About Michelle’s Yoga
How I came to yoga
My route into yoga began in my late 20s with the practice of Bhakti yoga (devotional meditation). This led me to explore Hatha yoga to help heal my body.
As clichéd as it may sound, to move the body this way really was an experience of ‘coming home’ for me. By which I mean there was an ‘effortless effort’ to the practice and no sense of a dictated way to move.
Much of my childhood had been spent in thrall to choreographic gymnastics and finding 101 ways to stand on my head. Hatha yoga reminded me of this playful way of being present in my body without the need to go back to gymnastic-style movements.
Five years into my yoga practice, when I was ‘letting go and moving freely’ again, I found myself at a crossroads, career-wise. I chose the path of yoga. It has been a transformational path that continues to inspire me.
Healing body and mind
I have trained in and practised a variety of natural therapies since the late 1980s. This investigation was spurred by a desire to both understand myself and heal my own body from various ailments. I found natural therapies, together with yoga and meditation, to be key contributors to my own physical, mental and spiritual well-being.
First drawn to meditation and Buddhism when visiting Asia in 1992, I tried several style of practice before I found one that suited me. Since 2006, I have been practising insight (‘vipassana’) meditation, which emanates from the Theravada Buddhist tradition. The simplicity of this practice - investigating the present-moment experience through the cultivation mindfulness and heartfulness - resonates profoundly with me.
Photo: In India with a roadside fortune teller and foot reader, 2000.
Yoga
I began practising Hatha yoga in 1995 and was fortunate to find great teachers on my doorstep. I am forever grateful to Liz Warrington for her teaching and introducing me to the profound approach to yoga pioneered by Vanda Scaravelli.
In 2000, I studied at Vivekananda (sVYASA) and Satyananda yoga ashrams in Bangalore, India. Upon my return to Brighton, I began a yoga teacher-training programme with John Stirk and Sophy Hoare. I also obtained the City and Guilds teaching certificate 7307. I have since practised extensively with Diane Long, Pete Blackaby and, more recently, with Dot Bowen, Sandra Sabatini and Michal Havkin.
In 2008, I completed a Certificate in Humanistic Counselling at the Gestalt Centre, London. This has sharpened my listening skills and helped me to become more keenly aware of how we can relate creatively to the present moment. This course sparked a hitherto supressed interest in expressing myself through painting. I have spent much of my time since then studying and exploring with my paintbrush and bringing a yogi's perspective to making art.
I draw on this breadth of experience to inform all of my work.
Photo: A masterclass in effortless movement from my neighbour’s cat.
Is it possible to have a different attitude in which a new intelligence, not imposed by authority, but born from interest, attention and sensitivity, will emerge and in which body and mind, fused in one single action, are collaborating together?
—Vanda Scaravelli, Awakening The Spine