Vanda Scaravelli

Vanda Scaravelli was born into an artistic, musical and intellectual family. Her father, Alberto Passigli was involved in creating the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino as well as the Orchestra Stabile. Her mother, Clara Corsi, was one of the first women graduates from an Italian university. Her early life was very much a musical one and many world class musicians such as Pablo Casals, Andres Segovia and Arturo Toscanini were frequent visitors to the family villa, Il Leccio.

Scaravelli was a concert standard pianist herself and maintained her involvement in music throughout her life.

She married Luigi Scaravelli, a Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Rome and Pisa with whom she had two children. Luigi Scaravelli died suddenly shortly after WW2. Around this time she was introduced to BKS Iyengar by the violinist Yehudi Menuhin in Gstaad, Switzerland. Iyengar taught daily classes to Krishnamurti, whom Scaravelli had known earlier in life through her father. Thus she took up yoga late in life.

Some years later Krishnamurti invited Desikachar to the Scaravelli's Chalet Tannegg in Gstaad, where he taught them about the importance of the breath or pranayama, which became one of the principle themes in Scaravelli's teaching. After this Scaravelli continued to study with Iyengar and Desikachar for some years as she was developing her ideas surrounding the breath, gravity and the spine.

When Scaravelli's husband died suddenly after World War II, she soon began spending summers with her children at a chalet in Switzerland, where she hosted Krishnamurti during his lectures there. B. K. S. Iyengar would come every morning to teach him yoga; he introduced Scaravelli, then in her 40s, to the ancient discipline, and "a new life came into my body." Thus began her ongoing exploration of what she called allegrezza, "the intelligent heart."

From T. K. V. Desikachar she learned breath awareness; she later formulated her own approach to yoga (in which "you become intelligent and at the same time you are happy") and began to teach others. Her book Awakening the Spine (Harper San Francisco, 1995) became a classic. Since her death in 1999, at age 91, several teachers have carried on her work, most notably Toronto-based Esther Myers. "I practice because it is natural for me to practice," she told Myers in a 1996 YJ interview. "There is no other reason. "