Mark Whitwell

  Consider the first two words from Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutra: Atha Yoga , or “Here now.” They do not mean, “Be here now.” They mean, “You are here now.” The difference is everything. You have been taught that you need to “find” truth, but seeking denies you the perfection that you already are, the wonder of your present reality. Stop seeking, stop searching, start living, start loving. When you practice yoga in the way that is right for you — your body type, your age and health — then the tantra is given. There is no tantra without hatha yoga, where every form of mutuality inherent in the body is acknowledged and felt. The intimacy with body and breath gives us the yoga of mutuality and the ability to feel, and when we practice it there is no end to the depth of our feeling. Embracing our experience, we embrace one another and the Source of life. Understanding the social landscape and the handicap we start with can help us make a difference. To this day, tantric practices have been ...

  When you know your whole body you realize the heart. The whole body is the heart, where all opposites are in union. I want you to do your yoga in your daily routine, non- obsessively, actually and naturally as the mere participation and sheer participation in the extreme condition of life that is utterly upon you, in you, as you. Because you won’t get it any other way. My teacher Sri T. Krishnamacharya, the teacher of our teachers, said,“Do your yoga.”That’s what he said all the time.“Do your yoga. Do your practice.”And I’m saying that to you. Do your yoga. Do your practice. Yoga is the complete surrender of opposites, male and female, one to the other, within and without. There is a special polarity where this is felt, associated with inhalation and exhalation.The exhale is masculine strength from the base, moving energy up the spine; the inhale is feminine receiving from the crown and down the front. This is what I call strength receiving. If you do asana it is hatha and hatha ...

  Last week, thousands of students in my home country of Aotearoa/New Zealand participated in the school strikes for the climate. On the front page of the news, a young woman held a sign up that read, “ECO NOT EGO.” My teacher U.G. would have called her the hope of humanity. Ecology is a relationship. We can see now that life is about participation in the ecosystems of Mother Nature. It is not about exploitation or transcendence, but embrace and care. We know that we’ve got to clean up this planet urgently; that we have got to take dramatic action so that the way we live becomes harmonious with the ecologies that support all life. On the other hand, ego is the denial of relationship and the presumption that we are a separate body living in a separate world. Convinced of our separation, we fail to see that we are nurtured already and think we need to hoard, consume, eat, and control resource in order to be okay. It is the mistake of ego that allows us to destroy our own nest; to de...

It is promised in the traditions that the gifts and states of health and well-being that are described in sacred text will arise for you naturally as a result of your Yoga practice. This is not a fanciful selling point or a gimmick in an attempt to exploit you. It is an assurance based upon millennia of practice, logic, observation and religious scholarship. Yoga sadhana and the siddhis that arise from it are technical matter. It is not mere hopefulness, spiritual language, poetry or branding. Sublime intimacy with life (including others) is a human possibility that is scarcely known about in our time. We have inherited a vast mind of doubt that makes us question the solidity and intrinsic truthfulness of our life. Yet, you can be certain that all life is supported by an extreme nurturing force — the force that brought you into existence in the first place and presently sustains you. You will not know it through diligent self-improvement, heroic spiritual practices and meditations, phi...

J Krishnamurti was a dedicated practitioner of Yoga, first with Iyengar and then with TKV Desikachar, son of the great T. Krishnamacharya. Yet he often savaged Yoga in public talks. What was he pointing to in terms of actual practice beyond narcissistic self-improvement? Mark Whitwell offers a perspective on JK and yoga.   J. Krishnamurti on Yoga: The word yoga means to yoke, but it is a wrong translation as it implies duality. Yoga means unitive perception, to see the whole of life as one. The seeing of it as a whole is to act as a whole. To see the whole of life as one unitary movement is yoga, not standing on your head and all that. As human beings do not see the whole of life as a unitary movement, standing on your head breathing properly will help you, at least one hopes, to see life as a whole. Questioner: But would that help you really? K: Wait. First, get the true meaning of it: not joining two things, the soul and the body — that’s all nonsense — but to observe, to percei...