Founder & Director Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training, Senior Yoga Teacher, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Dance & Movement Researcher (Undertaking Research Master’s in Dance at Plymouth University), Butoh Practitioner
Gemma Mallol
I am a Senior Yoga and Mindfulness Teacher with more than 22 years of teaching experience with the UK Yoga Alliance. I am a Yoga Pro Teacher Training Provider.
I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (body orientated trauma therapist) working in both private practice and diverse group contexts and settings (trainings, retreats, CPD’s and workshops)
I am currently doing a Research Master’s in Dance at Plymouth University. My area of focus is Somatics and Butoh. I am in an intensive period of both intellectual and artistic exploration through dance and movement. I am currently practicing Butoh Dance with the Butoh Master Atsushi Takenouchi www.jinen-butoh.com and other renowned teachers. Butoh is a Japanese form of avant- garde dance that seeks to avoid definition but has been translated as “The Dance of Darkness”. I also draw influence from the work of Denise Rowe whose practice is inspired by Javanese Movement Artist Prapto Suroydharmo whose movement style is about the experience of one’s own moving body in connection with a constantly changing environment – a non-stylized movement within the natural world, where one’s own self is experienced as an ever-changing organism.
In a broad sense I work with nature and creative embodiment to transform suffering and resolve trauma at a nervous system level.
These diverse cultural embodied practices ignite my passion for all that is trans-cultural and trans-formational and how this expresses through the body in movement.
What I Teach and Facilitate
I offer in depth somatic movement experiences and embodied creative processes that are influenced by the movements of the elements both inner and outer and a deep reverence for nature as a resource and ally. I am interested to explore and create inclusive space for movement that might appear as awkward, disturbing, disrupted, queer, hidden, dark, or even erotic (inspired by my Butoh practice) and in allowing these expressions to arise out of an authentic connection to the inner body experience. As this can be a challenging process, I feel that the principles of Somatic Experiencing can really help in making sure that this is a gradual, sensitive, safe journey as can the baseline practices of Yoga and Mindfulness and safe spaces to return to when familiarity is needed.
I’m researching how Somatics and Butoh both in the spaces, the aesthetic and the movement they give rise to and also in their pedagogic technique can cultivate ways of moving and being that give form, visibility, and celebrate expressions of otherness thus providing spaces for authentic connection, artistic expression and movement creativity that may counter the hegemony that populates the yoga, movement and dance world.
This foundation provides the ground for an unfolding creative process where the energy of more challenging internal states, dysregulations and trauma can be gradually resolved from the inside out as the physiology becomes more and more stable and coherent.
My Yoga Approach
Since 2011 I have been inspired by the work of Italian Yogini Vanda Scaravelli, which honors the body’s intelligence and has creative, intuitive and enquiry based feel to it, I find that this works beautifully alongside the therapeutic work of Dr Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) http://www.traumahealing.org which greatly informs and inspires my approach to Yoga.
In a broad sense, my invitation in Yoga is to re-awaken the natural intelligence of the body, that has an innate healing and organisational capacity within it.
Instead of stressing and straining the body into shapes and breathing patterns that may override this innate intelligence, this practice invites us to listen and to feel inside, so the body can find its own voice – its own “song” or in Peter Levine’s words the unspoken voice.
“The feeling is more interior, because the motion is inside, the feeling is inside. It’s a feeling of well-being while you do the poses not to achieve. You must never have in mind what you want to do but what the body can accept.” Vanda Scaravelli
By encouraging the body to undo and let go of habitual tension patterns and old habits that fragment and distort the body and its energy, the body is gradually offered new movement choices outside of old habits. This unexplored movement potential offers rest, regulation and deep internal release. A gradual awakening may take place, as new ways of approaching movement through asana pave the way for new ways of being and experiencing life. At a feeling level this may be experienced as freshness, wholeness or just being deeply and simply happy in your body.
By deepening our embodied understanding of core/ peripheral balance through a curious approach to asana, we start to experience greater degrees of safety, wholeness, connection, containment, and nourishment from inside of ourselves, within this, we cultivate our innate capacity for self regulation at the level of the nervous system, providing safe ground from which to gently explore further awakening and release of the spine and deep core structures of the body.
My approach has both a structured side to it and also playful free-form side to it, always seeking to balance stability, fluidity and spaciousness. By attuning to the elements of earth, water, fire and space within the body, gravity and its rebound play through the body with ease, affecting our shape/structure, our breath, our feelings, our relationship with ourselves, others, and the environment around us.
One of Vanda Scaravelli’s great gifts to our Yoga practice was freedom. She gave us permission to follow our own inner teacher, liberating Yoga practice from the restriction of rules and traditions. She encouraged students to understand that, ultimately, we are our own best teachers – all we have to do is listen deeply.
“Do not kill the instinct of the body for the glory of the pose. Do not look at your body like a stranger, but adopt a friendly approach towards it. Watch it, listen to it, observe its needs, its requests, and even have fun. To be sensitive is to be alive.” Vanda Scaravelli
I extend a heartfelt invitation for you to come and share the intuitive, creative, and liberating power of this work with me.
My Practice Story
I first came across Sivananda Yoga in 1998 in Kerala, South India whilst studying Ayurveda. It felt like coming home, the calling was profound.
Around the same time a close friend, Sid Peckman, undertaking a silent 7 year retreat introduced me to the Buddhist Mindfulness Teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master; his teacher www.plumvillage.org
In 1999 I met Danny Paradise who I studied with until 2007 (Ashtanga Vinyasa). His emphasis on non- dogmatic practice, Shamanism, evolution and community still inspire me.
During this period and under Danny’s influence I co-founded and directed AshtangaOm Yoga Retreats and El Convento Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and Mindfulness Eco Centre (Andalucia, Spain) with my ex-partner Nic Freeman.
In 2004 my family and I were hit by the tsunami in Sri Lanka. We all survived, however every aspect of life, and everything that we had built to date, was blown apart as a result of the massive wave.
In 2005 quite soon after the tsunami I met and practiced with Steven Smith who had met Danny in Thailand. This meeting transformed my meditation practice and re-affirmed an unwavering commitment to the Teachings of the Buddha.
Emerging from a very dark period, in 2008 I founded Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training, integrating the practices of Yoga and Buddhist Insight Meditation.
In 2011 still suffering from undiagnosed complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and searching for ways to cope with my unresolved tsunami trauma, I was introduced to Dr. Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing; (body orientated trauma healing) by my yoga colleague, friend and mentor Aki Omori.
I have trained for 5 years to become a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. I now work in the field of healing trauma particularly with yogis and meditators.
During this same period I have been practicing Insight Meditation and sitting with Martin Aylward www.martinaylward.com who has been my teacher since 2010 and I completed Mindfulness Teacher Training with Martin Aylward and Mark Coleman in 2018.
Since 2011 I am inspired by the work of Italian Yogini Vanda Scaravelli, and I continue training with Yoga teachers from her lineage. Her intuitive, revolutionary, stress free approach to working with the body from the inside out, blends seamlessly with the Buddha’s teachings on Mindfulness, and is highly compatible with the principles of Somatic Experiencing.
My Professional Yoga/Therapeutic CV
Since 2011 to Present:
- September 2022: Research Master’s in Dance at Plymouth University
- March 2021: Somatic Experiencing Post Graduate Module: Healing Sexual Trauma with Ariel Giarretto
- November 2020: Somatic Experiencing Master Class Module with Dr. Peter Levine and Euphrasia Nyaki on Healing Transgenerational / Ancestral Trauma
- November 2019: The Bridge I Year Training with Denise Rowe http://www.earthdances.co.uk
- April 2018: 1 Year Mindfulness Teacher Training with Mindfulness Training Institute (Martin Aylward and Mark Coleman) www.mindfulnesstraininginstitute.com
- Post Graduate Somatic Experiencing Module on Developmental Trauma with Dr Peter Levine (July 2015)
- 2011 – 2015: Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) Training www.traumahealing.org (I have completed Somatic Experiencing Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced Training)
Since 2008 to Present:
- Founder / Director / Principal Teacher on Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training
- Senior Yoga Teacher and Yoga Pro Training Provider with Yoga Alliance UK
- Registered Yoga School 200 hrs with the European Yoga Alliance
Since 2001 to Present:
I have facilitated, organised, and taught on yoga intensives, retreats, workshops and yoga trainings worldwide
2003-2006:
Co Founder, Director and Teacher: El Covento Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and Mindfulness Eco Centre, Andalucia, Spain
2001 – 2003:
Co Founder, Director and Teacher: AshtangaOm Yoga Retreats
1998 – 2000:
- Ayurvedic Massage, Panchakarma Therapy, Sivananda Yoga
- Kovalam, Kerala, South India
1992 – 1996:
BA – Hispanic Studies 2:1 – Queen Mary College, University of London.
“Lovers find secret places inside this violent world, where they make transactions with beauty.” – Rumi
