easily recognisable brand of Yoga. My own answers change depending on the context, but the short answer is usually "Scaravelli Somatics". This is a yoga practice inspired by the work of Vanda Scaravelli and many gifted teachers who come out of this tradition.
COMPARING DIFFERENT FLAVOURS OF YOGA
The word yoga is attached to a wide variety of different experiences. A highly respected yoga teacher Pete Blackaby has said that the modern experience of yoga can be grouped into roughly three strands:
1. Gym Workout Yoga 2. Authentic Hindu Yoga and 3. Modern Somatic approaches to Yoga. These three groups are not particularly hard and fast categories but describe a certain direction a teacher or tradition will gravitate toward.
The Scaravelli Somatic style of yoga falls within the more Contemporary/Modern approach. This approach emphasises the internal felt sense of the body, mindfully exploring the interplay between the body and mind.
The feel of the class can sometimes seem like a Restorative Yoga class, or a standard Hatha Yoga class. However, instead of being instructed to perform a certain 'pose', you will often be asked to tune into how a movement feels as you explore its possibilities. For this reason, it is a way of exploring yoga which emphasises personal, individual internal experiences. It can be loads of fun, and amazingly helpful to ‘simply listen to the body’.
“I want to know more about this thing called Scaravelli Somatics, what can you tell me?”
WHAT IS SOMATIC SCARAVELLI YOGA?
If we look a little deeper at an understanding of 'Somatics' (in this context) it refers to “the body as perceived from within”. It points to therapeutic practices which encourage listening into internal physical sensations and feelings as a direction for healing and bringing about integration.
The influence of somatic therapies on Modern Yoga (such as the Feldenkrais and Rolfing) means that sometimes the practice does not always look like classical Yoga from the outside. Classical in sense of specifically recognisable asanas held for periods of time. Rather, the set of yoga asanas are taken as a framework for developing holistic ‘movement questions’. Questions that take the practitioner into a deeper understanding of their own physical presence, as it relates to their own psycho-somatic landscape.
VANDA Scaravelli
Vanda Scaravelli was a highly influential yoga teacher who taught how effective and interesting yoga could integrate softer ‘natural body movements’ in relation to gravity. She has had a massive influence on the way modern yoga is taught. Yet few people outside specific yoga teacher communities know about her. One of the reasons for this relative obscurity is that she thought it absurd that people call yoga anything other than yoga, and so did not want a school named after her.
Scaravelli-Inspired yoga has a certain feel or texture to it, rather than it being a particular brand of yoga.
Quoted below is a fairly good attempt at concisely describing the Scaravelli tradition:
“Scaravelli Yoga is a very gentle style of Hatha Yoga based on…her discovery that when one’s body is well balanced by gravity, the breath naturally flows along the spine like a wave, awakening and elongating it…Asanas are practiced with gravity (never against it) and from an inner intelligence: students are encouraged to be still – to hear and feel the breath’s inner movement – and follow the body’s direction and guidance. Emphasis is placed on poses for the spine, and it is important that all movements remain effortless and light to best remove outer tensions.” (yoga style definitions)
I encountered yoga when I was about 6 years old through my inspirational yoga teacher grandmother. Yoga in one form or another has been my companion ever since.
In 2010 in a field in Sussex (at the Into The Wild Festival) I discovered a radically new way of experiencing yoga inspired by the teachings of Vanda Scaravelli. This approach seemed to match the flow of feelings and inner life of the body and a sense of ease and 'undoing'. In the approach there wasn’t any external idea of ‘harsh ambition’ or ‘getting it right’. I instantly understood how valuable this encounter was. The experience led me on a path that radically changed my thinking about yoga, and yet surprisingly brought me back home to the kind, original and uncomplicated teachings of my grandmother.
I have Studied the Scaravelli Tradition of Yoga with the London Yoga Teaching Group. My Yoga Teaching Diploma is accredited by the British Wheel of Yoga (500hr Diploma BWY). I have studied Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy with Khen Rinpoche Geshe Tashi Tsering. I also hold a Post-graduate Certificate in Education in the Life-long Learning Sector at Canterbury Christ Church University. I also hold an AdvanceHE teaching fellowship.
