If a film director wanted to make a historic film on the fascinating first steps of European yoga, I would suggest to tell the story of Vanda Scaravelli. The first scene would show Vanda, young and very beautiful, driving her Lancia Flaminia in the Tuscan hills around Florence next to the handsome J. K. Krishnamurti, an afficionado of automobiles. I imagine they do not talk much, rather, they surround themselves by the silence that unites two people in their frienship, as they admire with gratitude the beauty of nature.

Krishnamurti, born near Madras in India in 1895 to a Brahmin family, lost his mother when he was very young. When he was still a child, a group of Theosophists saw him on a beach in India. He was subsequently brought up and educated by them to become “the Buddha Miatreya”, the new world teacher. Vanda was born in Florence in 1908, the daughter of Alberto Passigli, business man, musician and founder of the “Maggio Musicale Fiorentino”, and of Clara Passigli, an excellent pianist as well as one of the first Italian women to graduate from university. In the luminous music room in their villa “Il Leccio”, Vanda met well known musicians and thinkers among them Arturo Toscanini, Arthur Schnabel, Bronislaw Huberman, etc. In 1929 she met Krishnamurti for the first time when, as a young woman she attended a Theosophical meeting in Ommen, Holland with her family. It was on that occasion, in front of three thousand followers, Krishnamurti pronounced his famous speech, “…truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it through any track, any religion, or any sect…”. After dissolving the Order of the Star that the Theosophists had founded in his honour, Krishnamurti started to spread the message of internal freedom that would make him one of the greatest spiritual teachers of his era. Vanda got a degree in piano from the music conservatory, and later studied composition in Paris. She married Luigi Scaravelli, Professor of Philosophy, with whom she had two children, and also led an active social and cultural life. Her friendship with Krishnamurti was a lasting one, and it was thanks to him that she started to study yoga.

Exceptional guests

Vanda’s family was very friendly with Krishnamurti. Each year during his travels between India and America, he would spend time in their villa outside Florence, where no one expected him to be a guru and where he could think and write in peace. During the summers they hosted him in the Chalet Tanneg in Gstaad, Switzerland. There, every morning from seven to eight, the master B.K.S. Iyenger gave him yoga lessons, and after that he would also give a lesson to Vanda. And so, for a few years she had the privilege of studying privately with one of the world’s most famous (yoga) teachers. When she started she was almost 50 years old and going through a difficult emotional period due to sudden death of her husband in May 1957. Yoga, to which she committed herself without expectations or prejudice, proved helpful. “I did not know that it would help me”, declared Vanda in an interview with Yoga Journal (American edition), “because I practised it like tennis or any other game, for me it was fun.  But it acted on me much more profoundly than I could understand at the time. A new life entered my body. In nature flowers bloom in spring and then again in autumn. This is what I felt was happening to me”.
Later, still in Switzerland, Vanda Scaravelli refined the study of breath with Desikachar, the son of Krishnamacharya, who was invited by Krishnamurti. Without searching for it, she studied with two of the most important Indian teachers, with whom she kept up a true friendship. Later when Desikachar passed through Florence, he always visited her and chanted for her. But, as Vanda wrote in her book Awakening the Spine, it was when she stopped having lessons and became her own pupil that yoga revealed itself to her in all its beauty. Once again, Krishnamurti was indirectly responsible. While practising yoga he would exert himself too much and would get tired, so Vanda tried to find a way to help him. She discovered that, by following the wave of the breath, the body would become supple and elastic. She discovered that the secret, so simple that it becomes mysterious, is in the “not doing”, that the less one does, the more one arrives, that one must work “with” not “against” (the body). It is not about proving something, but about “being” without effort. It is about remaining in the wave of the breath with joy, with an intelligent heart, without becoming a slave of ideas. It is about rooting oneself to the ground and allowing the force of gravity to be the base of support, in order to be able to extend the upper part of the body.

The clarity of the writing

Vanda explained her revolutionary approach to yoga in a book, written in limpid, elegant prose, that she wrote when she was 83. The photos in Awakening the Spine show her in challenging and demanding poses that alternate with images of nature chosen by her to illustrate liberty, love, the knowledge of bodies, all fundamental ingredients of her yoga. Here are a few phrases from her book:
“Yoga must not be practised to control the body: it is the opposite, it must bring freedom to the body, all the freedom it needs.”
“There is nothing that must be done. It is not a state of passivity, but on the contrary, it is a state of observation. We must be most active inside ourselves to go “with” and not “against” our body and our emotions. There is beauty in the acceptance of what is.”
“Breathing and yoga exercises bring energy and transform the body from matter to energy.”
“It is not possible to teach how to breathe. But one can discover a lot by attentively following inhalation and exhalation while looking and listening to the heart beat and to the way the lungs move.”

Breath sculpts the physique

Vanda thought that one can start practising yoga at any age, even at 70 or 80, if one follows the breath, if one works “with” the body and not “against” it, and if one is ready to receive the energy.  “Yoga”, she said, “does not modify age, but the body becomes healthier. If we do not retire from life, if we do not close ourselves in a shell, old age does not exist.” In the video “Vanda Scaravelli on Yoga” (Esther Myers Yoga Studio) one can see her at 88 while she teaches in Toronto, and, with elegance and naturalness, demonstrates Urdhva Dhanurasana (the archer pose starting by standing). “I have seen Vanda Scaravelli”, writes Esther Myers, one of her few pupils, “execute Urdhva Dhanurasana for more than ten years, and every time it was as if I saw the arching of her body for the first time. I looked and listened to this powerful woman in her mid 80’s, plant her large foot on the ground and talk of sprouting roots. Then, with a rhythmic movement like a wave, she would arch to the ground and then become erect again, all the while talking about sprouting wings, the freedom of birds, and of love. She would go up and down like this as though she could do it for ever”. Technically (if one can use that work with her), she talked about listening to the body. She explained that if we allow gravity to pull us down, and if from the waist down we send ‘roots’ deep through the ground to help us be grounded, and if we are open and keep relaxed to this thrust towards the earth, the upper part of the body will become light, open, receptive and relaxed. The more the lower part of the body sinks down, the more the upper part lengthens and relaxes. A wave is then produced inside the spinal column and, if one follows it, the body will be able to move with agility.

An unusual teacher

Vanda started teaching when she was 60. She has had very few students (less than 10). Rossella Baroncini has been one of her youngest followers and the only one who was not already a yoga teacher. Rosella started to study with her when she was 26 and continued for almost 20 years until Vanda’s death at 91 in 1999. “We worked three consecutive hours”, states Rossella, “She taught in her house, a small living room that also held her piano. A pleasant, normal room with a beautiful view of the Tuscan hills. She lived alone, but at least once a month she would invite friends, artists, and musicians. I was there when she received the phone call announcing the death of Krishnamurti in ’86. No one knew it yet. They had always remained friends. While he was deeply rooted in Indian tradition, Vanda integrated with her yoga the knowledge she shared with her philosopher husband, the art which she breathed in her family home, Western culture and her feminine sensibilities. She never spoke to me about Patanjali or the Bhagavad Gita,” continues Baroncini, “instead she put me in touch with her profound path through her incredible inner freedom. She never asked me to do anything for her in exchange for her teaching. Rather it was the opposite: it was she who, after class would invite me to lunch. Vanda avoided all kinds of manipulations. She had already lived all the phases of her life. As her children were adults, she was a free woman. Our reciprocal commitment was communication. Between us there was not only a simple friendship but also a great affection. She was my teacher and she is still that. She had a lot of patience, a great faith, and great trust. Although she did not impose anything, having lessons with her was hard work. It was a difficult three hours under her eyes and her strong hands that were never distracted. She wanted yoga to be fruit of a deep internal listening, and technique had to be an individual discovery”. She never wanted to set up a school, a tradition that creates limits. “Teaching”, she said, “starts with freedom and ends with freedom… comprehension brings one to independence and liberty.” In an interview given to the Yoga Journal (American edition), she explained what yoga meant for her. “It is health, it is comprehension, it is creation, and it is above all love. When you are open, love comes in. It is when you are defensive and fearful that you close the doors. When you are open, you can communicate with the person that is near you, with nature, with the world, and you become one with everything that surrounds you”.

by Emina Cevro Vukovic

Emina Cevro Vukovic
www.eminacevrovukovic.eu

Translated by Paola Scaravelli, from the Italian Yoga Journal, June 2008.
www.yogajournal.it

Rossella Baroncini
www.rossellabaroncini.com

CAPTIONS OF VANDA’S ARTICLE
FOR READING AND LOOKING

Vanda Scaravelli, Awakening the Spine, Harper Collins, San Francisco (1991) Awakening the Spine
In this book, written when she was 83, the teacher explains her revolutionary approach to yoga.
Can be purchased through Esther Myers Yoga Studio (www.estheryoga.com/products/book).

Vanda Scaravelli on Yoga DVD, Esther Myers Yoga Studio (1991)
Vanda’s student Esther Myers interviews the famous teacher in Toronto. Interviews, conversation, and practical demonstrations.
Can be purchased through Esther Myers Yoga Studio. (www.estheryoga.com/products/dvds).

In her footprints

The teaching of Vanda Scaravelli continues today in Italy with Rossella Baroncini (www.rossellabaroncini.com), Diane Long (www.dianelongyoga.com), Sandra Sabatini (www.sandrasabatini.info) and Elizabeth Paunz (www.florencescaravelli.com). In Toronto (where she visited her daughter), Esther Myers (1947-2004) (www.estheryoga.com/classes) was the founder of a school, Esther Myers Yoga Studio, that has trained many teachers and has spread Vanda’s approach to yoga in Canada and the United States. Monica Voss (also a student of Vanda) and Tama Soble now own, direct and teach at Esther Myers Yoga Studio.

Pranayama is often translated and understood as a method to control the breath. In this video, Monica Voss of Esther Myers Yoga in Toronto points out that viewing pranayama as a means to control the breath can actually be a source of stress and anxiety. “We were born, and we began to breathe, and nobody needed to teach us.” Join Monica on an exploration of pranayama, what it is, what it isn’t and why it’s easier to practice than you might think.

Pranayama: Breathing Exercises from Toronto Body Mind on Vimeo.

Western yoga practitioners are captivated primarily by asana. For many, this is the only aspect of yoga that they will engage in their lives, which some would describe as similar to eating the bun and ignoring the hot dog (tofu hot dog, of course). While asana-based yoga provides great physical benefits, adding a little pranayama to your practice can help you cultivate the single most important activity in your life: breathing.

Video and photography by EK Park.
Toronto Body Mind (www.torontobodymind.ca)

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health issues in Canada according to the 2006 Community Health Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing from Statistics Canada. In this video, Tama Soble of Esther Myers’ Yoga Studio discusses the natural causes of anxiety and how yoga can help establish and maintain a balance between anxiety and relaxation.

Yoga for Anxiety from Toronto Body Mind on Vimeo.

While anxiety is a natural and necessary part of our life, the stresses of urban living can lead to heightened levels of anxiety and the suppression of our ability to relax and cultivate peace of mind. Join Tama as she explores a number of postures and methods to ground the body and mind, release postural tension and ultimately benefit from the use of yoga to manage stress and anxiety in our everyday life.

Note that, while these techniques can help in dealing with everyday stress and anxiety, you may also wish to consult a health care professional if you experience prolonged periods of heightened anxiety. The Canadian Mental Health Association estimates that 1 in 10 people suffer from an anxiety disorder, however the stigma surrounding these disorders often discourages people from seeking help.

Photo and Video by EK Park, Toronto Body Mind (www.torontobodymind.ca)
Thursday May 26, 2011

“The pregnant body is changing if not daily, then sometimes weekly, and certainly monthly. Those changes can be profound, they can bring up structural stress or postural stress, and they can bring up a lot of strong emotion.  And quiet time for processing those emotions and for releasing that postural stress is so important.”   Monica Voss

Nine months might seem like a substantial chunk of time, but for a pregnant woman, they can fly by in a whoosh of excitement, anticipation, worry and joy. With everything from changing hormones to increased appetite, pregnancy incurs such massive change in the body and mind that it can often be overwhelming to the expecting mother. Perhaps not surprisingly, yoga, with its focus on mind-body awareness and connection, is a great tool for pregnant women to help them deal with the changes that accompany a growing baby both before and after birth.

Yoga for the Pregnant Woman from Toronto Body Mind on Vimeo.

According to Monica Voss, yoga teacher at Esther Myers Yoga Studio, prenatal yoga is a practice appropriate for the issues and developments in all trimesters. On the physical level, yoga is an ideal way to maintain fitness during pregnancy without high-impact exertion and to help prepare the body for labour itself. As the fetus begins to grow and expand outwards, for instance, a great deal of structural stress can occur as a result.  When the woman’s centre of gravity begins to shift, posture may well follow suit, to lead to the repositioning or tilting of the back and pelvis.  Such shifts may cause pain or discomfort, which, in conjunction with a growing belly and new energy requirements, can create new physical demands and sensitivities.

Many of these new physical sensations may be mitigated by poses and movements that gently assist the body in making adjustments. Certain positions, Monica says, can help relax the body while encouraging it to create space for the baby. Seated asanas, for instance, can help release the hips and inner thighs—poses which can open the pelvis and expand the groin both to make room for baby as it develops prenatally and to open the birth canal region prior to labour for a smoother birth. Others can help alleviate the physiological strain incurred by extra pregnancy weight and uterine expansion. Poses such as Upavistha Konasana, or a seated wide-legged straddle, provide a nice stretch in the hamstrings and calves that can relieve painful leg cramps in muscles that may be fatigued from carrying additional weight or which are suffering from a restricted blood flow as the growing uterus puts pressure on the veins that return blood from the lower body to the heart.

Standing positions can similarly help expecting mothers adapt to the changes in their bodies. As Monica notes, the baby will grow “forward into the area of the least resistance, the abdominal muscles”, yet this also means that the baby will move away from the mother’s spine, where it needs to be positioned for the birthing process. In prenatal yoga, therefore, standing postures may be adjusted for the mother’s changing centre of gravity.  With their feet wider apart, women will feel more stable and secure as they feel a greater connection to the ground and to gravity. And more criticially, when appropriately positioned in Tadasana, for example, the prenatal yoga teacher can then assist women with their posture in order to help them draw the baby back toward the spine and to settle the pelvic floor.

Of course, yoga is an excellent way for expecting mothers to help settle their minds and emotions as well as their changing bodies. Pregnancy can create a great deal of excitement, uncertainty, and anticipation that can stimulate a flurry of changing emotions and concerns. In conjunction with hormonal change, these mental and emotional fluctuations can cause stress that may lead to anxiety and fatigue in the new mother. Yoga, through grounding and breathing exercises, can help women release emotional tension and find relaxation. Performing controlled and deep breathing exercises while lying on the floor, says Monica, is a good way to allow the woman to become grounded, a technique which can diffuse high levels of anxiety and excitement, while also giving the woman time for herself and the developing baby. The practice of Pranayama during pregnancy can strengthen a mother’s fitness and help her provide vital energy for her baby. Breathing is therapeutically ideal for both supplying the baby with adequate oxygen and prana, or energy, in utero, while also preparing the mother for labour. A conscious awareness of breathing during birth can assist the mother to reduce the physical and emotional tension of labour.

Post-natally, yoga also offers great benefits to the new mother. Continued practice of breathing and asana can help the new mother adapt to the changes and demands of motherhood, while giving her time to relax into her new role. Because caring for an infant can take a physical toll on a mother, yoga can work to alleviate the tightness of the upper body and legs by renewing a sense of energy through stretch and an awareness of muscular relaxation. At the same time, Monica notes, deep belly breathing can return sensitivity and intimacy to the lower body and pelvis, which may have become flaccid or lax.

While Monica warns that yoga should not be considered a cure for post-natal depression and that women who suspect they have symptoms of post-partum depression should seek medical help, she does recommend that new mothers partake in post-natal or mother and child yoga classes to allow them to benefit from the sense of community that yoga can provide. Recommitting to your yoga practice at this important time can help women become grounded in their new roles and prepare for the many new experiences ahead.

Video and photography by EK Park. Article by Krista Weger, Toronto Body Mind (www.torontobodymind.ca)
Tuesday, April 26, 2011

There are many therapies available to manage chronic stress and anxiety.  Yoga and meditation can act as supportive partners to these therapies.  Yoga and meditation can assist us in becoming more aware of our patterns of reactivity and give us a practical, positive and concrete means of responding mentally to stress and anxiety.  Yoga and meditation can reenergize the body’s natural relaxation response, moving us toward homeostasis. Once learned, these practices are tools that we carry with us wherever we go.

The word anxiety comes from the Latin “anxius”, which means a condition of agitation and distress. Anxiety is a feeling that many of us have experienced.  In its most moderate forms, anxiety can actually be useful.  For example, the heightened awareness that comes with anxiety can help us instantly refocus our attention on driving following an avoided collision.  Anxiety can enhance productivity and performance, as it can sharpen our awareness and keep our attention exclusively on the task at hand. In other words, there are situations in which the startle reflex is positive, useful and even welcome.  Problems arise when anxiety becomes elevated, chronic and habituated and begins to impact on the quality of our daily lives.

Anxiety and fear evoke similar experiences in the body.  Both trigger similar feelings of dread and/or foreboding.  The physical responses in the body are also similar.  Both fear and anxiety cause elevated blood pressure, rapid heart rate and sweating, among other symptoms. The essential difference between anxiety and fear is that when we are frightened, we understand what we are responding to.  We can identify the danger or threat.  When the danger or threat is not clearly identifiable, this is anxiety.  The inability to identify clearly what we are anxious about is a hallmark of anxiety.  A disproportionate stress response to a given situation is another indicator of anxiety.

At present, research on both anxiety and fear note a potential interplay between biology, cognitive-emotional influences and stress.  There is a growing body of research that yoga and meditation can have a positive impact on all of these systems, and therefore an effect on the way in which we deal with stress.  In order to experience the potential positive effects of yoga on our bodies and minds, and to re-pattern the postural anxiety that we have embedded in our bodies, we must practise regularly.  With regular, intentional practice, we can begin to teach the body/mind new, more positive patterns and remind ourselves of a time when stress and anxiety were not so deeply embedded. The unifying theme in all of these practices is that we remain focused on what we are experiencing moment by moment.  That experience will at various times be physical, emotional, intellectual and/or some combination of the three.  The primary questions are: What is happening at this moment?  What am I responding to and how? What is my experience at this moment?  Trust your answers.  They are accurate.  You are engaging in an inquiry in which you are the expert.  The attitude of inquiry itself can act to ground and steady the mind and the body.

By practising remaining with each moment as it reveals itself, we recapture a relationship with and an understanding of our own bodies and minds.  We begin to trust our own experiences, and may begin, over time, to note our habituated physical, emotional and psychological patterns in response to stress and anxiety. We sit with what arises.  We watch the experience unfold, and we can also observe it changing.  When anxiety arises, it is not us, it is merely anxiety.  Again, over time, we may be able to observe our responses to anxiety and simply be with them, trusting ourselves to meet and observe the experience; knowing that the stressful time will pass.  The experience of anxiety arrives and it also leaves. Not being in the past with previous experiences of the sensations that arise with anxiety and equally, not being in the future (anticipating what may occur), leaves us with sitting in the present moment.  But first, we begin with simple practices or inquiries that allow us to connect to ourselves and to the changing landscape of our bodies and minds moment by moment.

• We begin with three basic constructs for practice:
• Asana (postural practice)
• Pranayama (breath practice)
• Meditation (focusing the mind)

The approach to asana that we teach at Esther Myers Yoga Studio is deeply integrated with pranayama practice, and has been called moving meditation. Ultimately, we can practise these three branches of yoga (asana, pranayama and meditation) separately, or we can integrate them.  Practising yoga in this integrated manner can:

• assist with neural/muscular re-patterning
• heighten our ability to be aware of the experience of being in our own bodies
• assist with developing the skill of staying with each moment as it occurs
• free up the breath so that it can support the body efficiently
• guide us to an experience of the relaxation response, therefore encouragingthe body to access this response more readily
• empower the practitioner to sit with negative sensations and notice them change

When practising asana (postures) with the intention to release a stressed body and mind, there are two basic groups of postures that we can begin with: those that help relieve postural anxiety and those that free up the respiratory system.  Postures such as Bridge, Half Bow, Square Lunge and Dancer release and lengthen the hip flexors.  This is an area that holds a great amount of postural anxiety.  Little Boat, Child’s Pose and Squatting are examples of postures that release and lengthen the lower back.  Twisting while supported on the ground as well as basic arm and shoulder girdle postures such as Eagle and Cow’s Head free tension from the shoulder girdle, neck and head.  As postural anxiety seats itself in the hip flexors, the low back and the shoulders and neck, choose postures that bring ease and mobility to these areas.

Side bending postures such as Standing Side Bend and Gate Pose stretch the musculature between the ribs allowing for the possibility of freer and fuller respiration.  Simply paying attention to the breath and allowing oneself to breathe without interference can also help to ease respiration.  Supine twists are also effective.

Pranayama practices that encourage the relaxation response work well for those living with excessive stress and anxiety.  Timed Belly Breathing, Ujjayi Breathing  and Alternate Side Breathing  (without using the hands) are examples of pranayama or breathing practices that help many individuals and can be practiced anytime, anywhere.

Meditation practices that help to calm mental chatter and distraction, such as counting backwards and various mudra (hand position) sets assist in settling the mind and stimulating the relaxation response.

Give yourself time to feel and experience each of the practices.  The simple knowledge that you have access to asana, pranayama and meditation practices can be empowering. Remember that the most important question is: what is happening at this moment as I practice?  Stay with the feeling of your breath moving your body and the relationship of your body to the earth. Note physical sensations, thoughts and emotions as they arise.  Note them, but do not hold onto them or push them away.  Notice how you feel in the moment(s) when you have completed your practice.  Stay with the experience; stay with yourself.

Consider that staying with your body and mind in each moment can be practiced throughout your day, not just during yoga practice.  Over time, these practices may become an anchor for you when you are experiencing anxiety.  Potentially, other aspects of your life may be affected.  Enjoy the experience of observing with curiosity and persistent, gentle focus.

Bibliography: Calming Your Anxious Mind, second edition, Jeffrey Brantley, MDWherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Living, Well With Anxiety, Carolyn Chambers Clark, ARNP, EDD, The Instinct To Heal, David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PHD
Why Yoga Works, Peter Blackaby

by Tama Soble
January 2011

The messages seem to be that:

• Hatha Yoga is physical and therefore not spiritual (I’m not sure how/why that follows, since the body is our reality, mind, body, breath, and spirit are interconnected and even indivisable, and all practices of Yoga supposedly promote integration, rather than division and separation),
• Hatha Yoga is not “enough” to promote growth and development in life and prepare for death (as if we could possibly know, except intuitively, what would prepare us adequately for giving birth or for dying), and finally,
• Hatha Yoga without a strong background in the study of Patanjali is not traditional (while we know that there were all sorts of yoga traditions before, during and after Patanjali or his school codified their position).

Many seem to uphold Patanjali’s text as the intellectual authority. I do not. Where does that leave me in the yoga community’s eyes? One important question for all of us to ask is, what is the role of tradition and what is the role of personal experience? Overwhelmingly, the panel in August leaned toward the outside authority of the Sutra (a “textbook for life”, someone said) and away from the personal, the instinctive, away from exploration, autonomy, self-sufficiency, and discovery through the body. Are we denying the body? If so, why? Are we afraid? Or is it simply that we lack confidence in the body’s ability to partner the intellect?

Esther Myers Yoga Studio seems to have a reputation for teaching the injured and unfit. What we do is find ways for everyone who wishes to participate to participate as fully as possible regardless of physical condition, size, shape, and level of experience. One of our students was admonished recently while attending an Astanga Yoga class in Toronto that postures should never be adapted because the pose is always more important than the body. How could that possibly be true? If we are sending that message, are we aware we may be causing harm by doing so? The study of yoga Sutras is challenging and exciting to many people. But does our knowledge of the texts positively affect our behaviour and values as teachers, or is it separate from them?

An article in a recent YFT newsletter suggested that Hatha Yoga has become a practice for and about “bendy bodies”. The implication was that the physical postures and movements are for superficial people and deliver superficial results. My sensibility and experience over 30 years is exactly the opposite. The writer went on to say that Madame Blavatsky didn’t recommend the physical exercises (what she witnessed was probably pretty strange). But why would we defer to Madame Blavatsky, or anyone else on this matter? Or any matter? Hatha Yoga as I know it is intelligent, thoughtful, creative and deeply individual, and therefore anti-authoritarian. If the goal of Yoga is liberation, why would we take anyone else’s say-so? We can be free.

Analyzing guruism would be an important part of a “tradition” conversation, should it take place. There seems to be confusion in our community regarding the Hatha Yoga tradition. Hatha Yoga as it is practised now is only 100 years old and except for sitting crossed-legged on the ground, which is ancient, was mostly designed by one person! How did that person’s ideas become so powerful? And if he came up with an ingenious system for body/mind revelation, who is to say that anyone can’t? I might be tempted to describe my approach to Yoga Zen-like: we don’t need an intermediary, we can realize our lives fully by ourselves.

The memorable moments for me during “Yoga and Death” were not the expression of intellectual constructs, the should’s, the shouldn’t's, the must’s and have to’s. When Gitta spoke about her use of prayer during an illness, and when the young man in the audience described how he and his friends attempted to deal with the recent death of a fellow student, the room stilled. Our hearts were touched. We felt something real and true. As human beings, we are seeking moments of body/mind/emotion/breath integration, moments of deep connection with each other, aren’t we? Isn’t that the most important thing, that we’re together in our struggle and our search? What is spirituality, if not that?

YOGAChicago November – December 1998
By Sharon Steffensen

My Hatha Yoga practice and teaching are based on three principles learned from Vanda Scaravelli, my teacher for twelve years, and synthesized by Esther Myers, my teacher, colleague and friend for almost twenty-five. In all of the poses, all of the time, we breathe, we ground the body consciously and we elongate the spine in wavelike pulsations, passively or actively using gravity for support and often releasing deeply held tension. These three principles – breathing, grounding and releasing – are universal life skills, and their application to the asanas naturally results in individual expression of the asanas and the development of a rich inner life.

I have survived six decades without serious injury, surgery or illness, so it is difficult for me to imagine experiencing continual pain and deep fatigue. One of my students has struggled through darkness and depression to the light of a very new life using grounding principles to help slough off despair, breathing to rebuild, and elongation to reach out to others. Now she offers her students the sanctuary and the resources she sought, providing succour, relief and inspiration.

Kathy Felkai immigrated to Canada from Hungary in 1980 and opened a high-end jewellery store in downtown Toronto. She had the “Superwoman syndrome,” taking care of two children aged seven and seventeen, a home and the business. In her early forties, she had an active gym routine of aerobics and weights when she began to feel unexplained pain in her body.

“About ten years ago, I got aches and pains in my shoulders and arms,” she says. “I thought I had just overdone the weights. Then I began to get tired, which was very unusual because I always had tremendous energy. The pain and tiredness would go away and come back, until it began to take me off my feet for a couple of days at a time. When it really hit, I couldn’t get out of bed. My organs felt so tired, I couldn’t even breathe. For me who was always so energetic, it was devastating.”

Kathy consulted her family doctor after reading a newspaper article about chronic fatigue. Her doctor told her, “I don’t believe in it, there’s no such thing, you’re just depressed.” Eventually Kathy was able to get a referral to a rheumatologist and after six months of struggling with symptoms and unhelpful advice, she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS).

Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia often co-exist; they are both chronic, but they are not the same. Dr. Valeria Blumenkranz, a yoga practitioner and medical doctor with extensive experience working with clients with CFS and FMS, stresses the difference between the conditions. “With CFS, the issue is a deep tiredness, an exhaustion that hardly allows you to accomplish anything, and with FMS, it’s the pain that impedes your activities. The only way to diagnose is through symptoms. There’s no blood test, for example, and no cure. The treatment for both conditions is the same: anti-depressants and gentle physical exercise.”

Kathy went to clinics and saw doctors who didn’t offer much except increasingly stronger painkillers. She took the anti-depressants, which gave her the strength to begin her recovery, but had to sell her jewellery business because she just couldn’t manage it. She also began to experience memory lapses.

“I was handling large amounts of cash and began to wonder what I did with that money or those diamonds. I was able to manage the pain and even the tiredness, but not the brain fog. I always thought of myself as bright and quick, but with the brain fog, I became even more anxious about what was happening to me.”

A trainer at her gym suggested that Kathy try yoga, and although the idea was “almost degrading after all my weight training,” she was eager and desperate to move her body again.

“I had no experience of yoga, didn’t know any yoga people, had never read a yoga book. I had no body-mind connection. The yoga postures did not really interest me, but the relaxation felt so good. I think I managed to take the focus away from the pain. And I became fascinated by yoga. I had no idea why it might be working.”

That sense that “something felt good” in the body motivated Kathy in a profound way. She had worked her body very hard, felt betrayed by her body, grew to hate her body, and was now finding her way out of suffering through mindful attention to the body. The revelation that the body and mind are indivisible helped Kathy realize an essential link in recovery. “It’s so important when something feels good to use the mind. If you know something and feel it, some amazing changes can begin.”

Dr. Blumenkranz suggests that CFS and FMS patients be viewed holistically. “There’s a strong sense of not being understood. Therefore, people suffering from chronic pain and fatigue tend to do better in a group led by someone who has experienced what they are experiencing.” In a yoga practice, she recommends movement with concentrated focus on the body and spending only short periods of time in each position. Conversation, supportive touch and rest are also beneficial.

“It started with the physical but went way beyond it,” says Kathy. “The grounding for me now is being present, looking at things as they are, not letting the emotions carry me away. I used to be always thinking of what could happen, what if? Soon that one little thought became an elephant!” Kathy also learned that breathing is an invaluable tool for soothing her anxiety. The breathing became “the way in.”

The focus on the release of the spine, she says, has “opened up my mind, opened my life. I’m more accepting, more tolerant, my values have changed. I feel like I enjoy life even more now than before. Yoga has opened my eyes to the little things I don’t think I noticed before, like taking a walk on a beautiful day. I never had time for that before.”

The body is the here and now, and is our grounding in reality. I have observed Kathy as a student in yoga classes for many years now and it is amazing to witness her process. She knows the route to releasing pain is through the body and she has a true desire to feel her body. Every week in class, she physically expresses the surging energy of nature renewing itself. In Vanda Scaravelli’s words, “The resulting wave is extraordinarily powerful… an unexpected opening follows, an opening from within us, giving life to the spine… the body awakens into another dimension.”

Kathy never expected the level of recovery she’s experienced and is excited about the effects of physical movements on thought patterns, emotions, attitudes and even ethics. She was determined to persist by herself without medical intervention and without much familial support, but she claims that yoga gave her the extra courage and motivation required to teach. For the past five years, she has been instructing a breast cancer class designed by Esther Myers at the Marvelle Koffler Breast Centre in Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital, and spearheaded the yoga program at the Wasser Pain Management Clinic.

Kathy considered teaching as an expression of her desire to help, but also as a challenge and an experiment – to find out how far she could take this practice that was at first a last-ditch effort at reclaiming some part of her devastated life. How deep can the breath go? How full the awareness? And what really are the effects?

To connect with the reality of the body begins the process of loving and healing the body. Kathy’s practical message to her students is to not identify with the pain. “You have that pain, but that’s not who you are. Movement creates pain, but you must go through pain. If you don’t, what is the future? If you stay where you are, there’s still pain.”

Kathy feels that these days her life is good. What she’s learning, teaching and experiencing are integrated. As well as a yoga teacher, she is a single mother with an active social life and many interests. She claims that anyone can help to transform difficulties. “It’s not complicated. It’s not only for the special few. You don’t have to be a genius or a scientist. You just have to make the decision!”

As I listen to Kathy’s story, I’m reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh’s simple and strong invitation for beginning walking meditation: “Anyone can do it. It only takes a little time, a little mindfulness, and the wish to be happy.”

My yoga practice has made me feel grounded, happy and at home in my body and mind. Kathy’s bravery is a reminder that yoga prepares us with little challenges, such as the Headstand, for bigger ones: sickness, disability, death. Now, as I pray for courage to face all obstacles, I trust in the breathing, the grounding and the releasing that I experience through yoga.

Published by Ascent Magazine www.ascentmagazine.com
Issue 38, Sustainablity, Summer 2008

Scaravelli, Vanda. Awakening the Spine. New York: HarperOne, 1991.
Thich Nhat Hanh. The Long Road Turns to Joy. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1996.

Tama Soble: I first came to yoga when I was dancing. I was rehearsing and touring and my body was under quite a bit of stress. I was also under psychological stress from being on the road and from the pressures of performing. One of my co-dancers in the company had found Esther Myers’ yoga classes and she felt that taking yoga would be good for everyone in the company. I went to check it out and from the first class I really felt a deep benefit. I felt my nervous system and my emotions responding. I felt that I had access to ease in my body in ways I hadn’t had access to in a very long time. I was sold right from the beginning. I continued to study with Esther Myers and also with Monica Voss during the time that I was dancing and I also studied with them through two of my three pregnancies. Yoga has been a great support for me throughout my adult life.

MW: I would imagine that as a dancer, which is a competitive field, that there would have been a lot of stress and anxiety and yoga would have been really helpful for you at that time.

TS: Absolutely. When you’re performing you are competing with yourself, you are competing with others and you are under pressure all the time to be at your best even at times when you don’t feel your best. It was lovely to practise yoga and to feel the pleasure of moving my body for it’s own sake; to feel the pleasure of integrating the body and healing it.

MW: How did you go from being a dancer to getting involved in yoga teacher training?

TS: I moved overseas for a number of years. I lived in New Zealand with my family where I continued to dance and teach. When we returned to Toronto I felt very strongly that it was time for some kind of change and I had always had in the back of my mind that yoga might be a very good transition for me, a good second career. At that point, I hadn’t been to Esther Myers Yoga Studio in a couple of years. I went back to take a few classes and again from the moment I walked in I felt like this was home, this was the right place for me and I applied for the Teacher Training Programmme. I went through the programme while Esther was still alive so I had the benefit of training directly with her and also with Monica Voss and Paola di Paola. They were a dynamic team. After graduating from the programme, I became a teacher at the Studio. After a few years I joined the Teacher Training faculty. This was, and continues to be both an honour and a wonderful challenge. When Esther passed away in 2004, Monica and I took over the Studio. It has been an amazing experience to develop all of the classes, workshops and programmes that we offer. The community has been tremendously responsive and supportive.

I know in my experience, because I study and take classes at Esther Myers Yoga Studio, that I had the same experience. I had a yoga teacher once who said that when I find the right place I’ll just know and it was like that when I walked into Esther Myers Yoga Studio. When I did my first class with you, I thought this is the person I really want to study with.

TS: Thank you.

MW: You are so welcome. Tell us about the yoga at Esther Myers Yoga Studio because it is so unique.

TS: In a way it’s quite simple in that we work with three basic principles all of the time; breathing, grounding and elongating. For example, as I exhale my body relaxes, that relaxation assists me in giving the weight of my body to the ground or to the earth. Then the third principle comes into play. After the relaxation, movement, ease and mobility can actually spontaneously occur in the body. We work with breath, gravity and release, and the way in which the relationship between these three principles plays out in each asana. How does it feel when I breathe? How does it feel to relax the body into the ground? Can I feel contact with the ground? The contact might be through my feet, it might be through my hands, my shoulders, the whole back of my body; whatever is in contact with the ground draws the attention. And then how can those two elements, breathing and relaxing, help me to get rid of tension so I can be more mobile? Initially we make these connections in the yoga postures, and then down the road in other aspects of our lives. We don’t do yoga just so that we can be mobile on the mat; we do yoga so that we can be physically, emotionally and psychologically at ease throughout our day, throughout our lives.

MW: I heard Donna Farhi speaking not too long ago. People were asking her how she uses her yoga in her day-to-day life now. She made this really interesting comment about how in her thirties, she had spent a lot of time trying to be able to get her foot behind her head and now she finds that kind of thing really almost ridiculous because it’s not very functional. She focuses on things that help her get through her day, to help her run her farm, help her with her horses.

TS: I think the question is why am I doing my yoga? How does this integrate with who I am as a human being? How can it help me?

MW: Exactly. When people are in a pose, they’ll always ask me should I be doing this or should I be doing this and I always say to them well what is your intention here? It always comes back to being really clear about what it is we’re doing with our yoga.

TS: Absolutely, and in that questioning, in that intelligent asking of why and that curiosity, we are getting to know ourselves and we are honing the body-mind connection.

MW: This leads perfectly to my next question. This radio show Returning to the Body-Mind is really about tuning in to the wisdom of our bodies. I came up with the name for the radio show in one of your classes in savasana. We are talking about tuning into the wisdom of our bodies for personal growth, for spiritual growth. Can you explain how you see yoga as a way to unite body, mind and spirit?

TS: One answer is that they already are connected. In fact, the way we practise, with the attention on the breath, acts as a bridge between the mind and the body. This way of practising simply guides us back to the natural state of integration that we were born with. Acknowledging the natural integration of the mind and body helps us to be the best that we can be. If we come back to that natural connection, we can begin to know ourselves more fully, and then we can reach out into the world and make choices about how we interact with others, the kind of work that we want to do, how we want to parent and what kind of partnerships we want to have with other people. To my mind, this is the soulful, spiritual aspect of our practice. Attending to the body-mind connection brings us back to the best in ourselves and from that place of quiet awareness we make choices about who we are and how we relate to the world.

MW: How do you define anxiety?

TS: The responses in the body when we are anxious are very similar to the responses in the body when we are afraid. The distinction is that when we are afraid, we often understand the object of our fear. When we are having an anxiety response it can be one of two things: either we don’t really know why we are anxious or the response is completely disproportionate to the situation at hand. Anxiety lives in the muscles, it lives in the bones, in the nervous system. It is a full body-mind experience.

MW: Anxiety can be very detrimental to our health and our well being.

TS: Yes, it can be very detrimental. There is also the flipside in which anxiety can actually be helpful to us. A little bit of anxiety heightens our awareness and helps us to focus. For instance when we are driving and a car swerves into our lane there is an anxiety response that pulls us into focus and allows us to avoid a collision. Then the relaxation response, which is another gorgeous full body-mind response, kicks in and basically says ‘ok that’s over, calm down’. We return to normal. The nervous system quiets and the breathing levels out. Anxiety can also help us to focus when we are preparing for exams in university or preparing a project for a presentation at work, when we are trying to meet any kind of deadline. We need a little bit of anxiety to get us through certain kinds of situations and we can say anxiety is a normal part of being a human being. We want it to be available, but we also want the balance of the relaxation response to kick in and help us level out again. We step over into it being negative or being a disorder when the anxiety starts to make us dysfunctional, unable to get through our day, unable to interact, to go to school, to go to work. When anxiety becomes pervasive and effects the quality of our lives, it’s a problem.

MW: What would be an example of that?

TS: There are individuals who suffer from anxiety disorders that are unable to leave their own homes. There are individuals who are afraid of giving presentations. People who limit their careers because they cannot give a public speech; people who are afraid of interacting with new people so then don’t go into new situations. Then there are anxiety disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, in which the individual suffering with the disorder engages in specific behaviors or rituals. In the end, anxiety is defined as a disorder when day to day life is strongly effected.

MW: People talk a lot about stress and you focus on anxiety and I’m curious about your reasoning.

TS: We have a lot of stress or stressors in our culture, particularly in our urban culture. I see stress as a short lived or specific moment in time where there is discomfort. We could call it low-level anxiety. My boss is stressing me out, but then that moment passes, and I come back to being able to function in a calm, normalized way. Or I have a stressful situation with one of my children, it feels like pressure in the moment but it’s contained. I recover and move on with my day. If we have a number of stressful situations that accumulate and we are not able to come back to a calmer feeling, a calmer state of body-mind, then those stresses create a situation where we’re feeling anxious for much of the time, but there is no particular stress occurring. At this point we are not responding to a specific situation or a specific person. We just may have this agitated, unsettled, feeling of foreboding. The reason I’m interested in this point is because, that’s when one needs to step in and say ‘I need to change something, I am not managing this very well’. That’s the point at which it’s affecting the quality of our lives.

MW: You believe anxiety comes from the disembodiment of living in stressful times. Can you explain to us a little bit about that?

TS: When we encounter a situation that triggers the startle-reflex, what is sometimes called the flight or fight response, there is a response in a portion of the brain called the amygdala. Our adrenal glands go off, our hormone levels change and the whole body goes on high alert. We are ready to fight or flee. Then there’s another centre in the brain, the hypo campus, that assesses this, and says, “Is this really a situation in which I need to be in this heightened state? Is this necessary?” If the analysis is no, then the relaxation response kicks in and the hormone levels in the body change, the breathing changes and the whole body settles. The problem is we sometimes come to a point in our stressful urban lives where the scales are constantly tipped. The fight-flight response has been triggered so often and the adrenal glands have gone off so many times that they are on a hair-trigger response. The relaxation response becomes repressed. The body’s natural healing or natural balance is not resurfacing appropriately. If this occurs, we are constantly being pushed back into a state of anxiety.

MW: The body becomes so accustomed to this response it craves it. It can become like an addiction in a sort of way.

TS: You could say it becomes attached to it, or familiar with it. The other thing that occurs is because we are in an urban setting, even though I might want to flee I may not be able to. If I’m in an office setting and someone is making me very anxious, even if the response to flee or fight is appropriate given the interaction, I may not be able to do either. I end up containing all of that adrenaline and all the other chemical changes in the body and there’s nowhere for them to go. This exacerbates the hair trigger anxiety response.

MW: Interesting.

TS: When I was reading about this idea in a number of psychology texts and studies I thought, that rings so true to me. This is an animal response but we are in a very contained, socialized setting which limits our ability to respond.

MW: If we cannot run, what could we do in that situation or setting, in an office building?

TS: There are a number of breathing techniques that might help. In an office setting I could certainly try one of these breathing techniques without anyone else knowing what I was doing. It’s interesting to note that the breath is not only the bridge between the body and mind, it’s also the bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind. It’s a link between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. I can intentionally calm my nervous system down through breathing practices. The opposite happens all of the time. When I’m calm and my nervous system is quiet my breath is slow and steady. When I am agitated, my breathing becomes high, short and rapid. The respiratory system and the nervous system are deeply connected.

MW: What would be one technique you could describe that they could use in that situation, one breathing technique?

TS: Do what your mother always told you. Take ten deep breaths. Not ten gulping deep breaths, but deep, meaning deep in the body. If we can relax the abdominals and breathe in so that the stomach actually rounds and moves, it can be quite calming. The belly moves outward as we breathe in and relaxes towards the back of the body as we breathe out, this massages a hub of nerves that is low in the body and it basically tells the nervous system to calm down. As soon as the nervous system starts to quiet this will loop back and support the breath and quiet the breath further. With the mind, we intentionally deepen the breathing, by dropping the focus into the belly. The nervous system quiets, and the quiet nervous system then signals the breathing to stay deep, slow and quiet.

MW: That’s great, and a lot of people can apply that right away.
Tell us how yoga and meditation have a positive impact on our minds, on our bodies and on our emotional state.

TS: There are many ways in which they can have a positive effect. The first and simplest concept for me is doing yoga that connects the mind and body through the breath. This brings us back into ourselves. What we are really doing is noticing how the body and mind are responding to the experience. We might notice that the posture feels very gentle or very strong right now. In four breaths that strong feeling passes. We might notice a sense of relaxation or that the jaw is tensing for no good reason. We start to notice positive and negative patterns that arise in our bodies and then we can decide if we want to do anything about those patterns. We are trying to get to know ourselves through a practical experience of doing something and paying attention to it.

MW: I love that description. How does yoga affect the way we deal with stress?

TS: I think it gives us the tools to trust ourselves. I would be very disingenuous if I said if someone has an anxiety disorder and they practice yoga and meditation their anxiety disorder will disappear. What I think yoga can do for someone who struggles with anxiety or an anxiety disorder is give that person the trust in themselves to wait the anxiety out, to understand that they can ride through this difficult point or moment in their lives. It gives them the ability to be in the moment. Although that phrase can be quite overused, in this context it means when an anxiety response begins to rise up in someone who has experienced anxiety for a long time often the anxiety becomes worse because the individual is anticipating that what happened last time, which may have been a very negative experience, may happen again. It might get that bad. Another common response is to project forward and be concerned with how it’s going to effect the rest of the day. Projecting backwards or projecting forwards can actually heighten the response. Sitting with the response and breathing with the knowledge that this physical and emotional experience will pass can be very helpful. Practising being in the moment in our asana practice, in our breathing practices, in our meditation practice helps us to develop a skill set that separates the anxiety from who we are and gives us the confidence that it will pass through us.

MW: An interesting point. We are told to sit with very uncomfortable emotions and when I feel anxious the last thing I want to do is sit with it. So why is it so important to be with it? How do you teach people to become more comfortable, to practise mindfulness and being with these uncomfortable emotions?

TS: Start to consider the notion that the uncomfortable emotion is something that is temporal. It will pass. Consider that you have gone through this before and you will go through it again. There can be a benefit in sitting with something uncomfortable, acknowledging it, breathing through it, because then there is a possibility that it will pass through and out of the body. If we block an uncomfortable emotion or an uncomfortable sensation, in the blocking we are holding it. We are holding it for a future moment where it will come up again. If we practice regularly we become familiar with an integrated state of body-mind. Once we are familiar with this integrated state, we can reference it. It’s like a room that we can enter and sit in. We can sit with whatever arises, allow the physical and emotional difficulties to swirl and play out, and eventually pass through. We can learn to trust ourselves to be with not only positive but negative experiences. We can allow the negative sensations to ride through us. Trying to push them away may only heighten them.

MW: Pushing experiences away just heightens them?

TS: I would argue it heightens them. It’s like throwing a spotlight on them.

MW: How can we re-pattern that postural anxiety that we have embedded in our bodies with yoga or with meditation?

TS: Postural anxiety refers to habitual patterns of muscular contraction that actually occur quite naturally when the fight-flight response occurs. When we become very afraid there are muscles that tense around the groin area, around the hip sockets and also at the back of the neck. These are physical survival responses. We protect the soft parts of the body. There are very basic yoga postures that can counter the postural anxiety in these areas of the body. Over time we can come back into balance. It’s all about balance…so that the contraction can occur when it’s appropriate but also the release and the elongation of the musculature is available as well. We are bringing the body back to its natural balance so that the strength of contraction becomes the strength of contraction, and not the debilitating repetitive action of contraction caused by anxiety. If each muscle in the body is able to release and stretch as well as contract, then we have a strong, balanced and stable structure.

MW: What is the most important piece of advice you want to leave with people who are experiencing anxiety?

TS: You have all of the tools that you need to begin to help yourself. You carry all of those tools with you. You have your breath, you have the body’s response to gravity, the ability to relax. You have a body-mind connection that already exists, all you need to do is begin to hone it and strengthen it. There are many ways in which we can do this but we don’t need to have all kinds of fancy props and special machinery. We own everything we need to begin this journey of healing.

by Dr. Melissa West
Contact Talk Radio, July, 2008

Primarily, I was and still am inspired by the teaching of Vanda Scaravelli who lived in Fiesole, just outside Florence Italy, and passed away in 1999. More than anyone else, she spoke to my essential creativity and stirred my imagination. Vanda was introduced to the yoga postures by B.K.S. Iyengar in the late 1950′s at the suggestion of her friend J. Krishnamurti, who felt his students needed a physical practice. She studied with Iyengar every summer for about 5 years, after which time Krishnamurti began to bring T.K.V. Desikachar to Europe instead. From him, Vanda learned to integrate the breathing into her practice. By the time I met her in 1986, Vanda had been experimenting on her own without a teacher for decades. In 1992 in Toronto, Vanda was reacquainted with B.K.S. Iyengar, not having seen him for more than 30 years.

Vanda always found the postures easy. She had in many respects perfect yoga proportions: long limbs, flexible joints and a short spine. But she began to notice how tired her yoga friends were after practising, and her personal goal became to find a kinder, deeper approach, one more in tune with the natural waves of energy in the body. She was a unique individual who completely trusted her body’s intelligence. She discovered, rather than invented, basic truths about the body based on hours of daily practice, reading, and experiments with Tai Chi, Egyptian dance, and musical form. She was an innovator, a tireless pioneer who convinced her students that if they dropped inside, they, too, would make important discoveries.

Esther Myers and I began studying with Vanda in the mid-eighties. Every year, Vanda visited her daughter in Toronto, rested, wrote, and taught, traditionally, one-on-one. As she was opposed to anything that smacked of guru-worship, Vanda asked that her name not be used to describe a “method” of yoga. Therefore, we took the foundation of Vanda’s approach – the breath, the positive pull of gravity and the spontaneous release of the spine – and explored and expanded our own vision of hatha yoga. It is a vision that is alive, vibrant, intelligent, and one that with Tama Soble, my partner in Esther Myers Yoga Studio since Esther’s death in 2004, I am constantly reconsidering and reworking. Our approach is inclusive and evolving. We embrace any practice, from any tradition, as long as it brings awareness and vitality directly to the geographic, energetic and developmental centre of the human organism – the spine. In that way, I remain true to the basic principles and experimental spirit of Vanda’s work.

Our yoga practice is conceptual. Depending on how the mind works, one can weave a yoga practice from an idea, an image, a pranayama, a part or system of the body, one of the senses, or a traditional posture or series of postures. The genesis or inspiration, warp and woof can be almost anything. We plant a seed idea, then grow a practice or lesson whose roots are deep, healthy, and centered, and that expresses energy and beauty, because it is dependant on internal process, the laws of nature, not perfection or performance. The result is profoundly individuated.

The three basic elements underlying the process are universal life skills. With conscious  breathing, by grounding our feet in the earth, and by freeing the spine of tension, we learn to accept change with flexibility and equanimity, and experience freedom and great joy. From that viewpoint, the asanas – any and all of the asanas – become true practices in living fully, deeply and authentically. Each session is unique and over time, this reflective approach becomes an effective and engaging moving meditation.

This is yoga that honours and celebrates the individual: Vanda’s incisive and original teaching, her eccentricities and musical talent; Esther’s analytical gifts, personal discipline, and steel-edged insight; my own innate and heart-felt connection to nature, to imagery, metaphor, literature and poetry; Tama’s creative and exciting thematic experimentation and her love of physical movement in all its forms. This yoga demands intelligence of the body and tremendous mental focus, and reinforces the naturally occurring conversation between body and mind, strengthening both. It promotes energetic curiosity and a rich inner life. This is yoga for the thinking body.

Published in the Yoga Festival Toronto Newsletter, June 2008

Originally the transmission of yoga theory was through personalized curriculum. Teachers taught each student individually and advised on all areas of their development. Times have changed. Now teachers are instructing many students at once with little knowledge about or connection to the student and a limited scope of practice. It seems logical and imperative that each student be guided to learn the art and science of their own body/mind relationship to yoga in order to progress authentically and safely.

Teachers today easily become caught in the trap of simply teaching the form of the asanas.  For many beginners yoga postures are complex configurations and it takes time to become familiar with the names and shapes of the poses. The next important stage which many teachers seem to be reluctant to enter is to begin to view the asanas as containers for movement, for flow of energy.  Over time we yearn to practise the postures in service of feeling movement within the structure of the body, of finding our way inside both literally and figuratively. Without this intention to locate or catalyze inner movement and sensation, asana practice can become formalistic and even rigid.  It may not move students towards the ultimate goals of yoga which include self awareness, improved health, integration of body, mind and spirit, a sense of physical ease and lightness, and inner strength, self-reliance and independence.

How can we teach inner mobility, inner awareness, personal exploration, and personal choice?  As teachers we must have sincere curiosity and an authentic desire to encourage exploration. We must create an atmosphere in which the student feels safe and valued. Real time is required for this exploration to occur.  Silence is essential in order to enable the students to drop inside and truly listen to their own bodies.

Once we have the confidence to commit seriously to this radical, evolutionary approach, we must find forms that are open ended so that exploration of inner mobility can take place easily.  A single asana, a sequence or an entire lesson plan can be the form – choose to teach what you are most comfortable teaching – then slow down, make simple suggestions, ask simple questions, listen to the answers, and observe the results.  For example, instead of  the usual dynamic Sun Salutation repetition, a simplified version might be considered with many minutes spent investigating each detail, breathing deeply. We might encourage our students to observe the effects of a specific pranayama practice on the variety of asanas included in Sun Salutation.  We might remind them to notice body sensations, muscular, skeletal or breath movement, to notice how the experience of a posture changes with simple adjustments of the torso, head or limbs, to feel or search for more ease or more energy.

By choosing our teaching language carefully we can encourage a great deal of exploration within these known forms. We can learn to be less directive and more suggestive and descriptive, entreating students to vary, observe, feel, and assess their practice. Actively involving the mind and intellect in yoga practice will promote continuous long-term engagement, creative decision-making, and will stimulate further study.

Many teachers would like to dialogue with their students but fear a loss of class “control”. If we truly believe our role is to hand over control to the students we can begin, even if we are afraid, with questions such as “Do you like or dislike this pose, practice, breathing technique?” “What about it grabbed you? Stayed with you?” “What do you notice?”  “How do you feel?” “What purpose do you think this practice will serve?”

Teachers fear loss of control. We also fear not knowing “correct” answers. In dialoguing with our students we are handing the practice to the student to dissect, understand and use. We are signalling our interest in their experience and our willingness to learn from them. We are assuring them that experience is always valuable and true, sometimes surprising, never dull, neither right nor wrong.

With every comment, question, pose, sequence or technique we can encourage our students to drop inside their own bodies and find out how to be more and more present and resourceful.  This approach of guiding the student back to herself is a potential pathway to engaged and thoughtful practice.  We might call this path creative engagement.

Teaching creative engagement requires interaction, dialogue, creative problem solving, courage, compassion and flexibility.  It can be frightening at first.  But in this approach we are asking our students to practise with vulnerable and open minds and hearts and we must be prepared to do the same.  Suzuki Roshi says “we are feeling our way along in the dark” as we practise, as we teach and as we live.  When we move in the dark, we must go very slowly in order to understand where we are, being quite attentive each step of the way, feeling, sensing, thinking, touching, carefully moving forward by ourselves.

by Tama Soble and Monica Voss