Summer yoga workshop in Glastonbury: reflection and review

I was joined by a group of fellow yogis at the Rowan Centre on Glastonbury High St for a morning of yoga, the second in a series of two summer workshops. My intention in creating the sessions was to provide the opportunity for regular students to regroup while weekly drop-in classes are paused for the summer. How delightful then that the groups have comprised a mix of familiar faces as well as those who I have met whilst covering and teaching at festivals.

The teaching studio is a bright, clear space with an intimate feel, just right for a small group of eight to ten. I am told that the St Michael line (a geomagnetic energy channel which has been mapped from East Anglia to Land’s End) tranverses the room, giving added benefits!

We began supine, resting down onto the floor, through feet and hips, pelvis, shoulders and skull. Beginning the business of allowing the weight of the body to drop away, becoming softer, more spacious, finding room in the joints, the spaces between vertebrae, elongating the spine, allowing the fullness of one’s natural breath to assist in this deep undoing.

So much of this approach to yoga, the Scaravelli tradition, is about not doing; the quieter and less involved we can be, the more the body will yield and open. Sometimes we have to get out of our own way! We can then come to experience the body’s preferred, natural state of being. Not doing, breathing, becoming quieter, creating conditions for the body to experience a lightness, spaciousness and freedom so that any resultant movements are joyful, free from resistance, in a sense effortless…

During a pause I passed around Vanda’s book, Awakening the Spine. Far from being a how-to manual, much more an evocative inspiration. Her wonderfully lyrical words and selected imagery convey the feeling sense of how the body might move:a backbend is analogous to an ocean wave; we are reminded of the gentle serenity of the Buddha; the curving grace of a swan’s neck is an invitation to yield and find the inherent beauty in our asana.

The sun shone warmly and so we took tea together in the garden and I left the students chatting and bonding amongst the flowers and herbs as I drafted arrangements for my autumn teaching schedule with the office manager.

I feel blessed and uplifted to have shared my love of yoga in such a profound and yet easy, uplifting way. Thanks to all who attended.

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