BKS Iyengar
If you’re a Yoga fan … the chances are that you have attended a class or watched a DVD where the teacher was influenced by Vanda Scaravelli. She was born in Florence in 1908 into an artistic and intellectual background and died only a few years ago, in her ’90’s with her extraordinary flexibility in tact, due to her lifelong yoga practice.
She learned Yoga, during the 1940’s when BKS Iyengar visited her mountain lodge, alongside other notables of the day like Yehudi Menuhin. She claimed in her book Awakening the Spine that she only began to learn properly when the guests left and she was able to develop her personal practice. And this observation illustrates the underlying philosophy of her yoga teaching.
The Tree Body
She likens the human body … upright where most other creatures are not … to a tree where the waist area approximately equates to that of a tree where it separates the trunk from the branches.
If you were to stand upright in Mountain Pose (Tadasana) you would get a sense of this. You simply place your feet hip-width apart and gently root your feet into the ground. In her book Scaravelli describes this foundation of all good yoga practice thus …
“In Tadasana the body is perfectly still. Standing on the back of the heels your weight slowing sinks down. If you stand long enough, the lower part of the body, from the waist to the heels, gravitates, you will discover that the upper part of the body becomes, light, free and straight. This starting position can correct and adjust spinal problems such as scoliosis and arthritis.
To do the pose correctly stand on the back of the heels with the spine straight, knees extended and chin in. The weight must be distributed equally on both legs,
This is the most important pose. Do it correctly and all the others will follow.”
Give it a Go
if you look at this child you can see how much he’s stretching his arms upwards and away from his feet. The act of stretching takes us wholly away from grounding (the act of calm and focus). He’s laughing and excited about life, and our aim is to have that joy, but from our centre (not control). One method for achieving this is Yoga and the starting point of Mountain Pose (Tadasana) provides that start, as stated earlier. We often don’t realize how ungrounded we are as we go about life, mostly in habit, existing in our dreamlike conscious-state, carrying out most actions on automatic pilot.
If you like a challenge, which stillness is for most of us, then have a go at this and who knows what you might find. This pose will start to inform you as to how much you can release and highlight the areas that may just require your attention.
And one aspect is our physical sense, as anyone who’s had a massage knows we carry most of our tension in the shoulder and neck areas, and likewise just how good it feels to free up those knots.
This is a simple and very effective pose … give it a try …
Jane
There is nothing like a scented candle to draw us back into a room and make direct contact with our senses …
Candles were used long before the power of electricity was discovered and therein lies an aspect of how remarkable they are to have withstood the test of time. And they continueto make their presence felt today despite modern technology.