Establishing a Home Yoga Practice | Mark Whitwell

New York City NY

25 February, 2021

3:00 AM

Description

Mark Whitwell | Heart of YogaThe biggest challenge we face when starting our life of Yoga is to establish a home practice that feels natural and pleasurable to do every day. Our daily practice should feel as simple as brushing our teeth in the morning, as easy as slipping into our favorite pair of jeans and as necessary as taking a shower (perhaps more necessary!). Yet, as we all know, when we wake up we can easily let the demands of the day take over and forget to practice. Some rare people can start to practice without any difficulties at all. For most of us however, the journey is uneven and this is all good. We all have our unique karmas, addictions, circumstances, emotional complexes and frustrations to cut through. We may practice for a few weeks or months and then stop. We practice some days and then do not practice on other days. When we stop we may feel guilty. We then resent Yoga for making us feel guilty. The next week we feel a burst of enthusiasm and recommit which is followed by a loss of faith and so on. Mark Whitwell | Heart of Yoga 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. On the other hand, women have been so trained to be tuned in to the needs of the others that the actual discipline of taking half an hour to an hour a day to do sadhana for themselves may result in a direct confrontation with deeply ingrained social patterning. Female friends describe how even when they do have the time to practice, their own tendency to put themselves second to others needs (real or imagined) means they won’t do it. Where there is an obstacle to practice it must be inspected. And when there is a couple who both want to practice, it is the responsibility of each person to ensure the other has the time and the literal space to do so. Perhaps the most significant barrier to practice however, is the idea that Yoga is something that you do on yourself in order to get to a future improved place. We have been raised to believe that we are separate body living in a separate world. Spiritual disciplines are provided to us by well-meaning (or exploitative) people as the means to return to a state of unity with life and others. The starting point is problem and Yoga is presented as the solution. Such a prospect either turns us off practice altogether or makes us obsessively practice for several hours a day trying to fix ourselves. The very presumption that we are separate and need to re-connect causes stress on the organism and turns us off practice. Read the full article here: Mark Whitwell About: Mark Whitwell has taught yoga for over three decades across the globe, and is the founder of the Heart of Yoga foundation, and the Heart of Yoga Peace Project. Mark Whitwell is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) and his son TKV Desikachar (1938-2016), with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than twenty years. Mark Whitwell is the author of four books: ‘Yoga of Heart,’ ‘The Promise,’ ‘The Hridayasutra,’ and, ‘God and Sex: now we get both.’ He also edited and contributed to his TKV Desikachar’s classic yoga text, ‘The Heart of Yoga.’ Mark Whitwell is a father of three and a grandfather. He now resides between New Zealand and Fiji and continues to write, teach, and speak.