WHEN YOU FIND YOUR PLACE WHERE YOU ARE, THE PRACTICE COMES BY ITSELF

Rossella Baroncini (Yoga Therapy Ireland winter 2006 issue n.28)

It happened that I was gifted to be one of Vanda Scaravelli’s pupils. I studied directly under her guidance for the last seventeen years of her life. I met her when I was just twenty six, she lived very close by me in Fiesole. I often saw her walking in the woods, without knowing her. I saw something very beautiful in the silence and the way she was with nature. Something very different from others – a total non attachment – she was a free spirit. I knoked to her door and she opened it. At that time I knew very little about yoga but very soon I started to practice, as she said “with infinite time and no ambition”.

There is a mistery in the teacher – student relationship that is as the same time necessity and freedom.

Now yoga is for me simplicity and a deep reconnection with nature, with the forces that sustain our life. Probably it is what our era needs, to go beyond division, to find unity not only with other human beings but with the whole planet earth. With yoga we could find a new way to make peace with our bodies, without imposing, starting from where we really are, cultivating the open attitude of a biginner mind.
Conscious breathing puts us in that innocent state of silence in which we could listen to our own body and the body itself is going to give us the answer, in the right moment.
In this way yoga practice becomes a friendly meeting of body and mind and beauty comes towards us from deep inside.
Opening our bodies to the action of gravity we discover that by undoing the beauty of “what is” emerges, the spine re-awakens and spreads strenght and unity through the whole body, focusing the mind in the right movement.
To be in contact with gravity, breath and spine means to be in contact with the new, and the new is coming every instant – that is a way to let go what we no longer need and to be more creative in our life with an open mind and no prejudice.
Probably, with our daily practice we could give a little contribution to the blossoming of joy,.
In this approach, teaching cannot be captured and closed in a definition, in a “method”, it is just being ourseves.
Only with a fire you can start another fire and it takes infinite time and no ambition. The three friends: Breath, Gravity and the Beautiful Spine are there for that – to let you be your own teacher and your own student , to enjoy your practice and let the flower of love opens his petals in your chest. “When you find your place where you are the practice comes by itself”.