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

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.

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Read More:- https://markwhitwell.medium.com/who-am-i-you-are-the-heart-mark-whitwell-fb105c78a1a1

About Mark Whitwell:-

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.