Mark Whitwell | Heart Of Yoga

New York City NY

19 January, 2021

4:35 AM

Description

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.” Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga 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). Read the full article here: Mark Whitwell 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.