Vanda Scaravelli: yoga and SI

One of my yoga heroines is Vanda Scaravelli. She started her practice of yoga at age 58 in her 40s and became a very wise practitioner. She wrote a beautiful book called Awakening the Spine. There are lots of parallels between her approach and the goals of structural integration bodywork. Here are a few lines that resonated with me.

This lumbar area (waist vertebrae) suffers most when standing wrongly. … These compressed vertebrae pinch the nerves that pass through the corresponding vertebral cavity, causing pain and muscular spasm. We have to recreate the proper space between the vertebrae so that the nerves can be released and health re-established.