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Mark Whitwell on the Teacher Student Relationship in Yoga

Is the Yoga Teacher a Special Person? Mark Whitwell on the Teacher-Student Relationship in Yoga [interview]

In the early 1990s Mark Whitwell was taking a walk on a beach near Madras with his teacher Desikachar and his wife Menaka. He had just finished compiling material for Desikachar’s first book. But they didn’t know what the title should be. Suddenly, Desikachar declared,

“The Heart of Yoga!”

The heart of yoga, Desikachar explained, is not the poses, the practices, or the philosophy, but the relationship between the teacher and the student. Without a relationship of mutual affection no yoga transmission can occur.

A year later, Mark Whitwell delivered the first copy of the book to his teacher.

The Heart of Yoga: developing a personal practice (1995) is now a set text on yoga teacher trainings around the world.

In this interview, I sat down with Mark Whitwell to explore the teacher-student relationship in yoga; what equality in teaching settings looks like; what the purpose of the relationship is; and how to be a good yoga teacher.

Andrew Raba: You’re fond of saying that the yoga teacher is “no more than a friend, and no less than a friend.” Can you expand on this principle?

Mark Whitwell: The intimacy found among friends – be they formally recognized as teachers or not – is the transformative means of yoga. This equal relationship is the necessary means of yoga transmission and personal empowerment of another. Trust in another enables trust in ourselves and trust in life.

When a student comes to a teacher, trust is already established simply because they have come believing that something is there for them. It is the teacher’s responsibility not to exploit that trust and to teach only what is useful and relevant to each person.

Many people who consider themselves teachers or therapists are wounded personalities who use their teaching as a strategy to maintain control of others. Useful teaching can only happen when there is no psychological strategy or social agenda at all.

When you feel you are in safe hands, something happens.

Andrew Raba: Why is this understanding so rare in today’s world in which there are so many spiritual teachers who claim positions of social power?

Mark Whitwell: The phenomena of spiritual transmission has occurred up until now in the social dynamic of disempowerment. Therefore, it’s not really ‘spiritual.’ It’s a kind of love transmission that actually makes you sick and bound.

Civilization and our present society is built upon this pervasive patterning. The model of the perfect person implies that everyone else is not yet perfect.

My friend U.G. Krishnamurti’s life was a crack in this very fixed presumption of society—a crack in which the light gets in! U.G. embodied an alternative model for all interaction and for spiritual transmission which was utter ordinariness and friendship.

Andrew Raba: Can you give an example of how Desikachar related to his students in this way?

Mark Whitwell: Often when arriving for a private yoga lesson with Desikachar he would say something like,

“Is there anything? Or shall we go to the beach? Or shall we just gossip?”

Two things are going on here.

Firstly, a teaching transmission depends on a sincere inquiry from the student. If a sincere dialogue arises between friends, that could be considered a teaching. Otherwise, there is no need for a teaching! Because life itself is doing a perfect job of nurturing and sustaining us.

Humanity has been civilized, burdened and controlled by the imposition of teachings on Life that Life does not need. If you suggest to a person that they need a teaching you only confuse the person and put them on a linear struggle toward some future ideal or improvement.

Secondly, asking if we should go for a walk on the beach or gossip is indicative of his profound commitment to egalitarian friendship as the context for teaching transmission.

Andrew Raba: Who can be a Yoga teacher?

Mark Whitwell: There are only three qualifications to teach yoga.

First, you have a good teacher yourself, so you know first-hand what the function is.

Second, you practice yourself, so you are in the direct embrace of life yourself.

Third, you care about others because you are cared for by your own teacher. You know what it is to love.

When you practice yoga daily for yourself, your presence in your community becomes a source of nurturing, healing and empowerment for all because you develop the strength to receive others. To be received is to be loved, and in love life flows.

Relieved of trying to be something you are not, your simple presence frees another to feel that relief, too. Then you fit a practical yoga to their needs.

The best teacher is the Acharya, one who has had victory over their own difficulties. Our difficulties have uniquely qualified us to be helpful to others who must go through the same troubles, especially in the areas we have passed through ourselves.

Andrew Raba: There is a lot of suspicion in the world today around spiritual teachers. Is the yoga teacher or the guru still necessary today?

Mark Whitwell: The word guru is deep in the traditions. Guru means heavy. It is a necessary intervention. Necessary because it is required to reduce or remove a person’s negative patterning. It's an important function of Mother Nature like a wave and the ocean. Two people coming together for transmission and transformation.

A mess has been created however, around the guru function. It has been toxified by those claiming to be gurus within the mistaken idea of the patriarchy that it implies status and authority.

It's a heavy thing to be in the fire of relationship with another, and collectively we haven't been given the skilful means to do it, so it's avoided. But an actual relationship between two people is how yoga works. It must be there to restore natural life.

We need our gurus. In every town and village. We need people willing to be the wave or the ocean for others.

End of interview

If you want to learn the principles of home Yoga practice that Mark Whitwell discusses in this interview you can join the 8-week online immersion by donation at www.heartofyoga.com/online-immersion.

Mark Whitwell has taught yoga for over three decades across the globe, and is the founder of the Heart of Yoga foundation, and the Heart of Yoga Peace Project. Mark Whitwell is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) and his son TKV Desikachar (1938-2016), with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than twenty years. Mark Whitwell is the author of four books: ‘Yoga of Heart,’ ‘The Promise,’ ‘The Hridayasutra,’ and, ‘God and Sex: now we get both.’ He also edited and contributed to his TKV Desikachar’s classic yoga text, ‘The Heart of Yoga.’ Mark Whitwell is a father of three and a grandfather. He now resides between New Zealand and Fiji and continues to write, teach, and speak.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Mark Whitwell Interview: Don't Be In Conflict With Yoga Society

Wendy Wright

Wendy is a mother-of-two based in Toronto. After initially training in dance, she became a yoga teacher for children and elderly people. She is passionate about learning more about the wisdom of our bodies and baking.

Wendy: Hi Mark, thanks for coming on today.

Mark Whitwell: You're welcome. Good to see you.

Wendy: I'd like to talk about something I've been struggling with lately. Which is, a sense of conflict with what I see in the yoga world around me. I just see so many strange mash-up of dance and movement and feel good therapies and stretching and then it all gets called yoga, and I've been part of this myself and I don't feel good about it anymore. And more and more there seems to be a lot of stuff out there shaming people for appropriating yoga and such, but meanwhile, people are enjoying these hybrids and get quite defensive. What's your experience here.

Mark Whitwell: Yeah thanks Wendy, I hear you on that. None of its valid. Or at least, it's not yoga it's lots of other things being called yoga and people are getting a little high off that and maybe feel a little bit better. It's the early days of yoga in the West and it's all a big experiment. The young students of Krishnamacharya popularised these very physical harsh male gymnastic practises, and they spread all over the world. And then, on the other hand, you have the practise is spread by Hindu missionaries which demand celibacy and so on. And so either way people haven't really been given a practise that fulfils the promises of yoga. They sense there is something more there waiting for them. And so they start trying to add this and that.

But what is needed to be added is not somatic this and trance dance that, it is the actual principles that the guru of those young men (Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois) Actually taught. I have seen people with decades of experience in those systems add the breath principles that krishnamachari are taught, and they are away. They're playing with a full deck of cards.

Wendy: But people are very attached to doing what they're doing and calling it yoga they don't like to hear that maybe it's not.

Mark Whitwell: Yeah fair enough, and that’s fine. It might have given them a little bit of relief, something positive in their life, some endorphins, like a glass of wine gives relief. We can't begrudge anyone for their sincere explorations. the problem is people start to identify with Wat ever has helped them, and that's when they get stuck because actually, Yoga is about dissolving those identifications so you can stand in your own ground as life itself not as any lesser conceptual categories. What we are talking about here is something more than feel-good gatherings.

Wendy: So what do you do when people righteously insist on their right to define yoga as whatever they feel like it is. For example, they feel good dancing around the room or walking their dog and so they say “that's my yoga.”

Mark Whitwell: Well, what I would say to them is different from what I would say to you. You have to create a relationship with people where they are at and honour their sincere attempts to feel better. That is Life’s intelligence happening. However silly. The goal is not to prove anyone wrong but to make some space for them to actually try what will truly help them. And you can't teach anyone anything until you love them. So what you do is you do your own yoga, your own relationship with life, until you're able to relate with them sympathetically and not react or try to win the argument. Sometimes when people get a little bit of knowledge about Yoga, they can become awful to be around because they start trying to prove to everyone else that what they're doing is superior and it puts everyone else’s back up. So there's no need for that. Everyone is the power of the cosmos and doesn't need to establish imaginary dominance over others in any way. So the main thing is to do your own Yoga. And if that's happening actually, naturally, and non-obsessively, people will notice. You'll find that some people have an organic curiosity about what you're up to. There's no need to get into arguments at dinner parties. I say, “when do you teach? When you are asked to teach.” If someone is not asking you then there's no need to impose on them. There needs to be some receptivity there. But of course, that request might not be a request for yoga it might just be a request for help. And yoga is the help that you have to offer.

Wendy: Do you think that tendency to want to own and define yoga is a western thing?

Mark Whitwell: Absolutely. The western mind wants to define everything, put it in the box, own it. My teacher Desikachar said that “In the West, whilst they don't accept authority, they would like to be the authority.” So yes, we can say that there is a colonial impulse there that takes yoga, changes it out of all recognition, and then angrily fights for its right to do so. That is attracted towards very materialistic, aggressive physical practice, such as what Iyengar taught, and then gets injured, blames “the Indian tradition” rather than its own ambition and habit of struggle, and then says we need physios and anatomy to make it ‘safe.’ The Western saviour complex that thinks it can come along and improve this poor inadequate indigenous thing called yoga, that can’t be very good because brown people made it up. As if they were not thousands upon thousands of years of sublime history there. Think about the sages wandering that great land while Europe went through two world wars… Anandamayi Ma, Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi, Bhagavan Nityananda, Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramana Maharishi… completely extraordinary. But we won’t gain anything from trying to point this out to anyone who is doing it. Because why are they doing that? They’re just trying to feel better in the cultural patterned way they know-how, which is over-stimulation and entertainment, possession and ownership. So what is the underlying need there? Intimacy. Feeling connected. Wanting to feel better. So what we can do is share the tools of the tradition that have been left behind that do actually make people feel better. The tendency to just get into fights about what yoga is, is part of the same cultural mess, the same illusion of separate mind vs separate mind. You are not a separate individual, you are Reality. And your Yoga is your daily participation in this fact. Whether they are informed about Yoga and yoga traditions, or uninformed, people are still troubled by the same thing which is our reaction to experience. And so reacting to the reactions doesn’t help. It just makes more of a mess. You have to step-free and live your life, share the actual tools, create something. Don’t worry about whether you succeed or fail, just keep going. Don’t worry if you’re misunderstood.

Wendy: I feel so pained teaching yoga and being associated with it all, I have thought many times about quitting teaching because it’s all become such a circus.

Mark Whitwell: That's a beautiful honest confession. Thank you for your sincerity and vulnerability. Please don't stop teaching, because these qualities are needed in the world. We need people who aren’t just selling shoddy goods to the public, selling patterns to people who genuinely need help and are coming to you for help. We need people who are willing to share their knowledge of the precise technology of Yoga that Krishnamacharya brought through from the ancient traditions. There are only three qualifications to teach: that you have a good teacher, you practice yourself, and you care about others. And you, Wendy, have all those three. And so you must teach. You know it. You have a treasure and I guarantee that you can’t help yourself but share it. It’s like having some food and there are hungry people around you, you want to share it. And when you see the circus going on, don’t be in reaction to it. It doesn’t define you. What you are doing has nothing to do with all that. Don’t waste your energy on it. Let it motivate you to be even more determined to share things that actually help at a deeper level, not just make people feel good for five minutes and then grind along as usual. Everyone has a heart. At some deep level, everyone wants to step out of the cycles of numbness and stimulation, distraction and repression, excitement and despair. Even if it seems to you like everyone just wants gymnastics and a talk circle, don’t despair. Share what you know to be true and a few good souls will find you. Do not worry about who comes and goes and whatever their karmas are. Don’t take it personally.

Wendy: It seems to me that part of the problem is that people don’t admit just how much they are really suffering. It’s like it’s shameful or something, and there’s just this surface level of smiles and laughter, with all this anger and pain underneath.

Mark Whitwell: Absolutely. That's part of the teacher’s role in the traditions, to see that people think they're at a feast, and really they’re in a kind of desperate hell realm. The glamour has to wear off the illusions. As people relax and start feeling into the real state of the body, as they start regaining their natural sensitivity, they become sober and realise that what looks like an exciting party from the outside is actually a desperate scene of suffering and seeking. No one has to take my word for it, they notice it for themselves. They stop being enamoured of the drunken party. A person starts a yoga practise and starts to feel for themselves how they have been imposed upon by culture. It's a shock. But it becomes further motivation for their practise. To participate in something different then the identity of the limited individual that they have been sold.

So as a teacher you absolutely don't have to try and convince anybody that they are suffering. First of all, you just acknowledge your own suffering. You really honour everything you have been through and every persona that you have been that got you to where you are today, the modern survivor. You thank them all. And you forgive them all for whatever they had to do to survive. And then you just share the breath with people and you share your recognition of them as a valid person, as life, as something that isn't the limited identity they might have bought into of winner or loser or whatever. You make it clear that you are interested in them as a person no matter what they are feeling. Your own practise gives you a capacity of feeling, that you can receive them, no matter what their feeling. You can only receive anyone as deeply as you receive yourself. If they're down you don't try and cheer them up just because you can't handle it. You help them make space for reality. And that helps them make space for Reality capital R, the fact that we are always looked after, nurtured and supported in this life. That life is nurturing. You can tell people this, sure, but the most important thing instead you feel the truth of it and you share the practical means for them to feel the truth of it.

Wendy: Thank you, Mark. I feel like there is potential here to step out of a kind of purity spiral, where I never feel like I’m good enough as a Yoga teacher, never feel like I know enough like I should have more qualifications, read more ancient texts.

Mark Whitwell: Again, thank you for this beautiful vulnerability. There are so many feeling the same thing whom you speak for. It’s just our old patterning from school and culture of not good enough, old identify of being lacking, just a hangover of these old patterns. Some of them might hang around for a while, but you know that you ARE in fact the power of the cosmos, you acknowledge this daily. You make some new grooves in your mind. You don’t get stuck in reaction even to your own patterning. You have those three qualifications that I spoke about earlier and look, I can tell that you really do care about people. You have all kinds of people coming to you, and you really do care about each one. Thank you so much for caring about each person. I know you do. Don’t let these old hangovers hold you back from doing what you can do. Don’t let yourself be intimated by all those climbing up imaginary ladders in imaginary power structures. They get to the top, apparently, and they still feel bad about themselves, they still find themselves looking for power over others. It’s all made up. The teacher is no more than a friend, no less than a friend. Not an authority. Not a knower. Not someone hoarding information and doling it out with the stink of enlightenment, the promise of future realisation. There is no such thing as future realisation.

Wendy: Thank you so much, Mark. I hope other teachers reading this or listening in will feel some relief and inspiration.

Mark Whitwell: Thank you, Wendy. I appreciate your love of the people and desire to get it right for them so much. Thank you.

About:

Mark Whitwell was born in 1949 in Auckland, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. In 1973, he traveled to India and began a life-long study of yoga with Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) and his son, T.K.V. Desikachar (1938–2016). Mark Whitwell’s simple mission is to give people the principles of practice that came through Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to make their Yoga authentic, powerful, and effective. Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga foundation and the Heart of Yoga Peace Project, an organization dedicated to developing yoga communities in conflict zones around the world. Mark Whitwell lives between New Zealand and Fiji.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Krishnamacharya on Relationship | The Opposites are Already in Union

Mark Whitwell shares Krishnamacharya views on Relationship.

When all the obsession with self-improvement, gym workouts, language learning and yoga come to an end, we recognize that we simply want to love and be loved in the mystery condition of Life. We all want to give and receive one another naturally and easefully.

Indeed, our bodies are built for this very purpose. From the soft feeling frontal line of the body to the masterful base and spine, we are strong and yet utterly receptive. We are here to love.

Yet, for most of us, relationship is where we are stuck. The trauma of having been born into a society that assumes separation has gone deep. Our living organism has been abused by a social mind that believes it to be separate from Nature and God for thousands of years. Because we mistrust our most essential connection to Life we struggle to love others, especially when it comes to sex.

Waves of lockdown and confinement may have brought the social dysfunction that was put in us as children up for inspection. This is all good. Our restriction is a goad to take positive action.

In all the chaos and confusion that surrounds intimacy in our culture, the great yogi Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) stands out as a beacon of hope. Krishnamacharya made available to the modern world the tools of the tantra: the practical means by which any person can be intimate with their own embodiment and then with another.

Yoga is Relationship

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya’s teaching on Yoga and relationship was simply that Yoga is direct intimacy with Reality Itself. It is intimacy with that which beats the heart, moves the breath and Sex and grows the trees and flowers. It is your participation in that which blows the wind across the islands and moves the ocean.

Specifically, the special technique of yoga is the union of opposites in our own system. On every inhale we receive the breath down the frontal line which is our embrace of the feminine aspect of our embodiment. On every exhale we give the breath back from the body base which is the embrace of the masculine aspect. This polarity of receptivity (the feminine) and strength (the masculine) is the way life is functioning at its most basic level. Yoga is a deeply sexual practice of enjoying the already-established union of these qualities on a daily basis. It is easy and for everyone.

Intimacy with your own embodiment naturally translates into the capacity to be intimate with somebody else. The guidance is: intimacy with body, breath and relationship, in that order. The great Yogi Jesus Christ said it in his instruction to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” First, you have to love yourself and Yoga is to do just that.

When this is not practiced and when you try to do Sex or follow the usual religious advice to suppress it and try to get away from it comes out badly in mistaken social disasters.

My friend Alan Watts once said that Sex is how we all entered this universe. It is the basis of all existence. We must educate the world on how to be intimate with Life and we must not deny the male/female union.

A Householder Tradition

Krishnamacharya made clear that Yoga is for ordinary family life. He said the best cave for yoga is pleasurable family life. It is a dignified matter to enter into an intimate relationship and yogic relationship. He was emphatic that the translation of the word brahmacharya (often translated as celibacy) was the study of Brahman through right-relatedness. He said there was never celibacy in yoga culture and that it came as a religious ideal much later.

The idea of intimacy having a place in spiritual life may come across as a bit of a shock. In conventional Buddhism and Christianity, there is the dominant idea that the ultimate spiritual life that of renunciation, meditation, monasticism, and going within: residing as ‘witness only’ to all arising conditions. It is now a universal assumption that spiritual practice is to drop all conditions and be the witness. This idea has created damage. It has dissociated humanity from our own reality.

Yoga is to turn 180 degrees around. Krishnamacharya’s view was that Yoga is intimacy with all ordinary conditions. When we are intimate with all conditions (including real difficulty), then we come to know the source of all conditions.

The first spiritual responsibility then is to heal relationship and sexuality. To participate in life and to be intimate with everybody on this beautiful planet. Sexuality must be engaged appropriately, with dignity and commitment.

Krishnamacharya, Yoga and Women

I was fortunate to have the gift of meeting Krishnamacharya in my early life. I came from New Zealand in the 1960s. I had received a western university education and so I was able to bring that scientific, discerning mind to his teaching.

In many respects, Krishnamacharya was a man with one foot in the ancient world and one in the modern. In his life, he negotiated and synthesized the orthodoxy of the Vaisnava tradition that he was born into and love and the relative radicalism of tantra. For example, in his Yoga Makaranda, he pointed to ancient texts to prove that women in ancient times were educated fully in the religious life and were educated to practice yoga.

“Everyone has a right to do yoga. Everyone — brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, sudra, g˜nani, strong, women, men, young, the old and very old, the sick, the weak, boys, girls, etcetera, all are entitled to yogabhyasa with no restrictions on age or caste. This is because yogabhyasa rapidly gives maximum visible benefits to all… But many do not agree with this opinion. This only reveals their confusion and the absence of a sattvic state of mind. (The sastras do not forbid yoga for anyone.)”

Krishnamacharya’s emphatic point of view was radical to the orthodoxy of this time and still is today.

TKV Desikachar (1936–2016), Krishnamacharya’s son, did so much to interpret and translate his father’s teaching. Without Desikachar, Krishnamacharya would have been difficult for the western world to access. Both of those gentlemen made it clear that the lineage of Krishnamacharya not biological but based upon the sincerity of the individual.

Understanding the Culture of Abuse in Yoga

The ongoing tragedy of male teachers abusing their students is a universal story. When you do not give the gifts of intimate life to a man, the means to actually come into mutuality and deep abiding intimacy with the feminine, then that man will use his secular or religious power as a way to manipulate social circumstance to try to get what he intuitively knows is missing from his life. There is a deep sadness in us in these times.

Let’s be clear about it. The world is deeply tragic and dysfunctional in the area of sexuality and intimacy. Abuse is universal in all secular and religious institutions. We know about the Catholic Church and we know about the Swamis who came to America. Within the religious ideal of celibacy, their sexuality comes out as an explosion of energy rather than a continuity of feeling between intimates in ordinary life. Many of the public have been turned off from the investigation of spirituality and sexuality.

Nevertheless, there is something absolutely extraordinary that came out of our ancient people. Extraordinary gifts come from extraordinary saints and sages and avatars and Yogis. And these gifts are supremely useful to our modern lives. Yoga is the Mother’s Milk of human life.

Krishnamacharya wanted the world to know that there is a right yoga for every person no matter who the person is. Yoga must be adapted to that individual according to age, health, body-type and cultural background. It must be given in a way that is right for each individual.

Through Yoga, we enjoy that connection to what we already are as individuals. We make love to life within and without. Don’t try to be like another saint and neglect your own wonder. We can who we are within the unitary wonder that is life on Mother Earth. My teacher U.G. Krishnamurti said that human suffering is simply trying to be something other than what you are.

If these words speak to you then join me and my friends in the heart of Yoga online studio to continue the conversation. We are committed to providing any person, no matter who they are, with a Yoga practice that is right for them according to the principles that Krishnamacharya brought forth.

Follow Mark Whitwell on Facebook.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Mark Whitwell on How to Survive a Pandemic | A Soft Message for a Hard Time

Mark Whitwell shares his thoughts on dealing with such tough times.

For many friends around the world, ongoing lockdowns are causing chronic stress. In the U.K., psychologists are now reporting what they call ‘Lockdown Burnout,’ with more and more people suffering from overload and uncertainty. In the context of real suffering, it is heartening to see teachers reaching out to communicate the healing power of Yoga in their communities.

I was talking recently with a friend in the U.K. and she described how teaching Yoga was no longer a hobby or a job for her, but a matter of survival for her students. “Everybody is under so much pressure,” she said. “People are desperate for the connection, nourishment and the fortitude that Yoga gives. We meet on Zoom twice a week, practice together and then share in each other’s company. I have no choice but to be there for my students.”

Our conversation got me thinking about care and the function of the Yoga Teacher within the broader ecology of nurturing that holds society together. In the Vedic lineage of my teachers, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) and his son TKV Desikachar (1938–2016), the Yoga teacher was considered essential to the health and wellbeing of the community.

Principally, the yoga acharya was there to help any person (no matter who they are) to merge with their body and their breath. Out of this daily merge, facilitated through a tailored asana and pranayama practice, come many gifts that are physically, emotionally and spiritually healing. Practice of intimate connection to body and breath is the Yogic means to enjoying intimacy with world beyond ourselves: our experience, our relationships and Life as a whole. There is no substitute for the regenerative power of breath.

“My father taught us more ways to approach a person in yoga than I have found anywhere else,” Desikachar writes. “Who should teach whom? When? And what? These are the important questions to be asked in beginning a practice. But underlying all these is the most important question of all: How can the power of the breath be utilized? That is something quite exceptional; nowhere else is the breath given so much importance, and our work has proven that the breath is a wonder drug, if I may use this term.”

At the level of physical health, the practice of deep, whole-body breathing coupled with body movement, cleanses and strengthens the respiratory system. It also improves all other vital functions of the body: the immune system, the health of the mind and digestion. On every exhalation, the lungs are emptied completely. On every inhalation we receive the refreshment of the breath into an expanded lung cavity. We empty what is full and fill what is empty. Or, we release what is old to receive what is new. There seems to be no part of the system that the breath does not influence.

The great gift of Yoga however it not just health for its own sake, but how it positively affects our relationships. In particular, the breath powerfully supports our ability to respond to difficulty and stress in our relationships in a caring way. Our daily delight of merging with our body and breath masterfully facilitates our ability to be intimate with our loved ones: to really listen, support and receive them no matter what is going down.

Deep in the traditions, it is understood that it is not what we experience but how we react to it that determines its effects. If we react to our experience and contract, then blockages or rubbish forms in the nadis and the muladara chakra. The prana can no longer flow unhindered through the system as it wants to. If, on the other hand, we merge with our experience, even it is disturbing or difficult, then prana continues to flow.

We all have difficulties in life and we all react from time to time. There is no idealism here, especially during a pandemic. When we notice reaction we can apply intelligent means to release the blockages that may have formed. In fact, “Yoga is 99% waste removal” Desikachar once said, and by removing everything that is not necessary, the natural energy of life, pranashakti, soon flows again. Ultimately, the goal of Yoga is to not react in the first place.

If you are put off by Sanskrit terms, the simple language of biology is suffice to communicate what our ancestors were talking about. The psychologist Maurice Hamington, for example, describes how our natural physiology is “built for care” — the soft feeling frontal line from crown, face, chest, belly and genitals, to our wonderful sense organs and our ability to focus our attention — are there to support us to receive. On the other hand, the strong base of the body — legs, pelvis, back and spine — support our capacity to give and take action in our relationships.

Yoga is nothing more or less than our participation in the relational intelligence of the whole body. We move and breathe in the polarity of strength (linked to the exhale and described in the traditions as the masculine principle of life) and receptivity (linked to the inhale and the feminine principle). All bodies, no matter what gender or sex, contain the union of strength and receptivity. To live out that union is enough to base life upon.

The beautiful insight of Hamington is that caring for one another implies the whole body. This becomes obvious when we think of what happens physically when we close ourselves off from other people and from life: our shoulders hunch, our chest muscles harden, there is tension in the face; we generally fold in as a body. Conversely, when we feel free and easy in our relationships our bodies reflect this with a physical openness and softness: our spine straightens, our chest opens and softens, our gaze relaxes, we are both more upright (strong) and softer (receptive) as we give and receive in the natural polarity of life.

Although many try, this is why we cannot force ourselves to be more caring or sensitive to another with mental ideals alone. More often than not, cultural ideals of love and kindness without the practical means to let these innate qualities flourish in the body-mind causes stress and disappointment. There is a gap between how we are and how we want to be. What we can do is our Yoga practice. In the traditions, it is known as sadhana: that which you can do. My teacher would say, just do your asana and just see what happens.

We are not getting out of life or away from others here. “Yoga is relationship,” Krishnamacharya would say, a statement that holds weight given his profound understanding of the religious cultures of India. It was the profound view of my teachers that relationship itself was the principle healing for the human life and the heart of a spiritual life. When I was speaking with my friend about her classes, she confirmed Krishnamacharya’s view and expressed how simply being with each other, within the bhavana (mood) of friendship and respect, generated its own nurturing influence.

“People often arrived with a feeling of heaviness or depression,” she told me. “But as we sit together and as they feel seen, listened to and loved, then something happens: a lightness enters where perhaps previously there was darkness or restriction.”

In my early life, I was able to observe Desikachar embodying this principle during private lessons. He would do many things: take the pulse of his student, enquire about the family, check on the diet, teach various asana, all manner of intelligent means. Yet, what made these tools truly relevant and alive for the student, was the context of friendship and care that they were communicated within. Students reported that it was the relationship itself that they drew the most sustenance and motivation from.

“This personal connection cannot be replaced by books or videos,” Desikachar said. “There must be a relationship, a real relationship, one that is based on trust (sraddha).”

I want to thank everybody out there who is teaching their hearts out on Zoom and in-person around the world, making sure that the mother’s milk of Yoga gets to all people no matter their race, religion or financial means. We pick up where Desikachar and his father left off and continue their mission of giving the whole world a Yoga education.

It is everybody’s birthright to breathe well and to be intimate with their Life. Sahana Vavatu. May we get the job done together.

If you feel curious or moved to learn more about home practice you can join me and my friends at the heart of yoga online studio for live classes and conversations from the heart.

Why is intimacy and relationship so neglected in the spiritual traditions of the world? Last year we put out God and Sex: Now We Get Both (2019) to examine this question.

Originally published here.

About:

Mark Whitwell is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya (1888-1989). He is the author of four books including ‘Yoga of Heart’ and ‘The Promise’ and was the editor and contributor to TKV Desikachar’s classic yoga text ‘The Heart of Yoga.’ Mark Whitwell continues to facilitate teacher trainings and workshops in the heart of yoga all over the globe.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Mark Whitwell on God Love and Parent Love

The love of the Heavenly Father God and the ‘Holy Father’ or priest, his agency on Earth, inherently suggest that the love of your actual biological father is lesser. There’s an English nursery rhyme that says it all: ‘I love you, but Jesus loves you the best.’ Mother or father’s love is believed to be not as great as ‘God’s love’ and its special human agents (i.e., priests, popes, gurus, swamis, etc.). These systems deny tangible reality for an abstract ideal and in so doing dissociate us from our actual lives.

However, there are some hopeful signs that patriarchal systems are gradually dissolving themselves: in terms of the behaviors of their leaders at least, if not in their social structures. For example, the present Pope insists on behaving as an ordinary person; the Dalai Lama insists he is an ordinary monk. Also in modern times, it is significant that the Beatles and other cultural icons claimed their ordinary lives in the midst of super fame, which did much to disintegrate hierarchies in secular and spiritual life. These figures made a working-class hero something to be.

The great English visionary, William Blake, wrote that God only exists in actual beings (by which he meant ‘all things’). Is it possible that mother’s love is God’s love? In original Vedic culture, it was understood that god, guru, mother, father, your spouse, your body, and your child are One, arising in the one Reality in a vast elemental interdependence and harmony. Besotted love-devotion to all in all was the sublime culture of this ancient world. It was a folk or people’s culture and practice, a way for ordinary, mainly agricultural people to embrace their own power and beauty.

The unique union with Guru was like the relationship between the wave and ocean. Mark Whitwell believes it was an equal, yet profound relationship. Without this egalitarian form, so-called ‘gurus’ replicate this model of the ‘special agent’ or ‘special person.’ Within this model they can only have followers: no transformation, and no actual Guru-Shirshya (student) function or transmission can occur. In the ancient world of Veda there were never temples to the Guru and the Guru was never worshipped. The Guru had no special social or personal identity, authority or status. Mark Whitwell says for there to be a Guru there must be a Shisha. When the student became free (moksha) the relationship dissolved for its purpose was over. Of course, life-long gratitude remained. The emphasis in this culture was on the liberation of the student, not the status and continuity of the Guru. This is so important. Liberation was considered the domain and possibility of all ordinary people, not the rarity of exclusive so called enlightened rarified or perfected people, implying that all other people are not perfect.

These systems were only interested in gathering followers, continuity and power. They merged forces with political structures. The big examples of course are Rome with Christ and King Ashoka with Buddha. Wealthy people stole partialities, sublime or powerful ideas from the otherwise egalitarian culture of humble shamanic people. Arising elite built temples to create more wealth. They created social idealism without the Yogas of participation in life that are required to actualize them. These patriarchal systems used the poetry of spiritual wisdom (even of the Veda) as mechanisms of power, selling the idea of Guru as special access to God, and thereby making the human life and human love seem less than God. Our actual father’s actual love has been imagined to be less—and unfortunately, our mother or fathers’ behaviors, inherited from the patriarchy, they too deprived of love, are often less than love and affirm that assumption in this sad imposition on humanity. We must emphasis and return now to the original and actual purpose of Yoga, the liberation of all ordinary people in real life. Real Yoga for real people.

Power structures co-opted the teachings, the beautiful utterance of Vedic realizers as their own. Fearful people with the pathology to be teachers claim authority to control and feel secure in their social circumstance. They literally rob individuals of their lives and intrinsic pleasures. The Yogas of participation in life were not understood or given in the arbitrary methods of allegiance to the imagined Guru and institution. We live in a time where secular and religious exaggeration and mass stimulation consumption is ever increasing. Many legitimately reject the sham of patriarchy only to replace it only with the shallow stimulation of the middleclass massage and feeding frenzy, another form of patriarchy. Our lives and eco systems are at risk, yet in this time like no other each individual can take responsibility for their own life amidst the chaos. Each person can be who they are and claim their God given skills and intimacy with life in every way, including sexual intimacy. Each can respond to the certain fact that they are arising in and as radiance unfolding as this cosmos. The Yogas of participation that evolved from ancient times can now easily be practiced in sincere and equal relationship with others.

In the pain of the parent-child dysfunction, we transfer the attempt to feel love from parents to the hoax of illusory authorities (most of whom support the illusion) rather than to our actual parents where real love is, despite it having been obstructed. The teacher is not a substitute for the love of spouse and parents. This is where the healing must occur: in actual human relationship. To do so, all power structures must be thrown out of your system. In Reality, there is no such thing as social power or unequal relationships. They are a socially contrived swindle and do not truly exist. Yet regretfully, there are many individuals from all walks of life who exploit the social dynamic of disempowerment that civilization (and therefore our thought structures) are built on. The world is still rife with people looking for love from apparently powerful men or women who are imagined to have special access to an ideal—whether this is phrased in spiritual terms or seen in secular terms of success, wealth, or fame. True Yoga does not occur in this arrangement, yet ‘yoga’ in its popular forms is unfortunately duplicating this social dynamic of disempowerment. People who are imagined to be superior are followed and emulated… until we realize that no such person exists. This dynamic of seeking is engrained in our thought structures, and people yoga don’t realize that they are exploiting others or being exploited with arbitrary practices by which a person tries to reach a future idealized state… rather than the anciently given Yogas of participation in the perfection of reality, which is always already each person’s natural state and beauty.

In recognizing this, we can now pass through all the necessary stages of emotional reaction, in this order: fear, anger, pain, and grief, until finally the siddhis of compassion and forgiveness naturally arise for ourselves, our parents, and all relationships. By seeing and understanding the shoddy deal that has been dished up to all of us, compassion comes for all and to all. The patriarchal structure of society must end, as we return to authentic, (honest and real) spiritual life—direct embrace of our own reality, which is arising as power, pure intelligence, and the utter beauty of all natural things in their vast intrinsic harmony with the cosmos. This is simply how it is and Yoga is merely participation in what we are. It is intimacy with all ordinary conditions. The source and seen are one, therefore “the seen” is full and sufficient The absolute condition of all conditions, that which is great is simply spontaneously apparent.

I urge those of us who are involved in Yoga, either as students or teachers, to understand that we are not involved in the patriarchy. We are not “knowers” or trying to know. We are not authorities, or subservient to authorities. To be a Yogi is to be exactly what we are, utterly unique manifestations of life participating in life and teaching exactly as we are. Otherwise, teaching is merely a gross duplication of obstructive social patterning. Patriarchal systems may attempt to use Yoga to actualize its beautiful ideals, but then its power structures will dissolve as individuals become self-empowered. The Yogas of participation must be given or the usual guru cultures, from Christ and Buddha, to modern day guru-ism that proliferates are disempowering. These are insidious system that robs people of their own reality, sex and incarnation of individuality.

Human suffering is trying to be something that you are not. We are all the power of this cosmos arising as pure intelligence and utter beauty in perfect intrinsic harmony. That is simple a fact and must be taken seriously so that the Yogas of participation may begin. We embrace the fact. We don’t “teach” yoga: we share Yoga as we have experienced it ourselves. That is all. There is no social or personal identity in being a teacher or student. We are no more than friends and no less than friends, and Yoga teaching is no more than the flow of nurturing in local community, a natural phenomenon of Mother Nature. We teach the skills of intimate connection with all tangible conditions, which makes possible real relationships with real people, including the healing of the parent child / adolescent relationship and the male-female intrinsic harmony, the nurturing power of life. We stop looking for love in all the wrong places.

Regretfully, Mark Whitwell says much Yoga has been, and still is, taught by people imaging themselves to be authorities, but I encourage all to throw off this legacy. Stand in your own ground and relate to everyOne in and as reality itself in the one unitary movement of life, one to another. No power structures. As Jiddu Krishnamurti said to his friend and teacher T.K.V. Desikachar, ‘Don’t become one more monkey.’ He never did.

If you want to learn the principles of home Yoga practice that Mark Whitwell discusses in this article you can join the 8-week online immersion by donation at www.heartofyoga.com/online-immersion.

Originally Published here.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Establishing a Home Yoga Practice | Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

The biggest challenge we face when starting our life of Yoga is to establish a home practice that feels natural and pleasurable to do every day. Our daily practice should feel as simple as brushing our teeth in the morning, as easy as slipping into our favorite pair of jeans and as necessary as taking a shower (perhaps more necessary!). Yet, as we all know, when we wake up we can easily let the demands of the day take over and forget to practice.

Some rare people can start to practice without any difficulties at all. For most of us however, the journey is uneven and this is all good. We all have our unique karmas, addictions, circumstances, emotional complexes and frustrations to cut through.

We may practice for a few weeks or months and then stop. We practice some days and then do not practice on other days. When we stop we may feel guilty. We then resent Yoga for making us feel guilty. The next week we feel a burst of enthusiasm and recommit which is followed by a loss of faith and so on.

Does gender play a role? Men may find it easy to practice because they have long been encouraged by the culture to prioritise their spiritual fulfillment. Although, typically the means of fulfillment is located in career, artistic pursuits, a sense of mission in the world, and action. The stillness, restfulness and receptive quality inherent in a Yoga practice may deter many men who only know and want to penetrate life.

On the other hand, women have been so trained to be tuned in to the needs of the others that the actual discipline of taking half an hour to an hour a day to do sadhana for themselves may result in a direct confrontation with deeply ingrained social patterning. Female friends describe how even when they do have the time to practice, their own tendency to put themselves second to others needs (real or imagined) means they won’t do it.

Where there is an obstacle to practice it must be inspected. And when there is a couple who both want to practice, it is the responsibility of each person to ensure the other has the time and the literal space to do so.

Perhaps the most significant barrier to practice however, is the idea that Yoga is something that you do on yourself in order to get to a future improved place.

We have been raised to believe that we are separate body living in a separate world. Spiritual disciplines are provided to us by well-meaning (or exploitative) people as the means to return to a state of unity with life and others. The starting point is problem and Yoga is presented as the solution. Such a prospect either turns us off practice altogether or makes us obsessively practice for several hours a day trying to fix ourselves. The very presumption that we are separate and need to re-connect causes stress on the organism and turns us off practice.

Another approach is possible. Yoga is Not a Struggle for a Future ResultYoga arose in the great Upanishadic culture in a time before the concept of the holy personality or exclusive God had developed in history. It was a wisdom culture that simply acknowledged that everything is Brahman or God: Sun, moon, male, female, breath, senses, food, and all tangible and intangible aspects of the cosmos. There was no concept of a special person as God, implying that everyone else was not.This dichotomy was made worse when the idea of the divine person was packaged, distributed and forced into the social mind and behavior as doctrine. This is the cause of human misery, trying to be something we are not, rather than enjoying the wonder and power of Life that is already abundantly given.The message from the wisdom traditions of humanity, prior to the imposition of male power structures, is that there is no ultimate reality or God to be attained because God or Reality is already our innate condition and appears as every thing. There is no world separate from Source.Call it God or spirit if you will, but there is no necessity for religious language or belief. It is simply to understand that life and all there is to know is never further away than your own breath and all ordinary conditions. The secrets of the universe are fully in you, as you. There are no steps to be taken. None. Your body is not different from its source. Your whole body is not different from God.This is not something we can turn into a process of seeking. Just as the fact that the sun is the source of our solar system does not provoke us to seek for the sun. The sun is a tacit presence in our lives that we enjoy. Attempting to get closer to Reality or God is like trying to find the sun as if it is not pouring down on us every moment of the day. It only keeps the mind busy and stressed and we soon injure ourselves in our struggle. No Problem YogaOnce you realize that there is nowhere to get to, then your journey to daily practice is clear. Actual yoga arises naturally as the movement of Life in body, breath and relationship, rather than the manipulation of the body and mind.If you find yourself still caught up within the seeking logics of the mind then don’t worry. For as long as your practice is organised around the specific principles that Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989) brought forth then your Yoga will be the unitary movement of body, breath and mind. Your Yoga is direct participation in Reality itself: no matter what the mind is up to.These principles are:The body movement is the breath movement.The breath envelops the movement.The inhale is from above as receptivity; the exhale is from below as strength.Asana creates bandha; and bandha is not to be practiced outside of asana.Asana, Pranayama, meditation and life are a seamless process.These principles functionally override the mind’s seeking impulse by gently but deliberately subordinating the mind to the flow of the breath. The breath leads the movement not the brain. As a result, the mind automatically becomes immersed in the whole body and the whole body is always in the present moment. You find that you do not have to be here now, you are here now!The faith or certainty in the body’s intelligence and presence gradually enters the mind and the only motivation that remains for your daily practice is pleasure. The body loves its breath; the exhale loves the inhale. We feel the whole body, mind included, fold up from its fearful struggle. We gently relax into the nurturing field of Reality itself. Our system relaxes and energy flows. Then we are away.There is still of course a degree of discipline, but it is now conceived of as a discipline of pure pleasure. Just like making love regularly with our special partner is a discipline, because if we do not make it a priority then we tend to let work and other matters take over. The gamble is that pleasure (rather than fear, guilt, or hopefulness) becomes the guarantor of your daily sadhana.So get your practice into your day whatever it takes. Do not be casual about it and do not make it random. Have a time in your day that fits into your daily routine. Like eating breakfast or having a shower your practice will soon become a seamless part of your day.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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As a Teacher Do I Need My Own Practice? | Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

The one thing that qualifies you to teach is that you practice yourself. If you practice, then you can teach others from the authority of your own experience of what Yoga is: your direct participation in Reality Itself.

It can be a difficult job being a Yoga teacher because your students will have had teachers and authorities telling them the right way to practice. People will say, “This is not yoga” and “Why is there so much focus on the breath?”

With the strength and the certainty of your own experience you meet the student with their mixture of ideas. And with the authority of the fact that you are intimate with Life as it actually is, then you teach them.

A Yoga teacher is not an authority in the usual sense of hierarchy and power. But an authority that is born out of a sense of love for all other people. You love everybody in a fundamental way as Life Itself. And you know that this technology of asana and pranayama enacted according to the principles that Krishnamacharya brought forth actually helps people feel their prior connection to Life.

The key is to translate your own experience of Yoga according to the needs of the student. We adapt the Yoga to individual needs according to body type, age, health and culture. Many students will be religious people and many will be people who have thrown out religion. We teach by making Yoga relevant to each person’s background and with respect to who they are.

Within the ongoing waves of lockdown, the need for people to have access to a Yoga practice in their homes is huge. We need Yoga teachers who are practicing and who able to share.

Yet, even if the usual pre-pandemic world stumbles back there will still be massive problems.

The mind of civilization has dissociated us from our own Reality via the transmission of Doubt. What has been transmitted to us from babies is that we are a separate body in a separate world and therefore we feel lonely and problematic.

This presumption that we are separate from Reality has caused real pain in the body mind. In this pain we become exploitable by all sorts of cults, authority figures, knowers and spiritual salesmen. Otherwise we numb the pain and the doubt through drugs and alcohol to try and feel better.

Within this craziness we need the wisdom tradition of Yoga like a baby needs mother’s milk. We need to feel our connection to Nurturing Source. We need to feel connection to what Life is.

Separate Body/ Separate World? Or, Life is a Unity

The world of separation that is created by the thought-structures of society does not actually exist. It is a vast illusion. What does exist is the cosmos in all its harmony, beauty and intelligence and power and you are that. How could you not be that? What could create your body? What has created your body? A vast intelligence that is the body. What lives the body. What brings it through to existence and what is breathing it?

You have to agree that life is a Unity. There is no mind without life without the body. So the mind too is the Unity. This Unity cannot be lost. My teacher U.G. Krishnamurti would say, “Nobody need give this you because you already have it. Nobody can take it away, because you are it.”

Therefore, even thought we may have wild dreams of pain and separation, we can say that our pain is not the whole story. The thought-structures of separation and doubt create momentum in the psychophysical forms that we are in. But we know that we are the peace, power, harmony, intelligence and beauty of Reality Itself.

If the pain of presumed separation gets intensified enough, it may lead us to the understanding that we are not separate, so long as somebody speaks it to us. We need to speak it to each other because of the necessity to address it. Otherwise our only option is to numb ourselves. But if the pain takes us to Reality Itself, we can let that which is Prior wash over us. Then we will all get home.

Join me and my friends in the heart of yoga studio to continue the conversation, take live classes, and collaborate with one another to learn how to teach this much-needed technology of Reality Embrace.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Is Yoga a Means to Spiritual Realization? | Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

In our Yoga groups around the world the conversation often turns to the question of whether Yoga is a means to some kind of spiritual realization. By and large, our conclusion is that it is not. Why? Because we are already realized! The life that is our body, heartbeat, breath and Sex is an extreme intelligence, function and beauty that is beyond comprehension. And if there is such a thing as an unseen Source of this intelligence (God) then it cannot be separate from its visible expression that is you and me. Nurturing Source has realized you and all ordinary conditions. So there is simply no need to realize anything…the Source and the Seen are One.

Our Yoga asana is a non-dual practice of direct participation in Nurturing Source. An asana practice is participation in the union of all opposites: above/below, left/right, front/back, inner/outer, inhalation/exhalation, spirit/form. All these opposites contain the male/female equation of life which is already in perfect union. By participating in these opposites the source of opposites is felt which is the hridaya heart: the first cell of life that appeared when you appeared when source became seen. As you move and breath in these beautiful rhythmic patterns, you will naturally feel the fundamental power of life that supports you and is you.

Therefore, Yoga is not a spiritual project to try and get somewhere as if you are not Somewhere. There can be no approach to Source: no progressive process, no looking, no seeking, no possession, Only Love existing as all ordinary conditions. This is sahaj samadhi: the natural union we are all in. Each person is a perfect unique bloom of Life unfolding; a depth of Source unfolding in all directions.

Yoga is simply to be profoundly intimate with Life in all aspects. Because they are One, intimacy with the Seen is intimacy with Source. In the language of my teacher Krishnamacharya, because everything is God surrender to anything is surrender to God.

Many find this to be a deeply relieving consideration. Everyone is exhausted within by the pressure to try and realize something spiritual or become someone amazing. Civilization has been built upon religious doctrine and it is an uninspected axiom of culture that there is more Life in cultural proposals and language (“God’s word”) than there is in our own beautiful bodies and relationships. We have been convinced that we are less than some big idea written in sacred text and have to try and ‘get’ it.

It was my teacher U.G. Krishnamurti (1917–2007) who identified this as the cause of humanity’s misery. He would say: “I tell you very clearly, loud and clear, in clear, unmistakable language, there is nothing to be communicated now or at any time. You are chasing something which does not exist. There is nothing to be transformed, nothing to be changed, nothing to be understood. The one answer for all questions is: Stop asking questions!”

U.G.’s special function was to expose the way that cultural ideals actively interferes with the natural state of the body. The mind’s search for peace destroys the peace that is already present in the body. The mind’s desire to realize Consciousness only hides the pure functioning of Consciousness from the mind. And the search for an external God obscures our ability to see the power that is the ordinary human life. “Man’s heaven has created a hell out of this abundant paradise.”

What my friends and I got from U.G. was the understanding that ALL ideals and spiritual language automatically create dualities that cause a dissociation from Life, from the body and from intimate connection. It is the problem itself that takes people away from their experience. A friend pointed out to me that the Latin etymology of the word “abstraction” is “to draw out of; to drag away, withdraw, detach, pull away and divert.” We are easily fascinated by the charm and wisdom of language instead of being intimate with our reality. No wonder we are all looking for more intimacy…

So, Yoga begins when we give the spiritual ideals of culture and settle into our lives as they actually are. We leave the body-mind alone and give it a chance for its natural intelligence to express itself. Yoga is participation in the pranas and the pranas have their own movement.

“Forget about the ideal society and the ideal human being. Just look at the way you are functioning, that is the important thing,” U.G. would say.

Perhaps there is a paradox here! As the social mind lifts off the intrinsic intelligence of the whole body we may find that many of the promises of well-being described in the traditions are spontaneously given to us. It was the point of view of my teacher that the abstractions of text are descriptions of what is already true, not something that needs to be attained. When we participate in the Truth of Life and the social mind lifts off the whole body, what is already the case (Nurturing and Unity within Love-Bliss Reality) may become obvious to the mind.

It is intimacy that is the point however: not Meditation, not Consciousness, not Awareness, not Enlightenment, not God realization. But all these arise spontaneously, naturally and unpredictably as siddhis (gifts) that come from our practice of intimate participation; that come when we are no longer looking for Life in text but living our Life as the whole body. We may find that the beautiful ideals of text are no longer ‘Other’ to our lives when before they seemed to separate us from what had already been given.

To learn the five key principles of practice that Krishnamacharya brought forth from the Himalayas, you can join the heart of Yoga online studio.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Mark Whitwell Unravels the Seduction of Yoga Knowledge

By Rosalind Atkinson

“Without understanding these intricacies and secrets of yoga, some people look at the books and try to do yogabhyasa (like looking for Ganesa and ending up with a monkey). They get disastrous results and bring a bad name for yoga sastra. We need not pay any attention to their words.” T. Krishnamacharya, Yoga Makaranda 2.4

When I first went to Yoga teacher training, I imagined that I would have my head stuffed full of yoga knowledge. I imagined I would come back incandescent with learning, able to bleed Sanskrit onto anyone who came near me. In hindsight, I can see that this was a fantasy of power, believing that knowledge could make me somehow bulletproof, and more importantly, protected from my own self-doubt. As it turned out, this wasn’t how it worked.

I had been thinking about doing yoga teacher training for a while, as I was volunteering at a retreat centre and had watched some disastrous yoga offerings given there. Perhaps arrogantly, I felt that I would like to try and offer something halfway decent myself. The bar had been set very low!

I had criticism in me of all systems that proposed to be getting a person closer to some idea of connection or love as if those weren’t already the fabric of our reality, but I had resolved to just go to a standard, reasonably indepth training, and to strip away any seeking philosophies myself, discarding what I found in conflict with my understanding. This betrayed my ignorance, because I see now that every little part of a yoga education depends on that one question at the root of it: is it about participating in reality, or is it about reaching for a future result. The teacher’s state determines absolutely every aspect of the process. You cannot take Iyengar’s movements outside of his personality as an authoritarian bully, for example. You cannot rebrand Bikram’s abusive systems as hot yoga and continue on as before. There is a deep logic between teacher and what they teach. The system is cohesive all the way. “Take the teaching, leave the teacher” is not possible.

So thank God that I happened to pick up the book Yoga of Heart by Mark Whitwell before I managed to enroll in one of those sensible courses. Otherwise, I would have ended up with a deep disconnect between the yoga I shared (a mere physical practice) and my ideals and understanding of life as something that didn’t need progress towards a future result. I would have unwittingly absorbed the modern, externally focused yoga that the West has arrogantly created in its belief that it can improve upon an ancient Indian system of Furthermore, I would never have had the seed of criticism of spiritual authority planted in me that led to me leaving that retreat centre for good.

As soon as I read Yoga of Heart, I felt a mysterious attraction toward knowing its author. It was a strange and lovely book, an intoxicating, free-wheeling, non-linear ride filled with assurance and sublimity. I could feel that the author, Mark Whitwell, was speaking from his own experience. This was something that would take a while to sink deeper into. “Step outside of the social dynamic of disempowerment,” he urged. “I’ve done that already,” I smugly thought. Of course, I had not.

And so I made the pilgrimage to the Heart of Yoga Ashram in Taveuni Island, Fiji. I kept the mission secret from all but my closest friends, as I was embarrassed to be associated with the idea of going to a tropical island yoga retreat. I was broke and sold my clothes and couch to pay the airfare. I felt myself to be some kind of activist radical and didn’t want to be seen as someone swanning around at a neospiritualist navel-gazing luxury retreat.

I soon forgot these image-maintenance concerns. My first gathering with Mark was at a musical concert given by his Indian classical music friends, whom he had flown over to play for the group and the wider Fijian community. Perhaps it was appropriate to begin with music, as music is the best metaphor I have for communicating how Yoga is a skill and yet an experience, not a verbal accumulation of knowledge. The raaga played by Bruce Hamm and Joanna Mack somehow entered into me, rearranging my cells with its accelerating rhythms. A young local Fijian Indian man accompanied them on table, and I could feel how this was a tradition of sacred music, not merely entertainment. A perfect accompaniment for the yoga we were about to learn.

Over the next few days, we sat around in a diverse group of bodies, more like a scene from the Decameron than what I imagined yoga teacher training would be like. There were no whiteboards, no diagrams, no tests, no need to learn the names of the asana unless we felt motivated to do so in an autonomous impulse. And yet something was absolutely going on. Mark engaged each person in the room in sincere dialogue, finding out there reasons for being there, why they were attracted to Yoga, what they hoped for. I marvelled at his ability to enter deeply into sincere interest for the person he was speaking to, and yet I admit that at first I thought this was just “Mark Whitwell’s personality,” not the very thing we were learning. For what does a yoga teacher need more than anything else? The ability to care about others, to relate to people where they are at, and truly see a person beneath all their social patterns and coping mechanisms. I had expected Mark to pour information into us, like a bird feeding desperate baby birds. I had not even realised the extent to which a currency of information structured my whole understanding of knowledge and wisdom.

I started to truly wonder what made him capable of such kindness to all the very varied souls who were present. How was he able to engage each person with such good humor and sincerity, even the people I would have been tempted to write off as idiots? What was it that enabled him to not react to people’s projections and patterns?

“Well, are there any questions,” announced Mr. Mark Whitwell after all the introductions were complete, “Or shall we gossip.” Shocked, I realised that he was not going to teach us anything that we did not explicitly want and need to know. There was no “syllabus”, no knowledge economy. I would get answers to whatever questions I was able to sincerely formulate, no more and no less. I realised that all my other teachers had been power tripping on the basis of a point of difference from their students, usually more knowledge.

He led us through long simple practices that stirred something deep in me and released many tears. Sometimes, I felt like I was floating in a cosmos of stars. Other times, overwhelmed with anger. I discovered a voice to stand up for myself and started straightening out some of my messy affairs at home via email with a newfound sense of self-worth. I belong in this cosmos, I felt. I am not a scabby loser needing to impress people. Old identities fell away in the face of the forec of reality in the simple practice of uniting the inhale with the exhale.

I realised that there was some precious knowledge: no one had ever taught me how to breathe before, how to really receive my inhale with receptivity. It changed everything to make my yoga practice all about the breath. So many classes and I had never leant this. I was so inspired to share this with others, not as something that I knew, but as something that everyone could do. I found myself drawing rather than writing in my journal, colourful plants, a picture of myself with no head and open palms with eyes in them. Space opened up for the non-verbal and the pre-verbal, in me, a talkaholic knowitall and knowledge junkie. What a miracle.

I realized that’s Mark’s kindness was not just his personality, but a direct result of his own practice, his own yoga process of loving his teachers, being with them, and releasing his own reactivities. I saw how most human relationships are just people reacting to a reaction to a reaction. And that to be a decent teacher, we had to release some of our own baggage so we would not react to potential students. So we would not play out games of power and control with them, to satisfy our imaginary ego complexes.

When I returned home, people could see the difference in me. Something was standing up straight that before used to be quivering in the corner. I had been given the means to see everyone as my equal, no matter how much knowledge they had. The heart of yoga. No longer manipulable. My old identities were weakened, and I had my means of practicing reminding my brain who I really was. A person with no need to hoard knowledge or play games. The power of life itself. I am forever grateful to Mark Whitwell for this gift!

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Mark Whitwell on Teaching the Heart of Yoga in Christian Communities

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

In this article, we collate advice Mark Whitwell has given those who share yoga in strongly Christian communities, for how to break down barriers and teach in a non-dogmatic way.

Yoga is what you do as your principal devotion. It is your principal practice. Not puja, not meditation, not kirtan, not philosophy. In ancient times, asana itself was what was done in the temple to your deity. What Krishnamacharya said was there is ‘Yoga Yoga’ — Yoga that is connected to life itself. But if you are describing life itself in terms such as deity or guru or God, which is what Christians are doing, then Yoga is the principal means of connection, your asana practice! We have to understand that in the tradition that is what asana is. Devotion to life. Devotion to God and guru or deity if that is relevant.

For a Christian, their deity is Christ. If Christians would do Yoga, then it would a whole-body prayer to life. Christianity is a great guru system, of course. The cross is a sincere yantra that people relate to with their body, crossing themselves. This can easily be translated into practice. We can inhale, open our arms out wide, receive God, the arms of the cross… and exhale, fold forward, devote ourselves to God. Inhale, come up, hands in prayer to the Almighty above, and then exhale, hands come down to prayer in the heart. Beautiful.

There is much practical Yoga instruction in the Bible. If you are familiar with it, you can speak to people in their language. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.” Important and accurate Yoga instruction. Or the kingdom of heaven is within you. Even words from Christ that say things like “No-one gets to the father except through me”, we can take a yogic perspective on this and hear him speaking not as one man, not as a body, but as someone who realizes and embodies Shakti, the power of the cosmos, and it is through this power that we can know Shiva or consciousness. It is the same as saying “through intimacy with all known conditions, the source is known.”

You must have some sincere sympathy with the beauty of Christian utterance. Those who go in with some kind of missionary or pity orientation won’t succeed. You must honour each person’s sincere beliefs and search for something sacred and meaningful in their life. Not a slavish swallowing of dogma hook line and sinker, but no one can deny the beauty that is there. Let yourself be moved by that and communicate within that sincerity.

Christ was a yogi. No doubt. We have to understand that a yogi is a woman or man who is a realizer of reality, who is not obstructed in their participation in the power of the cosmos that everyone is. It is not a cultural descriptor, a religious descriptor. It means someone whose mind is no longer imagining separation from others, and so becomes a wellspring of compassion, tolerance, and love. A friend to all. A human possibility.

Depending on the Christian communities you are teaching in, there may be a belief that Jesus Christ is the only God, the only ‘yogi’ and so that might be a subject to steer clear on. You don’t have to use the words ‘yogi’ or ‘guru’. You don’t even have to use the word yoga. When something is real, and really helping people, then it doesn’t matter what you call it.

I have one friend in Fiji, who was teaching elderly Fijian women who were very Christian. Because she was raised in the church, she is familiar with the language and liturgy. She was able to explain to them that the first gift of God was the breath, and so their yoga is to honour that gift, to receive the grace of God, and give themselves to that grace. They could really understand and enjoy that.

Every situation will be different — rural or urban, educated or more simple, older people or younger, more open-minded denominations versus more closed, and of course every different individual within that. Go slowly and with deep respect for everyone. You cannot teach anyone anything until you love them.

The Pope has said some things against Yoga, which means Catholics are sometimes a little cautious. Just let people know it’s all been a misunderstanding. After the 15th century, it became very confused what yoga was — invasions, the rise of orthodoxy, colonial times and western values all contributed to the belief yoga was either a male monastic transcendent practice of mostly cleansing and meditation, or else a very dirty suspicious sort of thing done by suspicious fakirs and ascetics, tapasyas, dreadlocked wanderers with one arm in the air and a cage around their neck, hanging out getting stoned at the cemetary, sitting in holes in the ground, that sort of crazy thing. That is not yoga. You can let them know that you won’t be teaching any of that stuff, that yoga has been confused with. Help them make peace with that.

Our teacher Krishnamacharya would say, “Christians need yoga!” He would teach all different religions, whoever came to him, despite his own Vaishnava religious orientation. He did not impose that. Yoga has always been practiced by all kinds of people across the ancient world. Jains, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Egyptians… and all the unnumberable cultures that these blanket terms lump in all together. It is simply a tool to embody your ideals.

So for example, to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself,’ we need to be able to love ourselves. We need to be capable of love. To actually release all the reactions and trauma that restrict the heart. Let people know that yoga will serve their relationship with God, with Mary, with Jesus.

In fact, Christians often bring a beautiful depth of understanding to Yoga, because they are not embarrassed to be very sincere and devotional, not embarrassed to pray, and not aggressively insisting on a materialistic universe. I find that aggressive atheists are much harder to connect with. Especially clever western atheists, just mind mind mind, and a scorn for all the millions of sincere religious people around the world, looking down on them. Sincere devotees just want to learn the practical means to connect with their chosen deities, and the Yoga will help them naturally come out of the social dynamic of disempowerment, where you assume someone to be superior than you, rather than continuous with you. Yoga helps people to realise that relationship of intimacy with their chosen ideal, to make it real.

And if you do encounter some suspicion or lashback, don’t be dismayed. There are deep patterns of suspicion for the body, for anything different, for anything that empowers the people to feel and think for themselves. The dark ages of Europe are not so long ago. The witch burning and the Crusades are not so long ago. Some still believe that dinosaur bones were planted on the earth recently by God, who made them look really old, to test people’s faith. We go slowly. My friend Sriram, he has been teaching for many decades now in southern Germany, and when he started there was great suspicion and hostility. Things are slowly changing.

If you do encounter suspicion or closed-mindedness, or even find yourself unable to teach, do not take it personally. It is not a rejection of you. You have something useful to share with whoever wants it, to help them feel better, and feel better. It is a long slow thing, to share the basic practices of moving and breathing, and every little bit helps. You are not expected to change the world overnight by yourself. Everyone has a heart, and everyone wants to feel that heart, no matter how thick their layers of mind are over that longing to feel. There are cracks everywhere. Keep looking for those who wish to receive what you have to offer. Keep doing your own practice of intimacy with life and speaking with your friends about what you are discovering. Adjust your expectations. Perhaps do not rely on teaching Yoga to make a living. All in good time.

Hallelujah, praise the Lord!

*Join our by-donation online immersion into personal practice and learn everything you need to know in order to practice for yourself and then teach in your community.

Originally Published Here: Mark Whitwell on Teaching the Heart of Yoga in Christian Communities

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Locked Down in Love: Mark Whitwell on Intimacy During a Pandemic

By Mark Whitwell

Co-Author Andrew Raba

Life in lockdown has put the spotlight on our intimate relationships.

According to the New York Post, people seeking divorce in the U.S. is 34% higher than the same period last year. And as the fallout from the pandemic deepens, it is predicted to get worse. In Australia, a recent study showed that 42% of those surveyed said that they had experienced a negative change in their relationship with their partner due to lockdown.

For others however, the pandemic has been a wonderful chance to deepen their relationship. Many of my friends describe the positive effect of having more time with their partner as the busyness of the usual life fell away. A study in Japan found that 20% of married couples said that their relationship had actually improved.

In this article, I want to share with you what the tradition of Yoga has to offer for our relational lives during the pandemic. Whether you are wanting to protect a beloved partnership amidst the stress; to go more deeply into a happy marriage; or you are looking to develop a new intimacy with yourself in this period of time at home, these sublime practices are here for you, both now and into the future.

Before you close this article, please suspend the usual associations you may have with the word “Yoga.” I am not talking about the sweaty gymnastic exercises that have been popularized in the west. And neither do I mean any kind of inward spiritual gymnastics or religious obsession.

Rather, I want to share with you the beautiful practices and understanding that came through through Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989): the man known as the “teacher of the teachers.” Krishnamacharya was the teacher to BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, and his son TKV Desikachar. Yet, curiously, in the popularization of Yoga the specific breath principles that he brought forth (that make Yoga actually Yoga) have been left out. When we put them back in, Yoga becomes truly useful.

Let’s take a look.

1|What is Yoga? Yoga is Intimacy

When we encounter relationship difficulties or stress, it can be tempting to look for more mental ideas or maps or tips and tricks to guide us. We look up psychological columns and self-help books; try and find criteria online that we can measure our relationship by; we plan days apart and date nights together on Fridays, for example.

But these external guides are not useful if we are separated from the native intelligence of our own embodiment.

Krishnamacharya and his son Desikachar showed me that Yoga is each person’s direct intimacy with Life itself, as it actually is: the extreme intelligence, utter beauty, and intrinsic harmony of the whole body.

When we link the body movement to the breath movement ensure that the breath envelopes the movement, the mind automatically follows the breath. As a result, the mind gets linked to the wonder, power, and beauty of the whole body. You participate in the intelligent flow of prana (life energy) through the system.

Through the daily embrace of your body and breath you allow for the body’s natural sensitivity to function. The dissociative patterns of the acculturated mind with its presumption of separation from Nature, from the body, and from others, is dealt to. The mind is reprogramed not to dissociate but to relate! It is this intimacy with our own life that is the basis for a sensitive relational life.

How this embrace of your embodiment affects one person will be different from another. You may suddenly recognize your need for deep rest after years of struggle. You may spontaneously release addictive habits. You may suddenly realise who you are attracted to and to whom you are not. A reliable gift of the practice however is that you will feel a spontaneous and natural pleasure develop in your relationship to others.

Intimacy with another begins with intimacy to our own embodiment. So be intimate! Merge the inhale with the exhale and see what happens.

Principle 1: The body movement is the breath movement.

Principle 2: The breath envelopes the movement.

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2 | Strength-Receiving is Honest Sexuality

We have been living in a pandemic of hard-heartedness for our whole lives: a patriarchal disease that devalues receptivity (the feminine) and overvalues strength (the masculine).

We have been raised to be productive rather than to be intimate with our lives: to compete, and to struggle in the worlds of career, art, music, sport, and politics. Many of us feel a nagging sense that we are somehow ‘not there yet’ and we need to work to attain a sense of completion as a person. In that process, our poor bodies have become numb and battle hardened.

Such social conditioning places a severe limit on our relationships. Men in particular feel deprived of their ability to feel or to receive their experience, their emotions, and their partners, as they have shut down the softness of the frontal line in order to knuckle down and get ahead. Or they may have been abused in their early life and never received themselves.

On the other hand, women have become wary of unreceptive males and have closed their nervous systems off in self-protection.

Your daily Yoga practice reprograms the nervous system to become receptive. As the inhale, combined with opening arm movement, is drawn down from above, it expands and softens the frontal line from crown down to the genitals. It lifts off undigested emotion, brings prana into the system, and sensitizes the body to our own experience —including our experience of being with our partner.

The exhale is linked to life’s natural faculty of strength. We exhale from below, engaging the legs, the base of the body, the abdominals, and the spine. The exhale is linked to the action of giving. As we exhale we give back to the breath that we have just received, we give ourselves over to our experience, we give our pranas to our partner.

In the traditions, it is said that where the inhale and the exhale meet is the hridaya heart: it is valued in Yoga as the supreme locus of realization, the seat of mind, the source and basis of our Life. It is sometimes called the spiritual heart but it is felt only in the physical body. The word hrid is of made up of two parts: ‘hr’ means to receive, and ‘da’ means to give. Your Yoga practice allows you to feel the heart and to make it the basis of your relationship.

We become able to turn to our partners and to receive and give to them in a spontaneous and sensitive way, especially in our sexual intimacy.

Principle 3: The inhale is from above into the upper chest as receptivity; the exhale is from below as strength.

3|I’m Thinking About Breaking Up

If you find yourself in difficulties and conflict with your partner take the action of no action, don’t do anything. Your impulse is likely to be wrong action that is based on complex reactivity in life, external stresses of the pandemic, and the patterned roles of parents and of society.

For now, just wait and spend your time bringing the inhale to the exhale. You will find clarity of mind through your practice as well as an uncommon connection to your partner that you have not felt before.

Lockdown has deprived us of the normal things that we do to keep an even keel in life. For example, before the pandemic one of my students had the seemingly innocent hobby of spending a lot of time hiking in nature.

When unable to do this due to lockdown restrictions he became extremely depressed and started snapping at his partner. She in turn found it hard to relate to him outside of his usual sunny good mood.

What lockdown revealed is that his innocent addiction to spending time in nature concealed an underlying problem — the deep cultural assumption that we are not nature and have to get it, like a consumer, from external sources.

A simple Yoga practice allowed him to feel for the first time that he was at home in nature, in his body. He was nature and so was his partner. The joy and awe that he felt in wild places was accessible to him anywhere, anytime, even in lockdown in a small apartment in Sydney.

His girlfriend became curious watching his changed mood and joined him in daily practice. She found it easier to cope with her high pressure job and the hours she spent looking at a screen on zoom conference calls.

“The wilderness is right in front of me in the form of my girlfriend.” — Student

After a few months he messaged me and said that he had never thought that there was a downside to enjoying time in nature. But he could see now, the hidden denial of his own nature revealed by the lockdown.

Of course, he will continue his passion when the restrictions lift but without the desperation and dependency of thinking he was separate.

Principle 4: Asana, Pranayama, Meditation and Life are a seamless process. Meditation (clarity of mind) arises as a gift of our asana and pranayama.

In many ways, the pandemic is an enforced global retreat and a time for serious (not humourless) Yoga study. It is the perfect time to begin a home practice and the perfect time to transform your intimate relationship into Yogic mutuality: the union of opposites within and without; a relationship where each partner empowers the other in an endless mutual exchange.

As Krishnamacharya would say, “Do your Yoga!”

If you are interested in practicing the principles of Yoga that I talk about in this article you can visit www.heartofyoga.com/online-immersion and join our eight-week online course that is available by-donation.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Sthira Sukham Asanam | Mark Whitwell on Yoga Sutra 2.46

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

In Patanjali Yoga Sutra the quality of asana is described in the beautiful phrase Sthira Sukham Asanam (YS II.46). Sthira means strength, alertness, energy and intensity and sukha means softness, comfort, openness and serenity. Right asana practice should have the dual qualities of sthira and sukha present in equal measure as a balance of opposing forces.

How do we do achieve this?

We want to practice with open hands and to keep a gentleness in the fingers. Let all the joints be at ease. In standing asana, keep the front of the feet active and the musculature of the legs engaged (no dead weight through the heels). Move from the strong centre of the body and avoid placing tension on the outer limbs.

Now, simply participate in the natural receiving and releasing process of the breath. Asana facilitates the union of the inhale with the exhale, that’s all. So start where you are with simple asana and be with your breath. There can be a challenge as you explore the range of your breath capability but never so much that you are straining for breath. Your practice should be pleasurable and energizing rather than stressful and depleting.

Remember, Yoga is not physical or spiritual gymnastics and there is no goal. Don’t worry about trying to do impressive asana or to practice like anybody else. We are deeply programmed to take up disciplines like Yoga in order to try and change ourselves into an ideal person. Practice without this burden as a pure pleasure, as your intimate connection to Life. Nobody has to be like anybody else. You are flower blooming in your own garden.

The openness and ease of sukha enters our practice when we accept who and what we are. If we have shoulder problems or are restricted in the breath, we start from there and move intelligently. These qualities flourish in us less when we impose them on ourselves and more when we let the natural, intrinsic intelligence of the body function.

What should our mind do during asana?

The balance between sthira and sukha also applies to the mind. Ideally, the mind is relaxed and comfortable whilst also being focused and attentive. My teacher Desikachar says, “It is attention without tension; loosening up without slackness.” If the mind is distracted during our asana practice then it is not really asana.

As we practice we discover for ourselves how to apply the right amount of effort (sthira) so that the mind’s tendency to wander is gradually replaced by its wonderful capacity to focus. It is not a matter of mind control. The mind ceases to wander when it become absorbed in a single direction, rather than when it is forcibly restrained or controlled.

The necessity for a personalized practice is clear. What effort without struggle means for one person will be different from what it means for another. We all have different constitutions, energy levels, health conditions, family circumstances, goals, and work lives that need to be taken into consideration.

As Desikachar writes,

“We cannot escape the need for adaptation. Adaptation is the application of certain principles, to achieve certain results. It implies: Knowing where the person is now and knowing where we want them to go. Adaptation is the means used to bridge this gap.”

For example, finding sthira-sukha for one student may require a morning practice of several rounds of Surya Namaskar followed by a long pranayama; for another, a lying down evening practice with long exhales may be appropriate; for a religious student, mantra, puja and guru devotion may be essential to the cultivation of this quality of mind; for a non-religious student, practice may need to be placed in the context of the student’s relationship with the natural world: to visualize the strength of the sun and the softness of the moon during asana. The student’s whole being must be considered — their body type, age, health, and cultural background. In order to become absorbed in our practice, we must be interested in our practice; it must be made relevant to our life.

In this way, the entire tradition of Yoga can be thought of as a vast treasury. The full portfolio of asana, pranayama, meditation, mantra, yantra, and visualization are available to be individually applied.

This is why group classes where everybody’s doing the same thing are a problem or a compromise.

“We are not magicians,” Tirumalai Krishnamacharya would say, “You cannot teach Yoga in classes, it must be adapted to each individual.”

Yoga is Relationship

The relationship between your asana practice and all aspects of your life is silken smooth. If you practice your asana in the way that is right for you, then the twin qualities of sthira and sukha will permeate your life. To be in life with these aspects in balance is the same quality of energy it takes to succeed in the world without creating stress.

There are so many opportunities to be very effortful with people and to make things happen in the world: publish books, build websites, build apps, run around the world meeting people, see this person, organize this event and so on. In that struggle, we eventually fall over depleted.

Whereas if we go about our life’s work with the balance of intensity and calmness, in which we keep the prana in the spine, then we are far more effective. You can be very effortful in your work whilst ensuring the quality of sukha — serenity, calmness, relaxation — is there.

So find a good teacher who really cares about you and who is educated in the tradition of Yoga. From there, invite the beautiful qualities of sthira and sukha into your practice and into your life.

*For an introduction to personal home Yoga practice you can join the by-donation online immersion course at www.heartofyoga.com/online-immersion

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Who Am I? You are the Heart | Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

Hatha Yoga

Hatha Yoga is the means to participate in the hridaya heart. Via participation in the intrinsic union of all opposites, the source of all opposites is revealed. The hrid, the heart, has no opposite and is the portal between the seen and unseen conditions of life.

It is deep in the traditions. Hr means to receive and Da means to give. The Hrid is the nature of reality itself; the perfect place of giving and receiving.

Through our practice of giving (exhale) and receiving (inhale) we participate in the heart’s function. By participation in the giving and receiving that Yoga asana allows, within and without, the heart is realized and the nurturing force of life moves in an unobstructed flow.

The Heart is Who You Are

The hridaya heart came into existing at the moment of your conception. It is the first cell of life that appeared when you appeared. In the union, intelligence, and beauty of the male-female harmony (your parents) you came into existence: spirit took form, source became seen. From this single cell the nurturing source of Life flows like a lotus blooming in all directions.

The heart on the right flows into the heart in the middle (anahata cakra) which flows into the beautiful physical heart and the flesh of the whole body. This is why we say that your whole body is the heart. The whole body is the bloom of the hridaya. And the mind is arising from the hridaya as its function. The heart is what you are. You are the nurturing flow of life.

There is no hierarchy between the hearts and we do not deny the physical or subtle hearts in an attempt to know the hridaya. In fact, it is the other way around. By the embrace of the physical body we know the body’s source. In the embrace of the body’s physical relatedness to its own experience, including human intimacy, the chakras and the hridaya heart are naturally felt.

The heart need not be concentrated upon, located or awakened because it is the substance of our Life — as ‘ordinary’ as the whole body, as your beautiful eyes reading these words. It is not a goal. You don’t have to try. And you do not have to discover anything.

But through the Yogas of participation in the given reality, including the physical embrace of one’s life, the heart is revealed as given. It is simply felt, like a lotus flower in bloom, when the whole body is relaxed and participating naturally in life and relationships.

This is why in Yoga the hands are always returning to the heart. Bring your hands to the hridaya heart with your palms so soft that you could hold a flower in your palms without crushing the petals. The cave in the hands is associated with the depthless cave in the heart.

It is everything to base a life on.

*Join the by-donation online immersion into personal practice and receive the actual technology of hatha Yoga that Krishnamacharya brought forth, not the usual hopefulness, gymnastic product, and spiritual seeking of the conventional Yoga scene. But real Yoga for real people.

About:

Mark Whitwell has spent a lifetime dedicated to sharing the wisdom tradition of Yoga that he discovered in India as a young man in the 1970s. He was shocked to discover that the breath-based "whole-body prayer" Yoga as spiritual practice learnt with his teachers T.K.V. Desikachar and T. Krishnamacharya was not represented in the US and European "yoga scene." Since then, Mark Whitwell has dedicated his life to sharing the transformative teachings of Yoga as embodied practice with modern people around the world. Mark Whitwell was deeply influenced by his friendship with the sage UG Krishnamurti, who helped him ensure that the yoga he was sharing was participation in Life only, not seeking for a future result (and therefore a denial of the present). Mark Whitwell has offers trainings and workshops in Europe, India, China, Bali, Australia, Fiji, Japan, the US, SE Asia, New Zealand, Africa, the Middle East and Mexico. He is the author of four books, translated into many languages, and founder of the Heart of Yoga Foundation, a non-profit that offers scholarships and educational resources to those who would otherwise not have access to Yoga learning. Mark Whitwell is renowned for being a "voice crying in the wilderness," staying true to the non-commercial heart of yoga whilst moving freely without reaction in the modern circus, unafraid to gently criticise aspects of modern Yoga that mislead or exploit the public. Mark Whitwell has a deep love for the wisdom realisation culture of India, and is forever grateful to his teachers for the treasure of Yoga they passed on. He has three children and four grandchildren, and lives with his partner Rosalind between Aotearoa New Zealand, Fiji and the US.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Does the View Matter in Sadhana? An Interview With Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

Interviewer: Rosalind Atkinson

About Mark Whitwell: Teaching since the 1970s, Mark Whitwell is known worldwide for his unique blend of caring about individuals, humor, wisdom, and truth-speaking. After discovering from his teachers, T. Krishnamacharya and TKV Desikachar, that yoga was the missing link in spiritual practice, Mark Whitwell dedicated his life to sharing the principles of tantric Hatha yoga that he had received. Traveling to the United States in the 1990s to find a publisher for his teacher’s book, which he had put together, he was completely shocked to discover what was being practiced there, and how little resemblance it had to what he had been studying. Since then he has traveled the world sharing the principles that he learned with students around the world who have become fed up or injured within the yoga industrial complex. Mark Whitwell is unapologetic about sharing yoga as a spiritual practice that is nonetheless available for people of all religions or none. His training introduces people to yoga that is neither gymnastics nor knowledge-acquisition, but participation in reality. He lives with his partner Rosalind in Fiji, where this interview took place.

Rosalind Atkinson: If you do your yoga with the mindset of trying to get somewhere, will it still be yoga?

Mark Whitwell: No. Yoga is your direct participation in the beauty, intelligence and harmony that is already established as life itself. There is no getting to that. You can’t practice separation and then suddenly get rewarded with unity after decades of slog. There is no process. Either you participate, or you deny. We are trained to see practice as something unpleasant that you do for a future reward, rather than the thing itself. Sorry to bear the bad news, but no reward is coming.

RA: So the view that we hold does matter? The feeling of practice matters?

Mark Whitwell: If you give the principles to your student accurately and spend some careful time and attention to see that they are practiced accurate, then the results will be this unitary movement of body mind and breath in reality, which is a nurturing force. Not trying to realise anything. And the result will come without any necessary thoughts or philosophical accompaniment to one’s practice.

RA: So would you ever teach a class without taking the time at the start to recognise everyone, to affirm to everyone that they are actually already the power of the cosmos. To establish a context of not trying to improve or struggle.

Mark Whitwell: I like to have a little conversation and get to know people. You’ve got to know them a little bit to make good decisions about what to give them as a suitable practice. But I do think that the principles alone without any words or philosophy will maintain the right view. Because you can say to someone, you are the power of the cosmos, it is a pure intelligence how your body is functioning, and everything in the natural world is utterly beautiful and you are that beauty, you are of the natural world, your body is already in a perfect harmony with air, with light, with water, with the green realm. You can say all that and someone can say, “I see what you mean, ok”. But that might last for one minute, and the patterning of their samskaras, their problematic presumptions are so powerful that they overwhelm the clarity of their insight. So they do go together. There’s jñana, the yoga of understanding, and then there’s the haṭhayoga, direct intimacy with reality as it is, and then there’s the bhakti, devotion to reality.

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RA: Do you think that for us teachers out there, there’s a need to communicate to the people we’re sharing with that we see them, that we see them as part of life, to say that in our own language, from our own feeling?

Mark Whitwell: Yes. Us teachers, we need to talk in language that is our own, that is also relevant to the student. To have a conversation about “you are the wonder of existence, you are existingness, it’s amazing that you’re here” — whatever we want to say. It’s completely relevant to be said and an unusual conversation in our society, because it’s not the kind of thing that is usually being said. And to say them not as spiritual affirmations, not as poetry, not as quotes in a weirdly soft calm voice, not as inspirational ideas that are supposed to cajole your student into trying to realise it, it is just a conversation you have in a normal voice, because it’s so damn obvious. It’s a matter of fact! But do have that dialogue, and then the practice. But I am saying that the practice accurately done gives the siddhis, where what you might have affirmed becomes tangibly real in their own experience.

RA: But couldn’t you just do all the principles with a raging project of trying to self-improve?

Mark Whitwell: If the principles are taught accurately and implemented accurately as the unitary movement of body, mind, and breath, that itself does the work, because the mind follows the breath automatically. And the mind becomes linked to the whole body, and the whole body is the miracle of the universe, and the intelligence of the universe, the beauty of the universe. And that informs the mind. And the mind can feel itself arising as a function of life.

RA: Great. Thank you. We’ll call it “Mark Whitwell Yoga”

Mark Whitwell: No! Horrors. Please no.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Does “Hathayoga” Really Mean Force? An Interview With Yoga Master Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

Mark Whitwell is a world-renowned yoga teacher of the old school, who for decades has been sharing the tools of body movement and breath and bearing witness to the madness of the yoga industrial complex with compassion. Sometimes seeming to have stepped directly out of a fourteenth-century Tantric temple, Mark teaches in the traditional way of transmission between teacher and student through non-hierarchical and sincere mutual friendship and affection.

We wanted to interview Mark as someone who does not just hold knowledge of Yoga but embodies it (as you will see if you spend some time with him) about whether “hathayoga” really means “the yoga of force,” as claimed in numerous books and articles. In a world where one study found Yoga to be more dangerous than all other sports COMBINED, and where yoga-related injuries are increasing rapidly, do we really want or need a practice whose very name indicates “force?”

Interview by: The Dirt Magazine, an independent online magazine featuring new writing on spirituality, embodiment, relationships and psychology.

The Dirt: Mark, let’s start with the big question: does haṭhayoga really mean yoga of force?

Mark Whitwell: Well, some have translated and interpreted it that way, and some certainly practice it that way, so maybe we have to say that to them, it does. But I would argue that no, it does not mean that, because if what you are doing is forceful, than it is not yoga.

I have to tell you, I am not an academic. I am not a scholar reading Sanskrit who can look back through the texts and tell you the meanings. But I am very interested in the findings of those who are doing that work, and how it aligns with what for all of us should be the main touchstone of truth, which is our own embodied experience. Not our opinions and impressions, because as we know they can be severely warped, but something deeper.

The Dirt: So could you give us a quick overview of that research, maybe some leads if people want to dig deeper?

Mark Whitwell: Well for the academics reading this, a good place to start is Jason Birch’s article, The Meaning of

Haṭha in Early Haṭhayoga, (Editor’s note: this is available on academia here.) I found this very interesting to hear about what is said in the Tantric and haṭhayoga texts of over a thousand years ago, in some cases.

For starters, it is very interesting to me that Jason Birch finds that all the early references seem to refer to something earlier and lost. So the truth is we don’t know the earliest roots and uses of the word. I believe it may go way way back to the time of the Vedas, but there is no textual evidence for that yet. But I also feel we should be careful not to impose the western academic paradigm of needing textual proof onto what is essentially an Indigenous knowledge system with its own systems of — not belief, that’s dismissive, something deeper — own ontologies, own ways of understanding reality, that should not be seen as less true than the ‘rational’ academic paradigm. Otherwise we’re just continuing the legacy of colonial cruelty, assuming the western paradigm is superior.

The Dirt: That’s very interesting. Could you give us an example of that?

Mark Whitwell: Sure, take for example Krishnamacharya’s text, the Yoga Rahasya. Krishnamacharya described how this was transmitted to him from his ancestor Nathamuni. This kind of thing is absolutely normal and completely dignified, serious and sincere within the Vedic traditions, the Tibetan traditions, the Yoga traditions… all across that ancient world there is a deep tradition of transmission of teachings beyond time and space. This is dismissed or seen as a quaint anthropological phenomenon by modern academic scholars, starting from the first European Indologists, who want to find out the ‘real’ story according to the known laws of western physics etc. “who actually wrote the piece” — that world actually reveal a lot, the assumption of the superiority or priority of their lens on reality. I recommend reading Charles Eisenstein’s essay, ‘The Feast of Whiteness’ for a really good explanation of the problem of imposing a western framework of “but what really happened” onto another culture’s ways of knowing, and suggestions for other ways of engaging.

The Dirt: I think we could have a whole other conversation about that subject alone. But let’s come back to the findings about what ancient texts say about haṭhayoga. Some people who don’t like the implications of ‘force’ use a translation of haṭha as meaning “sun and moon.” Is there a history of that, or is it a modern new age invention?

Mark Whitwell: Oh, there is absolutely a deep profund history of that. Ha and Tha, sun and moon, the union of opposites within and without. Strength receieving, male and female in perfect prior union. This is the essence of the Tantras, and as we now know, haṭhayoga comes to us from the tantric period, approximately 400–1500 CE.

Going back to Jason Birch’s research, he notes that modern books and practitioners have been drawn to the “sun and moon” definition to avoid the distastefulness of “force”. I mean people are using force, but they still don’t want it branded as that. He finds clear definitions of Yoga as the union of sun and moon in early Haṭha texts such as the Amṛtasiddhi (11th/12th century), and of the syllables ha and ṭha being used to indicate sun and moon, and inhale and exhale in earlier medieval Tantric texts. So this definition is valid, but it’s not widespread in the older texts to my understanding. We have the word haṭha in use before that definition is first found.

The Dirt: So what did it mean in those earlier contexts?

Mark Whitwell: Well I think we have to consider what is meant by force. Because there is very much a force we encounter in our yoga, which is the force of life. You know, one aspect of Christopher Tompkins’ excellent work has been pointing out that there are zero references in the tantric literature to a person raising their kundalini, in the sense of a coiled force at the base of the spine. There are references to a coiled force that may act upo0n you, descending down and then rising up your spine, but we don’t awaken kundalini, we are awakened by it. That sense of I the doer is dissolved. If anyone says to you “I awakened my kundalini” or “I had a kundalini awakening” something has gone very wrong, their identity structure has co-opted an experience of some kind and taken it on as an identity possession. Anyway, force is like this. It is something that acts upon us, something we join up with, something we are, not something “you” as a limited and separate self identity enact upon, to use Mary Oliver’s immortal phrase, that poor soft animal of your body. Your yoga is your participation in this force, this power, that you are. Not a manipulation of it, not trying to get to it. Abiding in it. This is how the ancient texts of our tradition speak about yoga, that energy may move forcefully, but not as an act of forceful volition.

Jason Birch has tracked it all down and finds the early Haṭha texts using the word “haṭhat” or forcibly, but only toward a movement of energy, not toward the body or into any movement or action. It has a sense of taking the normal downward movement in embodied life and turning it around, not violently. The implication is “that Haṭhayogic techniques have a forceful effect, rather than requiring forceful effort.” (Birch 2011). Force in the modern sense of pushing these poor old bodies into something that makes them sweat, shake, collapse, strain and sprain is absolutely not there. These are serious devotional practices we are talking about, from the Tantric cultures, one of the lost wonders of the world with their incredible insight that matter was not a degraded shackle pulling down our ethereal souls, but rather just on the spectrum of vibration of the whole cosmos. It’s a similar perspective to the understanding of modern physics that matter is just energy, not solid at all. This was radical, that the body could be a site of liberation, of deity abiding, not just a hindrance to be managed and bullied. The Christian legacy of anti-materiality is deep in the western psychology and has very much shaped the western approach to yoga. We are not that far on from self-flagellation and hair shirts.

The Dirt: So how could we summarise your interpretation of the word haṭha.

Mark Whitwell: I was always taught that asana and pranayama must be done carefully and within our breath capabilities, measured by the number of breaths and the ration of breaths. So I affirm the academic findings that haṭha can either mean the union of sun and moon — that’s accurate, and poetic and beautiful — or it can mean the great force of life, the energy of life that is moving through us, as us, and which our yoga enables us to feel and participate in. To be devoted to. A great force is moving the planets and oceans, the sun and moon, growing your hair. What is that force? What is the force that grows a seed? That force, that power. We don’t enact that, we recognise and abide in it.

As far as I know, looking at the translation work of Birch and Christopher Tompkins and others, “the word haṭha is never used in Haṭha texts to refer to violent means or forceful effort.” (Birch 2011). That matches my experience with Krishnamacharya and Desikachar, and their students such as Srivatsa Ramaswami. All emphasise that the key qualities to master asana were comfort, ease, and stability. Never force.

The Dirt: Could the association of yoga with the word force be to do with the association with tapasya, with ascetics?

Mark Whitwell: Yes, there has been great confusion in the last 500 years between ascetics and yogis. You might like to refer to the excellent article by Domagoj Orlić, “Why Yoga is Neither Physical Gymnastics.” Yoga became associated with obscene acts of self-torture, holding one’s arm in the air for years and years, a metal grate around one’s neck, and such extremes. Yet these extreme practices are not there in the Tantras, the Shastras, the Haṭha texts. They are not yoga. Mortification of the flesh is the opposite to realising the intrinsic union of the source and the seen. It was the early Europeans coming to India and trying to understand what they saw that really popularised an idea of yoga as force, as self-violence. Perhaps reflecting the internalised violence of their own culture. A kind of projection that the Yoga sutras warns us about. And getting confused with the fakirs and ascetics, and seeing it all as a suspicious kind of witchcraft. India internalised all of that British projection and judgement. By the time Krishnamacharya was teaching, yoga was not seen as a high or holy calling. This was a man with the equivalent of 6 or seven PhDs, yet he was teaching yoga, as a very serious undertaking, in a time when it was not taken seriously at all. He would do some kinds of “feats” at the Maharaj’s request, such as stopping his heart for doctors, that kind of thing. But he refused to teach this to his son when he begged him. He said it was just to get attention for yoga, to get the ball rolling so to speak.

The Dirt: So there was also a confusion between ascetiscism and yoga within India as well?

Mark Whitwell: Yes. It’s something Desikachar would often clarify. Krishnamacharya really stood apart from any of the traditions based on anti-body philosophies, dualistic transcendent schools that saw the body as a bag of rotting flesh, a meatsack, that needed to be bullied and purified and ideally gotten rid of altogether. That kind of school has denigrated asana and pranayama the way they denigrate the body itself. Krishnamacharya’s lineage came from the 10th century Ramanujacharya, who had declared that yoga was the means that the two became one, and that householders and ordinary people could practice this. He wasn’t from a monastic, man alone type tradition. Even his guru in the Himalayas, Ramamohan Brahmachari, lived there with his wife and children, in his accounts.

So Krishnamacharya really represented the coming together of these great traditions of Vedanta and Tantra, which belong together. They are branches from the same great tree and are now back together.

The Dirt: And finally, could you tell us what you have observed in terms of the impact of this misunderstanding on people’s yoga, and how to correct that.

Mark Whitwell. Thank you. Thanks for caring about all the people out there, sweating away and struggling and getting injured. I think the idea that the body, that the earth, that the feminine is less, something to be conquered and controlled, has done great harm. It is the basis of centuries of patriarchal culture. And that cultural split, between some sense of essence within, and a dead materiality without, has enabled humanity to use and abuse its Mother, the body of Nature, and our own bodies are part of that body. So the conditioning towards a forcefulness towards embodiment runs very deep. This is the same psychology in the earlier Indologists translating haṭha as simple “yoga of force” and in the bullies who rose to prominence in the yoga world. And then the same psychology in the western students, who had been conditioned to control themselves, restrain the body, who were beaten at school, who thought a good teacher hit you with a stick to help you get it right… who were hit by their parents… this is the western mind, the modern mind, the cultural framework criticised as “whiteness,” but I don’t think that is accurate enough, as it is not intrinsically tied to skin colour. Basically it is deeply in us to bully and force the body, and yoga is our way out of that, into reverence and ease, and yet it has been popularized as mere duplication of the same old hegemonic patterns of abuse.

Your body is tired. It’s been forced into so many things it didn’t want to do. Deprived of sleep, filled with comfort food, too much or too little, plucked and poisoned, whipped along in jobs it hated, squashed into uniforms and cubicles. Yoga is the freeing of our bodies from all of this, the freedom to be that soft animal, that embodiment of love, that piece of wild mother nature. Our yoga is careful, precise, different for each unique embodiment. Please, don’t throw yourself around in the circus gymnastics they’re calling yoga. It’s just simply not. It’s all made up. There is no precedent for this kind of insane forcefulness, this self-violence. Step out of it all and be free, live your life in the garden.

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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How Can Yoga Help Change the World? Mark Whitwell on Yoga and Social Change

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

Is Yoga Activism?

Our work is to bring authentic Yoga practice into the world as a powerful and efficient means of social change. Authentic Yoga is intended as a redemptive survival toolkit full of equipment that you can put to use immediately and share with your precious collaborators. It is not a new belief system or a religion or cultic sect, but an invitation to add embodied practice to our shared mission to eliminate sectarian belief systems as a basis of culture and life altogether. Yoga exists to be fitted to your life and relationships, to your cultural background and unique directions, not the other way around. It is about unwarping yourself from all social contortions, not adding more.

We hold firm to the classic definition of Yoga from our teachers, who defined it as to go in our direction of choice with continuity, a positive step towards something, rather than an act of asceticism or restraint. Yoga was never intended as an escape from the world, as it has been popularised by misogynistic renunciate cults. Nor was it intended as mere exercise: what my teacher Desikachar described as “mediocre gymnastics.”

Rather, Yoga is the embrace of body, breath, and relationship. By empowering our intrinsic drive to contribute our life to life, to be in relationship, we break the imagined wall between individual and social change. Our daily practice illuminates the connection between the depth of intimacy we can feel with ourselves and the depth of intimacy we can enjoy with others. When we are happy and blooming in life we naturally turn outwards towards connection with others. By contrast, when we feel separate from ourselves we tend to withdraw from relationship:

“Our sensory disengagement with others, the environment, and ourselves prevents us from really participating in our own lives with a profound depth of feeling. When we are not participating fully in Life — body, breath, and sex — we are less than fully human…As we keep closing down, we lose sight of our absolute birthright: to give the truth of ourselves and be receptive of the caring wisdom of others and all that surrounds us.” — The Promise (74).

Body, Breath, and Relationship

This is why we emphasise that the first act of social change is to be intimate with our own embodiment: the power of this universe that is arising as the whole body. Every body is a location of radical autonomous intelligence. Consider how wonderful our ‘ordinary’ bodies really are: from the soft feeling capacity of the frontal line from crown to base, the highly evolved nervous system and spine and its culmination in the sublime mystery of the brain core, to our ability to enjoy creative pleasures of all kinds including self-expression, art, music, logic, feeling, and the refined movement of energy between intimates in Sex. Our Yoga does not put us in touch with anything more extraordinary than what is already embodied as us, sitting here right now.

We practice Yoga to feel in Howard Thurman’s words, key mentor to Martin Luther King, what we know to be true: that we are “part of a continuing, breathing, living existence… alive in a living world.” Our practice reveals to the mind that our individual lives are nothing less than Life itself — literally. That we are an individual expression, utterly unique and unprecedented, of a larger unified process called Life that is every person and every thing.

We are autonomous, vulnerable, peaceful, and powerful individuals who are committed to relationship. We step into our full and deeply intuited capacity for love, compassion, courage and service and we do so as a collective. And we place all our bets the power of intimacy and love to sweep away the restrictions of these dark times.

“Meaningful experiences of integration between people,” Thurman continues, “are more compelling than the fears, the inhibitions, the dogmas, or the prejudices that divide. If such unifying experiences can be multiplied over an extended time, they will be able to restructure the fabric of the social context.”

The capacity for the intimate human connection and integration that Thurman speaks of can only begin in individual bodies, in the embrace of our natural embodied state of strength that is utterly receptive.

We are Nature

As our sensitivity to Life in the form of our own embodiment deepens, we feel and enjoy our place within the entire web of Nature. We can see clearly now that humanity is not participating in the ecologies of Mother Nature, and for humanity to survive we must function in our natural relationships. Patriarchal culture has deluded humanity into thinking we are separate and superior to the Earth’s ecosystems that we are made of, creating cultures of numbness, abuse and exploitation. Yoga is to reverse this perspective, to embrace our intrinsic connection. We are empowered to speak with utter certainty of our embodied knowledge that all life is sacred, and that any system which does not recognise this truth must be dismantled.

The recognition that we are nature allows us to release the widespread sense of guilt many change-makers feel when they consider their own needs for rest and regeneration. We cannot burn-out one piece of Mother Nature in attempt to save another from burning. This is why we say that Yoga is the first act of ecology, learning how to care for rather than control Mother Nature, starting in our own body. It is our practical method to process and release our grief for the hardness we perceive all around us, and it is our direct participation in the intelligence and nurturing function of nature — the body’s intrinsic movement towards harmony and health, the digestion of experience and emotion, the recovery of self-regulation, the releasing of what is no longer needed, and the receiving of what is. If you feel stressed or burnt out, please make use of these remedial practices to rest and restore.

I know so many sincere people who care deeply and so who innocently fall into practicing their efforts for change in ways that reproduce what has been called ‘grind culture.’ Who went out to work for social change with the same instrumentalization of the body, the same drive towards burnout, that capitalist economics trained us for. As the Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey beautifully writes,

“Grind culture has a fetish for seeing human beings move at the pace of a machine. It enjoys weary bodies and limited imagination […] Everything in nature needs to rest. The Earth can no exist without deep pauses….Our bodies deserve nothing less.”

As a result, many people find themselves in their adult life feeling that they are not allowed to rest at all, or that to take any amount of time away from work (or activism as work) is a waste of energy, a luxury, something for the lazy or uncommitted. Everywhere, human beings are burning out as these internal psychologies of endless grind destroy the ecosystems of body and mind. We are not robots, and we cannot treat our bodies like machines in this way.

To conclude this article I want to thank you for your commitment to serving humanity and the more-than-human sphere. The very fact you feel interested to read this article means you are a person who feels deeply and cares. Thank you for being a serious person who perceives clearly the utter chaos of human cruelty and suffering we exist in in these times. Thank you for bringing your love of life to bear on whatever the area of life is that you have felt compelled to attend to. I honour the stand you have taken.

Whatever your cultural background, whatever has inspired you to dedicate yourself to serving the world, whatever your tactics and strategies, we offer you these simple practices as a means of empowering your chosen directions and nurturing your “soft animal body,” to use Mary Oliver’s phrase. Please put them to your own creative use.

Let’s get the job done together and put love into action, within and without, in the vision of a society where life is nurtured not pillaged. Where we are all free to rest and relate in this beautiful garden of a world and enjoy the pleasures of a free-born life.

If this speaks to you, look into the yogas brought forth by Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya and his wife Srimati Namagiriamma, their son T.K.V. Desikachar, the yogi U.G. Krishnamurti, and their friends and students around the world. Desikachar’s book ‘The Heart of Yoga,’ is an excellent place to start, and we have made a course of learning in the basic principles of practice that is available by donation on our website.

From my heart to yours.

Mark Whitwell

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markwhitwell · 4 years ago

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Adapting Your Yoga Practice to Suit You Perfectly | Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga

A central principle of the Yoga I received from my teachers is that there is a right Yoga for every person, no matter who that person is. Adapted to age, health, body type, culture, religion, and stage of life. This immediately stood out in contrast to the physical systems I had been experimenting with up until that point.

Prior to meeting Desikachar and his father, Krishnamacharya, I had perceived Yoga as a fixed thing that practitioners strive to move towards, rather than the other way around — adapting the Yoga to suit the person. After the first lesson, where Desikachar watched unimpressed while I demonstrated the asana I was so proud of, and taught me how to breathe correctly, it became obvious. Standing in the moonlight on a rooftop in Madras (now Chennai), I could feel that the body loved its breath. And that Yoga was simply our participation in the life that we already are, the participation in the power of life that we are.

I saw all kinds of people come and go from the house, as well as from the Mandiram, which was built by that time. All sizes, ethnicities, ages, men and women, some very ill, some very religious, some with very specific issues. What I noticed is that although Krishnamacharya was a renowned healer and Ayurvedic practitioner, whose hands were revered as having healing powers, he did not dispense Yoga like a pharmaceutical product. The poses were not dispensed like different drugs for different problems. Instead what I saw was how he and his son helped each person find their breath in whatever way worked for them, so they could participate in what was whole and alive about them, identify with that, and participate in their own healing.

Looking around at the modern Yoga scene, I do not often see this nuance of adaption. I see a dominant paradigm that describes Yoga poses like individual pharmaceutical ingredients, good for the liver, good for the back, etc, divorced from their context of breath and vinyasa krama, and the placement of the mind in the aliveness of the body. I see people looking to Yoga teachers for healing the way they look to doctors, in a disempowered search for a parent to make everything ok. And I see yoga teachers absolutely burdened in their shared belief that they are supposed to heal or fix their students, rather than enable them to participate in their own health and healing.

It is a big step to leave the studio and the gymnastic routines and commit to our own personalized home practice. But it is an equally big and important step to really understand what this adaption is, and what the role of the teacher is in it. The teacher’s job is not to diagnose you and give you poses like medicines. No matter how good a teacher is, how educated in physio and anatomy and Ayurveda and all the other modalities of modern healing, and no matter how much information you share with them, the teacher is not there to replace your own body’s intelligence. Rather, their job is to help and empower you to participate in the body’s essential health and aliveness, even in the midst of perhaps injuries or a condition of illness. To participate in what is well. That participation spreads into all areas of one’s life as a shifting of focus. This is quite different from the standard modern approach to adaptation, which treats the individual like a collection of problems to be solved or treated.

The principle method by which your practice is your own is your breath. The length, depth, pace, ratio and retentions of YOUR breath. By making your breath the central feature and purpose of your asana, your practice gradually becomes utterly fitted to your unique embodiment. By making the breath start before the movement and finish after any movement, you safely hold your asana within the envelope of the breath. It is a revolutionary change, from imposing postures on the body, to allowing them to happen in their natural shape within the natural rhythm of your unique breath. If we are pushed beyond our physical capability, we will not be able to take a smooth and even ujjayi inhale. Therefore, the breath will keep you safe and be the guide and guru to help you modify your practice.

Adapting your practice to suit you perfectly does not necessarily mean it will look any different from a standard template or someone else’s practice. It is the principles of breath that ensure it is completely and subtly unique to you. Just as many people kiss in the same way, but no two real kisses are the same or boring, it is your intimacy with life that makes your practice utterly your own.

We also must break free of the constraints of ‘ideal form’ goals in terms of asana. There is no ideal shape. Krishnamacharya would say there are as many asanas as there are living beings. What did he mean? Just that every body is unique, and asana can and must be modified to suit us. They are not like yantra, needing to be done in an exact precise shape. We do not need to yank our bodies with ropes and straps and chairs into approximating the forms that were idealized by someone else’s body. If your knee is injured and kneeling asana hurt, simply do not do kneeling asana. Consider the movements of the breath and spine that such asana facilitate, and how else these can occur. There is nothing eternal and holy in any one asana. Take inversions, for example. A safe and accurate headstand is a very beneficial thing, but suitable for only a small percentage of the population. A shoulderstand gives many of the same benefits, but again will not suit everyone. To lie on the back with the legs up on a chair, however, and breathe with the arms, is something accessible to almost anyone, and gives great benefits of elevating the legs above the heart. We must not be put off from doing what we can do by what we cannot do.

Read the full article here: Mark Whitwell

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