Catherine Annis
Catherine Annis has practised yoga since the 1970s, teaching Scaravelli-inspired yoga and strength training for healthy ageing. Founder of BWY-accredited IYTT.
Yoga Since the 1970s, Still Finding New Ground
I started yoga as a teenager, after years of training as a dancer. That was the mid-1970s. I've been practising ever since, which means I've spent more of my life on a mat than off one, and I'm still learning things about my own body.
I worked through Sivananda, Iyengar, Ashtanga, and various strands of Hatha, all of it useful, none of it quite right, until I found the teaching of Vanda Scaravelli. That was the one that stuck. Everything I teach now comes from her approach: not pushing into a shape, but working from the inside out.
How dance and yoga ended up in the same body
I hold a Masters in ballet studies and I'm a qualified Thai massage practitioner. I also trained with APPI (the Australian Physiotherapy and Pilates Institute). All of it feeds into how I teach. I'm less interested in what a movement looks like than in what's actually happening underneath it: the nervous system, the breath, the places where people are holding pain, stress or anxiety without realising it.
Finding Scaravelli inspired yoga
I never met Vanda Scaravelli myself, but I've worked with a long list of people who did. My first Scaravelli-inspired class was taught by Alex Grey, a student of Diane Long, who studied with Vanda directly for years.
Alex had us in elbow dog, and I wanted to push straight into it, really do the shape. She held me back. It felt like nothing: no stretch, none of the effort I associated with the feeling of "a good yoga class." I found it frustrating at first, because it felt like I wasn't completing anything.
It took a while to understand what she was actually asking: not to hang out on my flexibility, but to work from the centre, integrate the whole of myself into one simple movement. That's what hooked me, and it's what's kept me coming back to this work for fifty years.
Not long after, friends introduced me to John Stirk. He became my teacher and mentor for the next twelve years, and his understanding of Vanda's life and work has shaped nearly everything about how I practise and teach today.
Why strength, now
Somewhere in the last decade I started noticing what happens to a body that spends fifty years being flexible and never being strong. Grip goes. The knees get cautious on stairs. Carrying a bag of compost up to the garden stops being nothing. So alongside the Scaravelli work, I now teach resistance-based strength work too, built the same way: precise, unhurried, worked from the inside rather than pushed at from outside.
What I teach
I teach Scaravelli yoga 1:1, and run live-stream classes and workshops from home on the edge of Exmoor. Throughout the year I lead workshops around the UK, and I'm regularly invited to teach for the British Wheel of Yoga and a number of independent teacher training schools.
In 2017 that experience became something bigger: the Intelligent Yoga Teacher Training (IYTT), a 12-month, anatomically-focused course I built with world-leading teachers including Gary Carter. It's the thing I'm proudest of.
For over a decade I also ran the Scaravelli Immersion, a course I created in 2008 for teachers and serious practitioners wanting to go deeper into this work.
Since 2005 I've led Scaravelli-inspired retreats, weekends and holidays across the UK and internationally.
Off the mat
I live in Exmoor National Park with my husband and our two dogs, genuinely thrilled to be back in the countryside after years in the centre of London. I've recently taken up cold water swimming, which has taught me a few things about breath and nervous system regulation that no yoga class ever did.
Ways to work with me
• Practice Anywhere: Stream Scaravelli-inspired yoga, strength and resistance training, and Yoga Nidra whenever suits you, in the Online Class Library.
• Join Live: See the current timetable for weekly Strength and Resistance Training for Healthy Ageing and Scaravelli-inspired Yoga, online and in person, at Online & In-Person Classes.
• For Teachers: Explore practical workshops (such as Pelvic Balance or Healthy Knees) and the year long Intelligent Yoga Teacher Training (IYTT) Programme.
• Retreats: When you need to take time for yourself, in the UK or abroad, see my upcoming Retreats.
• For Personalised Care: Book a private One-to-One Movement Consultation.
Catherine Annis
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