Mark Whitwell || Who Am I? You are the Heart

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.

Mark Whitwell || There Are No Straight Lines in Mother Nature

By obeying the breath and making it the very purpose of asana, we are kept safe in every asana that we do. Krishnamacharya would say, “You can cheat the body with will of mind but you cannot cheat the breath. So make the breath the guru to the asana. Obey your guru!” It is the breath that creates bandha — the intelligence cooperation of muscle groups in the polarity of above to below.

Mark Whitwell || What is a Yogic relationship?

In the traditions, Yoga was compassionately given to people by reality realizers — those are not obstructed in mind and body from the powers of creation — to individuals who were still suffering from the presumption that they were separate from their experience, their environment, and from each other.

Mark Whitwell || Should my Yoga practice be the same every day?

The pleasure of the practice is in the column of breath that moves from above to below; the pleasure of practice is in the union of opposites that reveals the source of opposites to the mind — the hridaya heart, from where the nurturing flow of life blooms as the whole body, is felt like a lotus flower unfurling from the chest.

Mark Whitwell || If you want to awaken the Chakras here's what you can do

In Yoga, all chakras are equally valued. It is the whole body and its natural participation and relational integration with the all aspects of the cosmos (including other human beings) that reveals ‘God,’ Consciousness itself, Reality itself, to the mind.

Am I Getting Better at Yoga? | Mark Whitwell on Sadhana vs Practice

The idea of spiritual practice usually implies a process of ‘becoming’ in a linear process. Yet trying to get become something amazing implies that we are not already the power of the cosmos; that we are not the beauty, the power and the intelligence of the natural world. And nobody can deny that of us any longer.

Mark Whitwell | Mothers Must be Nurtured

“Some people say that yogabhyasa is only for men and not for women,” Tirumalai Krishnamacharya writes, “Some others say that yoga is only for brahmins, Kshatriyas, and vaishyas and not for others. One can immediately say that these people have never read the yoga sastras.”

Mark Whitwell | Avatar, Jivamukti, Acharya

The avatar is the divine person who for the sake of all beings has entered into all conditions, all circumstances and is there so all circumstance of your life can be felt as the divine. In other words all there is IS the divine: reality only and all circumstances are seen in and as the divine. The avatar is born in the state of union.

Keeping Safe with Saints and Sages | Mark Whitwell on Responding to Grace

Yoga is your direct participation in the natural state, in your heart, the place of the perfect union of giving and receiving. That is, inhalation (receiving), exhalation (giving), strength-receiving, within and without. Your daily embrace of the union of opposites in your own embodiment, reveals the heart that sages such as Ramana or Christ pointed to.

A Break from Self-Improvement | Mark Whitwell on the Yogas of Participation

“If you are moved to practice the means of Yoga, lighten the load, the obligation you place on Yoga to fix an imagined problem. Practice only as a pleasure. Do it in the total context of understanding that there is nothing to attain” — Yoga of Heart

Mark Whitwell | Relationship is the Natural State

The movement to relationship is not a conscious strategy or a spiritual method. We do not need to add anything to ourselves to cultivate this movement. And we are not talking about the tantric idea of using sex and relationship as a practice, based on the assumption of separation and the egoic struggle to try and get to God. It is simply the natural movement of life to life that is already there; like a gravitational pull.

Mark Whitwell | Real Yoga for Real People

“Your mind is in every cell of your body. I want you to think about that,” he tells Tony condescendingly; “Shine your heart forward. Gaze into your pelvis. And look out of your third eye.”

Bandha is Bhakti | Mark Whitwell on Yoga as Devotion

Your body loves its breath and the inhale loves to exhale. It is a literal love relationship. The above to below principle of breath contains the natural life polarity of strength-receiving. Participation in this polarity reveals the source of both, the nurturing hridaya heart that is formed by the perfect giving and receiving of life. On inhale in jalandhara bandha the head softly gives over to its source, the hridaya.

You are THE Beauty of Reality | Mark Whitwell

“There is no Jnana Yoga (understanding) without Bhakti. There is no Bhakti without Hatha Yoga (union of opposites) there is no Hatha without Karma Yoga (service)” — T. Krishnamacharya.

A plea from the Heart of Yoga: Heal Toxic Masculinity

Our predecessors had no idea what to do with the power and vulnerability of the wild feminine. Alarmed by this uncontrollable, ever-changing world, they attempted to control and escape the feminine—the body, the world, feeling, and reality itself.

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

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.

Establishing a Home Yoga Practice | Mark Whitwell

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.

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

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

Mark Whitwell on The Hunt for Connection

Just as the ocean is the context in which the fish swim, so Connection is the context in which we live, and the fish swim too! Connection is always the case and is utterly given. You don’t have to realize it, find it, discover it, or even feel it. Because you are it. You have a prior connection to the One Reality that is all Life. Nobody can take it away from you and nobody can give it to you.

A Yogi is Ageless | Transcending Ageism During a Pandemic

Yoga is extremely useful to any person who has suffered from the presumption that ageing is a failure or who has been tormented by the beauty standards of the fashion and fitness industry (including the dreadful exaggerations of the yoga brands and styles that are popular in the West).

Mark Whitwell on The Natural State

You are alive as Life itself. And Life is extreme intelligence, beauty, and harmony. It is easy for us to notice this in the natural world. We look out the window and can say without a doubt that everything in the natural world is utterly beautiful: the trees, the flowers, the sunlight on the water, the moon at night.

Mark Whitwell | “There’s a Secret in the Universe”

It was the great philosopher J. Krishnamurti who famously declared that “Truth is a pathless land.” During their friendship, Krishnamurti said to Desikachar: “Don’t become a guru. Don’t become one more monkey.”

Removing the Seeking From Yoga— Mark Whitwell on J. Krishnamurti and Yoga

The word yoga means to yoke, but it is a wrong translation as it implies duality. Yoga means unitive perception, to see the whole of life as one. The seeing of it as a whole is to act as a whole. To see the whole of life as one unitary movement is yoga, not standing on your head and all that. As human beings do not see the whole of life as a unitary movement, standing on your head breathing properly will help you, at least one hopes, to see life as a whole.

Mark Whitwell | Yoga is Intimacy

“If it had not been for culture the world would have produced more flowers, different kinds and varieties of flowers, not only the one rose that you are so proud of. You want to turn everything into one model. What for? Whereas nature would have thrown up from time to time different flowers unique each in its own way, beautiful each in its own way…One ceases to be somebody else and is simply what one is” — U.G. Krishnamurti, The Natural State

Eco Not Ego | Mark Whitwell

Right now, consider how your body is sustained by light, literal light received by your cells from the sun. Consider how on every breath, air is kissing your lungs. Our natural state is connectedness and unity with Source. No matter what the mind or what social conditions suggest, this cannot be taken away.

Start Where You Are | Mark Whitwell

Yoga is the complete surrender of opposites, male and female, one to the other, within and without. There is a special polarity where this is felt, associated with inhalation and exhalation.The exhale is masculine strength from the base, moving energy up the spine; the inhale is feminine receiving from the crown and down the front. This is what I call strength receiving.

Atha Yoga! You Are Here Now | Mark Whitwell

I have seen so many people all over the world whose commitment to a daily practice has enabled them to find appropriate relationships, commit to them, and explore them deeply. They become devoted to relationship despite the personal and interpersonal difficulties that are a part of life.

Your Very First Yoga Practice | Mark Whitwell

All of life is made of these opposites in union. Look at a tree. The trunk is utterly strong and as we get up through the branches the foliage is utterly soft and receptive absorbing sunlight and nutrients. It is one perfect system. Without the trunk, there could be no leaves, no nurturing. Without the nurturing leaves there could be no trunk.

The Two are One | Mark Whitwell on God and Sex

Our guilt and shame surrounding sex are so deeply ingrained that we may not even acknowledge them. After all, western culture has been through a series of “sexual revolutions” in the last century.

Thoughts on Vairagya | Mark Whitwell

Krishnamacharya said freedom from all arising conditions arises when we merge with and digest our experience. And this applies to both pleasurable and painful moments.

An Introduction to Tantra, Part 1 | Mark Whitwell

You are perfect, a breathing miracle, just as you are. The universe shows up perfectly as it is. Imagine trying to improve a galaxy, make waves break better, or teach dolphins how to swim. Nature is exquisite in its integration and awesome in its infinite expression. So are you.

Is Meditation Evil? | Mark Whitwell

“Any doing in any direction is violence,” my friend U.G. Krishnamurti writes in The Natural State. “Any effort is violence. Anything you do with thought to create a peaceful state of mind is using force and so is violent. Such an approach is absurd. You are trying to enforce peace through violence. Meditation is violent. The living organism is very peaceful.

Can we have Faith in Yoga? | Mark Whitwell

“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church” (Ephesians 5:25). He said it staggered him; it touched me, too, to see this expression of yoga tantra in the Bible. The man realized God, his Source condition, not in a mission to sell doctrine to the people, but by loving his wife. In surrendering to his wife he found his heart and felt his God realization there.

If I Am Already The Power of the Cosmos Why Do I Need to Practice? | Mark Whitwell

Though union is our natural, divine state, we don’t feel it all the time. There is a practice, arising from the ancient wisdom of tantra, through which you can develop the ability to receive, the ability to be intimate and to bring out the strength in another who will bring out the strength in you. It is called hatha yoga.

Breath is Guru | Mark Whitwell

In every body and every cell, the intelligence of the male-female mutuality is present. What is the simplest way to experience it? With our breath. Breathing, pranayama, is how we release ingrained patterns and clear the mind. Asana practice is just moving breathing.

The Cult of the Normal | Mark Whitwell

In our everyday lives the thought-structures of modern society create and normalize a felt sense of separation in each person. Everybody is carrying around the feeling that they are a separate body struggling away in a frightening world of “others.” The lens of science and its methodology of splitting the “observer” from the “observed” (the “subject” from the “object”) creates an apparent rift between ourselves and our experience, between our life and its context.

What is Success in Asana? | Mark Whitwell

Asana is the spiritual practice. This is where your mind is informed by your heart. This is strength-receiving and the merging of your polarities. Put your asana practice up on the high pedestal of your spiritual practice, not meditation. Asana practice is your devotion to life and God. A quiet meditation will flow from asana.

My Teachers | Mark Whitwell

Over the years, I studied many paths and lineages of Yoga, religion and spirit. The wisdom and grace of three principal teachers allowed me to form my heart of Yoga. From them I found what I was seeking, From them through me, I hope you will as well.

How to Quiet the Doubting Mind | Mark Whitwell

As you practice the yoga that is right for you, you will come to feel how all life is utterly strong and synchronistic, utterly soft and receptive. In your heart, flesh and blood, you will experience the power of gentleness. Real power lives and breathes within your gentleness because it brings forth the life force of the feminine.

The Tantra of Descent and Ascent | Mark Whitwell

Spiritual practice, or the science of human flourishing, is about participation in reality as it actually is; that is, participation in the union of opposites. Hatha Yoga is the anciently given means by which any person can easily do this. We practice to link our mind to life at its most fundamental level.

Thoughts on Sraddha | Mark Whitwell

When we experience trust in our relationships then that trust naturally extends outwards into all areas of life. In the Yoga tradition, the word is sraddha and it means faith. It is a siddhi (gift) that cannot be forced.

Beware the Social Dynamic of Disempowerment | Mark Whitwell

Yoga is intimacy with Life in every way and one of the aspects of Life is the relationship we have with somebody who is able to share with us their Yoga experience and their understanding of how to participate fully in our existence

Why Yoga is About Breath and Not Body-Sculpting | Mark Whitwell

For many years I met with my teacher Desikachar at his home in Chennai. At each meeting, he would instruct me on how to practice asana as participation in breath. He would emphasize that the breath is not a supplement to the asana, but the very purpose of the physical movement itself.

Here’s the Problem… | Mark Whitwell on Doctrine, Yoga and Inspiration

Presented with the sublime poetry of religious text the public was seduced into the pursuit of exalted, abstract states of being. For thousands of years, the ‘ordinary’ life has been denied in the name of a future possibility.

Forget the World and Choose Reality | Mark Whitwell

The “world” is merely a presumed mass patterning of roles. Of limits interacting and reacting to each other in a tangled mess of dissociation from reality.

J. Krishnamurti, BKS Iyengar and TKV Desikachar | The Men Who Made Modern Yoga

“Truth is a pathless land,” Jiddu Krishnamurti famously declared in 1929, before stepping down as the world leader of Theosophy. “Man cannot approach it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique.”

The Five Crucial Principles That Have Been Left Out of Yoga Teacher Trainings | Mark Whitwell

“In our practice we concentrate on the body, the breath, and the mind. Our senses are included as part of the mind. Although it theoretically appears possible for body, breath, and mind to work independent of one another, the purpose of yoga is to unify their actions…

Men and Yoga: A Q&A with Mark Whitwell

We live in a world where gender norms are often tightly and unconsciously policed, so once an activity becomes associated with “women” or “men,” it tends to only attract one or the other. But there is more to it, as women’s activities have typically been looked down upon as lesser than men’s activities.

The Dharma of Intimate Connection | Mark Whitwell

This is the popular view of modern day Buddhism and Hinduism; and the practices of ‘witnessing your experience’ are foundational to modern meditation and mindfulness traditions. It is where we get the popular spiritual methods of detachment, stepping back from experience and even celibacy.

How to Realize Your Relationship Goals | Mark Whitwell

Regardless if they are Middle-Eastern, American, Norwegian, Mexican, English, Indian, German, Italian, or Ugandan; whether Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, or atheist; Yoga proves to be a powerful tool for supporting any person’s life.

From Conventional Sex to Intimate Connection | Mark Whitwell

Anxiety levels, economic pressures, academic stress, the ubiquity of online porn, dating apps, smartphones, a culture of casualness in relationships, environmental pollution, sleep deprivation and diet, have all been pointed to by experts as factors feeding into the decline of sex.

What U.G. Krishnamurti did for Yoga | Mark Whitwell

For thousands of years, humanity has suffered the proposal that Truth or God is absent and needs to be found. The population has been brainwashed into the pursuit of a transcendent Truth that supposedly lies ‘beyond the veil’ of ordinary, presently arising conditions.

Who was Ramanuja Acharya?| Mark Whitwell

“Life’s union of polarities occurs as male receptivity to the female principle. A most simple enactment of this union is the ability for the strength of the whole body to receive an inhalation in yoga asana.

The Asana Files: Mahamudra and Kundalini | Mark Whitwell

Mahamudra is known in the Yoga traditions as ‘the great sacred gesture.’ It is a highly revered asana that is placed at the conclusion of one’s vinyasa. Unlike a seated forward bend, the spine remains straight.

The Secret to Starting a Successful Home Yoga Practice | Mark Whitwell

In the traditional context of Yoga, students would meet with their teacher on a one-to-one basis and then go away and practice for themselves at home. The purpose of the meeting was for the creation of a personal, home Yoga practice that was perfectly suited to the needs of the student.

The Asana Files: Savasana and Resting

Before beginning your asana practice it is good to rest for a short while, putting aside the demands of regular activity and turning your attention over to the intimacies of body and breath. You may like to chant, listen to music, or place some relaxed attention on significant objects. This will establish the mood or bhavana of the practice.

Understanding the Guru Function and the Legacy of Sexual Abuse | Mark Whitwell

The word today is associated with the very worst confluence of male power structure, hierarchy, sexual abuse, and religious/spiritual cultism. Most people run a mile if they hear the word ‘Guru,’ and rightly so.

Technical Terms: Guru Parampara | Mark Whitwell

The term parampara is a beautiful word that refers to the passing of wisdom-knowledge from one teacher to the next through history. The word implies a continuous, unbroken transmission of learning; an uninterrupted sequence or thread. The gifts of indigenous wisdom cultures move along these precious lines.

Yoga in the Time of Climate Chaos | Mark Whitwell

Humanity once lived in non-hierarchical egalitarian society in which the physical wisdom practices of Yoga were enjoyed by all. It was shared in local community as a practice of intimate connection to the natural world; both to the natural state of the body-mind and its context: the entire elemental world of the cosmos. It was the basis of a spiritual culture of intimate connection to Nature; the antithesis of what we are seeing today.

Beyond the Drama of Seeking | The Yogas of Participation vs. Temple Religion

On what are the Yogas of Participation, the difference between temple religion and Yoga, how to practice without seeking, and the historic roots and dangers of motivated celibacy.

The Principles of Adapting Yoga to Individual Needs | Mark Whitwell

Desikachar described his father, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989), as an extraordinary person who lived for one hundred useful years; as a man whose thirst for yoga knowledge eventually took him to the high plateaus of the Himalayas where he lived with his teacher Ramamohan Brahmacari for seven and a half years; and as a man who gave his life to translating an ancient body of wisdom into the modern world for all people.

The Asana Files: Trikonasana as Strength-Receiving | Mark Whitwell

Tirumalai Krishnamacharya’s life represents a bridge between ancient past and modern present. Born in 1888 and dying only recently in 1989, he was the vehicle by which the physical wisdom practices of Yoga entered modern India and then the world.

Yoga Breathing Techniques in the time of Covid-19 | Mark Whitwell

One of the silver linings of the corona virus pandemic is that the world has become more attuned to how we breathe. And as Covid continues to spread, affecting the respiratory systems of millions of people around the world, research is growing into how breathing-techniques can help support our health before, during and after an infection.

Technical Terms: Īśvarapraṇidhāna

“You cannot surrender to anything because every time you surrender you want something. There is no path at all. There isn’t anything you can do. All effort has come to an end. All movement in the direction of getting something has come to an end.”