Feet First

I have worked for 17 years now, in the approach to Yoga that Vanda Scaravelli crafted. Often called Restorative Yoga, Vanda always insisted it was owned by the practitioner working with their own practice. In her lifetime, according to her protege and dear friend Diane Long - she would not have the work named after her. It is sometimes called 'Scaravelli Yoga' now, but that is a shorthand way of describing an advanced movement practice that is both intuitive and generous to the body. It takes years to make sense. The rewards for the teacher invariably reside among the students. My Friday Class (as they are known) range from 18 to 81 - and even the older ones have fallen over and bounced!! That works for me - especially watching a 75 year old man begin yoga and be fitter, more supple and agile at 81, than he was at 70!

First and foremost, Vanda's approach to any posture began with the feet. Their profound relationship to gravity is considered paramount; the exquisite depth that allows the body to ground itself through the heels, through the eloquent, articulate footprint - releases the breathing spine to lift naturally upward. Vanda called it an 'anti-gravity reflex' and her wisdom in the use of that phrase preempts the most recent discoveries about the body and its fascial matrix, by decades. Now it can be explained in exquisite detail why the body is actually spring loaded - but back then we had only the inner sense and those of us teaching this 'new movement' jumped in to get the proof in experientia - feet first.

That was Yoga, movement. Now came the manual practice of Structural Integration and a huge shift or expansion was required. My feet were awake - but my head and my hands each had a whole new language to learn that they didn't know they didn't speak. The head had to learn anatomy technology and biomechanical angles and levers -  while the hands had to learn to touch people - and the two worlds were so very different  - apparently galaxies apart. What vehicle could travel between them? Better still - how could they be united so they made sense to me and the client...?

...and no long nails for Structural Work!