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.

T. Krishnamacharya (1888–1989)

He was a great Indian yogi of the 20th century. His students included the giants of today’s yoga: B.K.S. Iyengar, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, father of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga,T.K.V. Desikachar, AG Mohan and Srivatsa Ramaswami.

Krishnamacharaya brought women back into yoga. His work revealed that women in ancient society had been educated in yoga, so he asserted that yoga was their right, especially as mothers, the nurturers of the community. From Krishnamacharaya’s wisdom I learned and remarried Hatha Yoga with its Tantric origin in practices that celebrate the nurturing forces of Life and honor our mother. His yoga absorbs the obvious feminine nurturing force and Source of Life already given and available through natural relatedness of all kinds.

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007)

U.G. is the most powerful spiritual teacher I have ever met. Ironically, he considers himself not powerful, not spiritual and most of all, not a teacher. He demonstrates by his Presence how yoga is the natural movement of life. It is the mere or sheer participation in the flow of life as it comes. Krishnamurti is the living embodiment, as we all are, of yoga; not as an attainment, but as full participation in our own natural state.

Baba Nityananda (1897–1961)

Nityananda of Ganeshpuri was a true teacher, such as those in days of yore who taught in ancient India before the onslaught of commercial yoga institution and doctrine. Like U. G., Nityananda was a natural man. He wrote no books and said very little. His gift to others was his sheer Presence, his personal friendships with students and teachers of all kinds. His communication was direct and available precisely because he had no agenda. Nityananda was open to all in an equal way.

I honor Nityananda by speaking clearly on the yoga of love and sexuality. Many people using his extraordinary power set themselves up as teachers and then the usual disempowering guru dynamics and sex denial or exploitation of seekers followed. For the sake of the authentic ones like Nityananda each person can have the yoga of direct absorption in their nurturing source without seeking or social inequality.

These men represent different aspects of ancient yoga wisdom. My life is a necessary merge of their teachings to bring forth the power of yoga to our suffering world. A necessary collusion of ancient knowledge finding each other in renewed contemporary form. May all beings everywhere soon enjoy the nurturing field that surrounds Mother Earth.

Your Personal Guidance

Find a teacher who cares about you. Find a teacher who teaches in a natural way; someone who does not create false glamour or manufactured sanctity around himself or herself. Yoga is a sacred activity. It is your own personal acknowledgement of yourself to yourself. Make sure your teacher truly cares about you. You do not want a teacher who arbitrarily imposes a standardized practice, philosophy or culture on you. Look for a teacher who has a regular, non-obsessive yoga practice. Make sure they have had a good teacher.

When you practice yoga, the constrictions around the heart fall away. The first insight of yoga is said to be that you know your heart is restricted. This observation is said to be the “unavoidable motive of practice.” It may make you feel vulnerable to know this, but there is power in this vulnerability, because it’s honest. Being close to the truth is being close to the power of life. When you do your yoga, the constrictions around the heart fall away.

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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.