Reflecting on forty-odd years of making music – whether in the basement of a Cornish fisherman’s cottage or in prestigious concert halls – I realise that my teachers, my teachers’ teachers, the musicians who have touched me and, in turn, their teachers, all spring from one source: Pablo Casals. My yoga practice also returns to a single person, the Italian teacher Vanda Scaravelli. What attracts me to both figures is that they draw constantly on natural principles, such as breath, gravity and the wave. I have often thought how much they would have liked one another had they met.
A well-grounded body can become still, much in the way a bowl of water becomes still if undisturbed. This is quite different from becoming stiff like a brick wall. Both may be unmoving but only the bowl of water has the potential for movement.
Peter Blackaby, Intelligent Yoga (2012)