Mark Whitwell | Relationship is the Natural State

Your daily Yoga practice of asana and pranayama very naturally extends outwards to intimate connection with another. We begin with the merge of our own body and breath, then we can merge with another in sexual union. While there is sexual function in us, we say use it for yoga, for relationship. There is no necessity for relationship, but in yoga we naturally embrace whatever life functions are in us. We open our body and mind to life and go in the directions that are natural to life.

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. We all arrived into this realm through Sex. Participation in Sex is therefore to participate in our very nature.

But we all know how dysfunctional society is around relationship and sexuality. All the world’s great religions have created chaos for humanity in this area and the pain that we have inherited through the denial of Sex and the suppression of women is vast. For millennia, relationship has been painted as less than God and as a secondary matter to spiritual life; or worse, an obstruction to it. In the secular world of career and money, relationship is often thought of as an optional extra; a casual matter like a hobby rather than a most natural part of human life.

As a result of society’s dysfunction many of us find ourselves in a position of enforced singleness. If you find yourself single know that you are not missing out. Relationship is not a necessity and there is nowhere to get to. Remember that you are the power of the cosmos already and there is nothing that you need to do in order to fully enjoy your born condition. It is just you and the universe and you are absolutely at one with what is. There are no steps to be taken. It is just that relationship and sexuality, should it arise, is not to be bypassed or dissociated from or turned into method of ‘becoming.’ Sexual intimacy is only the natural positive participation in all conditions of Life arising.

Monogamy

We recommend that a monogamous relationship is the most appropriate container to do your sexual loving within. In monogamy we go deeply into what intimacy has to offer with another person and abide in the limitless depths of one another. Not polyamory which is usually the result of individuals who, when they cannot go deep with one person, go sideways, trying another lover after another. The problem with conventional relationship is not the monogamy, but the inability to receive one another with depth of intimacy. Polyamory does not solve this problem; a sincere Yoga practice does.

The very valid criticisms of monogamy (jealousy, possessiveness, isolation) are resolved when we actually enter into the broad continuity of feeling that Yoga makes possible. Happy and abiding in the tacit awareness that our love-relationship is stable, we can turn outwards to the embrace of all relationships, friendships, and our pursuits in the world.

“Life’s union of polarities occurs as the male surrender to the female principle. Its simplest expression is the ability to receive via inhalation in yoga asana. Strength (male) must receive (female) and be received. This is the form of Life. Strength (sun) is in the base and spine and receives (moon) from above, through the crown and front. Strength is served by exhalation and receptivity is served by inhalation. Female strengthens male and vice versa. Male/female union serves the polarity of heaven and Earth as the means by which spirit takes form. Its ultimate expression is the willingness to receive another, including the mother and all her offspring in the nurturing force, which is life.” — Hridaya Yoga Sutra

Originally Published on:- https://markwhitwell.medium.com/relationship-is-the-natural-state-mark-whitwell-c6f50a70e17c

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Mark Whitwell has been teaching yoga around the world for many decades, after first meeting his teachers Tirumali Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar in Chennai in 1973. Mark Whitwell is one of the few yoga teachers who has refused to commercialise the practice, never turning away anyone who cannot afford a training. The editor of and contributor to Desikachar’s classic book “The Heart of Yoga,” Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga Foundation, which has sponsored yoga education for thousands of people who would otherwise not be able to access it. A hippy at heart, Mark Whitwell successfully uses a Robin Hood “pay what you can” model for his online teachings, and is interested in making sure each individual is able to get their own personal practice of yoga as intimacy with life, in the way that is right for them, making the teacher redundant. Mark Whitwell has been an outspoken voice against the commercialisation of yoga in the west, and the loss of the richness of the Indian tradition, yet gentle and humorously encouraging western practitioners to look into the full depth and spectrum of yoga, before medicalising it and trying to improve on a practice that has not yet been grasped. And yet Mark Whitwell is also a critic of right-wing Indian movements that would seek to claim yoga as a purely hindu nationalist practice and the intolerant mythistories produced by such movements. After encircling the globe for decades, teaching in scores of countries, Mark Whitwell lives in remote rural Fiji with his partner, where Mark Whitwell can be found playing the sitar, eating papaya, and chatting with the global heart of yoga sangha online. Anyone is welcome to come and learn the basic principles of yoga with Mark Whitwell.