Sandra Sabatini
A student of Vanda Scaravelli for fourteen years, Sandra has practised Yoga for thirty years, and believes, ‘Learning no longer comes from wanting to reach a goal or fulfil an aim but from a gradual unfolding, an effortless blossoming’.
The key to this unfolding is the breath; and in Sandra’s hands, awareness of the breath becomes a radical, intensely powerful tool capable of stripping away tension, tightness and toxins, and restoring the body and mind to balance.
Biography
I was born in Australia to Italian parents, grew up in Tripoli, Libya, and returned to Italy in my 20’s. I started studying yoga when I was 30.
The birth of my children brought a very different insight into my daily practice. During labour I observed an unknown intelligence at work. The more passive, soft and elastic I was, the more powerful this physical intelligence became. During my yoga practice I wished to be re-connected to this gentle, weightless brightness that I had observed at work in my body during the birth of my children.
To revive this primal energy I needed help, a guide with a very light touch. That guide turned out to be Vanda Scaravelli, who had developed a unique approach to yoga using gravity and breath to ride the body’s own wave.
Author of Awakening the Spine, Vanda, studied privately with B.K.S. lyengar and T.K.V. Desikachar over many years. Her lifelong friendship with Krishnamurti is vastly reflected in her teaching.
Learning from Vanda was an extraordinary experience. There was extreme clarity and wisdom in her words. Her hands could focus on the same spot until it became alive. Her words traveled straight into me; her touch gradually dispersed dullness and old habits
We met every week for 17 years. It is her gift of yoga – a radical yoga that emphasizes working with breath, gravity and the spine – that I am trying to pass on through my books and teaching.
Today I teach groups in Europe, the Middle East and India, as well as near my home in Tuscany.
