If I Am Already The Power of the Cosmos Why Do I Need to Practice? | Mark Whitwell

Though union is our natural, divine state, we don’t feel it all the time. There is a practice, arising from the ancient wisdom of tantra, through which you can develop the ability to receive, the ability to be intimate and to bring out the strength in another who will bring out the strength in you. It is called hatha yoga.

Ha-tha (sun-moon) is the union of opposites; it is relationship, just as life is relationship. It is the mutuality of everything above with everything below. Yoga relieves and heals the system, and, since the union of opposites has already occurred in all of us, it is available to everyone. It is participation in what is already given: left and right, above and below, front and back, inhalation and exhalation, inner and outer, spirit and form, Source and seen, male and female, strength and receiving. It is the integration of the whole body with everything existing, intimacy with body, breath, and all experience.

In our systems are the basic qualities and structures of life, and daily yoga permits us to feel them. The introduction of sthira/sukha (strength with softness) in asana (postures) establishes an awareness of our basic condition: strong yet receptive and soft, male and female surrendering one to the other. 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. So in pranayama (conscious breath) we have strength receiving.

The fundamental yoga practice of the inhalation acknowledges and develops our female aspects of nurturing receptivity and softness. The opposite of effort, inhalation is to receive. The exhalation from the base acknowledges and develops the male qualities of strength, clear perception, and the ability to penetrate the moment. One aspect is strengthened by the absorption of the other. This mutuality is the most fundamental aspect of yoga.

The energetic movement of the inhalation moves from above, down the soft front of the body, and can be felt through the whole body. The strength at the base, including the legs, absorbs this softness. This downward movement of energy merges with the exhalation’s upward movement of energy at the heart, the center of all merging and the portal between spirit and form. The mind and all experience seem to rise from this depth of feeling at the heart. It is a location that cannot be intentionally or willfully discovered but is naturally felt when the whole body is relaxed and participating in its life and relationships. We relax into the life current and enjoy its natural movement through us in a full-body prayer to life.

Do you see how conscious breathing, and the movement that flows from it, utterly supports our ability to be intimate sexually? The crown and front are the receiving, feminine aspect of the system, served by the downward movement of breath and energy. And the strength, the male aspect of the system, moves upward from the base and spine in the exhalation. We become soft and receptive in the crown, front and arms, which are utterly supported by the great intelligence and strength of the base and spine. No function is suppressed; nothing dominates. When the whole body is fully functioning in union within and without, the heart where male and female merge, the culminating point of body and mind, is felt. Some consider this to be a “spiritual” heart, but it is only felt in the body, in its tangible and unobstructed relationship with its opposite — the union from which life comes.

Remember, you don’t do yoga to unite these polarities; they have already merged! You are already at one with the unseen Source of Life. You do yoga, non-obsessively, to participate in and feel the polarities — to become sensitive to others by becoming sensitive to yourself. The merging of opposites is not a self-conscious effort. Yoga simply gives you the clarity you need to feel the unions within and without you. In this way you can feel whole and awakened to your fundamental sexual nature. Experiencing this union, in obvious and subtle ways, as your own tangible condition, you naturally prepare for the eventual approach and sensitivity to your partner.

Yoga is an inner relationship that prepares you for an outer relationship. In fact, the energy of life that yoga calls prana is exactly the same energy that is engaged in sexuality. When the base of the body relaxes and receives, the life current can move through the whole body all the way to the crown of the head, and you can relate as a whole body, fully participating in Life and Source. Understand the power of your own vibration, and allow yourself to feel the extreme pleasure of the embrace of life. Do your yoga and you will feel the energy you are made of. Then you find yourself participating directly in God.

How intimate are you prepared to be? You already have a deep, abiding intuition of your connectedness to the Source of the universe and all manifestations of that Source. Let yourself be intimate with your own life, and with the Source of life!

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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.