Yoga with Kay Campitelli

The Yoga Lineage of Vanda Scaravelli and Diane Long

“The thing is to make the mind free…” —Vanda Scaravelli

I believe this approach to yoga is about freedom...

Freedom from ambition, preconceived ideas, and perhaps most importantly, fear.

A fearful mind results in an accumulation of tensions in the body, inhibiting our breath, our natural movement, and our ability to recognize our wholeness.

Instead, freedom requires presence, responsibility, and an acceptance of our wholeness. Wholeness reveals the connections within us as well as between us and the natural world.

It is these connections that reveal to us how the body moves, led by the release of the spine and our connection to earth and sky. It is a process of discovery full of mystery and magic...

When I was introduced to this way of working, it immediately appealed to me, as I recognized that it is about truth and beauty and the importance of refining one’s attention rather than accumulating knowledge, and it requires we continually evolve.

This yoga takes time, diligence, and attention, and a commitment to starting anew and a willingness to always be a beginner. Along the way we learn to trust and love ourselves, to listen to our bodies, and to take responsibility for our own health and well-being by developing our ability to be present, to question, and to do what is right and natural.

“Find yourself first.” —Jimi Hendrix

Vanda Scaravelli is a unique and extraordinary figure in yoga. She came to yoga at age 50 and credits it with saving her life after the death of her husband. She had many years of lessons with BKS Iyengar and then TKV Desikachar.

Later, when she was on her own with her practice, and was helping her close friend J. Krishnamurti with his, she discovered “a world without aim and without competition, where the body can start again to function naturally and happily, allowing expansion to take place in space.”

She wrote a beautiful book called Awakening the Spine, which is how many, including myself, found out about her revolutionary approach to yoga.

Her book led me to discover her student Diane Long, who became my teacher.

Diane has been generously sharing the fruits of her practice for more than 40 years, through her teaching and her book Notes on Yoga.