I've watched Vanda Scaravelli do backbends for over 10 years, and each time I felt I was seeing a backbend for the first time. I watched and listened as this powerful, slight woman in her mid-80s planted her enormous feet on the floor and spoke about growing roots. Then, with a rhythmical, waving motion she would arch over and back, all the while talking about growing wings and birds soaring and love. Up she would come, then drop back again. Up and back, as if she could do it forever.

As I prepared a video about Vanda and her unique yoga practice, I spent a couple of days with her at her daughter's home in Toronto, listening to her reflect on her life and her love of yoga. Looking back, those two days remind me again what an extraordinary gift she has been in my life.

Vanda Scaravelli was born in Florence, Italy in 1908. Her father, a successful businessman and music lover, created the Orchestra Stabile, enabling Florence to have its own orchestra. Her mother, Clara Corsi, a teacher, was one of the first women from Italy to graduate from the university. Together they created a salon for some of the century's greatest artists: Arturo Toscanini, Arthur Schnabel, Federico Fellini, Bronislaw Hubermann, and Herman Serkin, to name only a few, often visited the family's villa, Il Leccio. Vanda herself trained as a concert pianist under the tutelage of Ernesto Consolo.

She describes the family music room as one of her favorite places to be, light-filled with yellow walls where people gathered to listen to intimate concerts given by such performers and family friends as cellist Pablo Casals or guitarist Andres Segovia. Across an ocean, nearly a century later, such a youth seems luminous, almost magical. Vanda speaks of those days with bright, unaffected pleasure.

The life of the everyday for Vanda was filled with music, with the talk of lively intellectuals, with open, exploring spirits. As a young girl, she accompanied her family to Holland in search of spirituality and healing.It was there, in Ommen, that she first met Krishnamurti. Vanda describes sitting around an enormous campfire singing Indian songs and watching Krishnamurti talk with her sister. The family remained friends with Krishnamurti, who stayed at their villa each year on his travels between India and America. They offered him a place to rest, a place "of peace and tranquility," where he wasn't expected to be a guru, where he could write and think. Vanda often walked with him, and she recollects how they went for drives together, in her Flaminia or in his Mercedes. "He liked to drive, but he didn't like it when people drove too fast," Vanda remembers. "He said, 'I have this body and I must look after it.' We were both interested in what we saw- nature, the fields and cows, and mountains full of snow."

Vanda married Luigi Scaravelli, a philosophy professor and scholar; they had two children. After World War II ended, and her husband died unexpectedly, violinist Yehudi Menuhin introduced her to B.K.S. lyengar, whom he had invited to Gstaad, Switzerland, where Vanda rented a chalet each year. lyengar taught daily classes to Krishnamurti, who spent his summers there, giving his annual talks. As Vanda explains,. Iyengar "was so kind as to give me a lesson in life each day as well." And so it was, in the middle of her life, that Vanda Scaravelli discovered yoga.

Several years later, at Krishnamurti's invitation, T.K.V. Desikachar visited the Gstaad chalet, where he taught both Krishnamurti and Vanda the importance of the breath. Vanda continued to study privately with both lyengar and Desikachar for many years. After they stopped their regular visits to Gstaad, Vanda worked alone, developing a unique method of yoga that endures to this day. She discusses this method in her 1991 book, Awakening the Spine.

Following are excerpts from our two-day talk together. All through our conversation she emphasizes the importance of making yoga practice and all of our attitudes in life simple and open.