Non-harm in yoga

Vanda Scaravelli was  almost 50 year old when she was introduced to yoga. Yet she went on to become one of the most influential female yoga teachers of the 20th century, demonstrating that it is never too late to start yoga.

Unlike modern yoga peers who built global brands or standardised lineages, Vanda revolutionised yoga by advocating for a non-lineage, intuitive approach that focused entirely on the relationships between gravity, breath, and the spine.

Furthermore, she never sought fame, riches or a massive following and thus her influence operated in an uniquely quiet and profound way. In fact she taught only a small handful of private students during her lifetime, including Diane Long, who is the teacher of my own teacher, Louise Simmons.

Finding Louise and being introduced to the Scaravelli-inspired approach to yoga has been – and continues to be – life changing, and I share this with you, because modern yoga fools many into believing that yoga is an exercise regime, accessible only to those in their younger years.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. An icon of lifelong vitality, Vanda’s book Awakening the Spine, features iconic photos of her practising highly skilled backbends with complete grace and ease well into her 80s, redefining what aging and physical capability could look like – while she is now passed, she remains an inspiration to me.

I admit I started yoga when I was much younger, just turned 28 and started teaching when I was 30. I was fortunate that I began teaching just as yoga started to become the multi-billion pound industry that is it today so I had no shortage of students willing to give it a try. I was trained in dynamic vinyasa yoga which fitted the need at the time too – people wanted fast paced flowing yoga, practised athletically and with music.

I was passionate about yoga and attended many courses, workshops and trainings off island, immersing in a variety of yoga styles but I always came back to this approach, dynamic vinyasa. It fed my fast paced approach to life and my need for things to be known and certain – following strict alignment principles and ideals.

However, as time went on, and as difficult as it was to accept, I started noticing that this approach, with its endless sun salutations, downward facing dogs and push ups, was creating more tension not less. Despite telling them otherwise, I would witness students strain and force their bodies into unnatural positions, the effort clearly visible on their face, desperate to achieve and succeed in a posture come what may.

Yet there is no achievement or succeeding in a pose. One of the many things that yoga teaches is detachment and letting go. It also teaches that there is no right/wrong, good/bad, only a conditioned mind that tells us so. There is also no perfect, yet students would bring their perfectionist tendencies onto their mat and approach their practice with that mindset, putting in far too much effort.

Furthermore, the body and mind are intimately connected, and I was concerned that this athletic and sometimes competitive approach to practice, with alignment principles was not only creating mental tension and rigidity - quite in conflict with the true essence and intention of yoga - but was keeping my students stuck in the same paradigm that was causing their suffering; the one that says we have to be a certain way to feel good about ourselves in this world and deny our own nature.

Also, many students were overlooking the fact that yoga is first and foremost a spiritual practice to contain the mind, so that we may realise the true Self and experience greater freedom.  Much of what is labelled ‘yoga’ today is merely an exercise routine devoid of yoga’s philosophical and spiritual framework. And while the practice may pacify the mind, it doesn’t necessarily support longer term positive change. 

About the same time, I had an urge to visit the Callanish Neolithic Stone complex in the Outer Hebrides. So, in 2018, with the family in tow, this is what I did. As it turned out, it wasn’t the stones that I needed to visit, but a yoga teacher in the village hall in Uig, who changed my life without even realising it. For some reason she suggested I visit a yoga teacher in Littlehampton as she had a feeling we might resonate.

Back home in Guernsey, I booked a day trip to Littlehampton via Gatwick, and visited the yoga teacher in her mobile home by the beach and was introduced for the first time to the Scaravelli-inspired approach to practice. It blew my mind. I moved my body very little, not at all like the yoga I had become accustomed to practicing. This in itself was a huge thing for me. But the way I moved, under her hands on guidance, did something to my body and mind that I had never experienced previously.

There was a lightness that I can’t properly put into words, and a certain freedom. My mind felt expanded, my sense of reality shifted. There was a certain softness, a certain coming home feeling – it felt more natural than any other style of yoga I had practiced. In many ways, it embraced ahimsa, the first ethical principle of yoga - non harm - in a way that I had not experienced in my practice before.

I realised how much this had been missing. In my quest to ‘achieve’ and progress, I had overlooked the embodiment of this ethical principle. I could see it in others, yet struggled to find the words but now I could feel it in myself.

It was as if the grip of the mind had been loosened, as if there was a possibility of thinking and perceiving differently, more lovingly, gently. And within all that, a little voice that whispered the word ‘possibility’. My world was about to open up and with it, usher in significant change.

As hard as it was, I realised that my own dynamic vinyasa practice was feeding more of the same pattern of perfectionism, and achievement that had caused so much of my earlier insecurity and poor relationship with self, let alone self-harm patterns. Many of my mental patterns and conditionings were well ingrained and limiting me. I wanted to go deeper, but I didn’t know how.

This approach appeared to gift me that depth and I wanted to know more. I read as much as I could about Vanda and her approach to practice and I attempted to connect with her principal student, Diane, but in the process connected to Louise, who agreed to accept me as her student and I work closely with her online, visiting her in person in Findhorn when I can.

Because Vanda started practicing yoga later in life, she could not—and did not want to—rely on brute strength or flexibility. Her philosophy was contrary to modern alignment-heavy practices like dynamic vinyasa through a few groundbreaking concepts such as “undoing” rather than “doing”, surrendering to gravity to allow a natural and effortless rebound, and allowing the spine to move with the fluid grace of a wave rather than creating stiffness of an architectural column.

Vanda did not believe in strict, standardised sequences or alignment checklists. She believed the ultimate authority was the student's own internal rhythm and that by treating the breath as a friend that moves the body from the inside out, yoga becomes a deeply personal, meditative exploration rather than an exercise routine.

It is true somatic experience - an approach to practice that seeks to do no harm. Tension in the body and mind is eased by changing movement patterns. Held emotions are released. Thinking patterns and behaviours are changed. One’s relationship with the body rapidly transforms into something more positive – this is a body to love and appreciate, to nurture and nourish, not one to berate and force to do things against its very nature.

My earlier students didn’t appreciate the change in my teaching style, and many dropped away. But in the last few years especially, a dedicated community of students committed to this approach to yoga has formed instead. There is more heart, more softness, more lightness and more joy. Not to say it is always easy, it is a deep practice and asks much of us at times, but it is yoga in its truest form.

So please don’t think it is too late to begin yoga as it isn’t. And please don’t feel you have to look at certain way either, as you don’t. Just turn up as you are and take it one moment at a time. This is yoga.

Love Emma x