Mark Whitwell

TKV Desikachar on T. Krishnamacharya In 1995, when Desikachar’s book The Heart of Yoga was published, we did a series of interviews in New Zealand in which Desikachar spoke at length about his father’s life and approach to teaching. Desikachar described his father, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888–1989), as an extraordinary person who lived for one hundred useful years; as a man whose thirst for yoga knowledge eventually took him to the high plateaus of the Himalayas where he lived with his teacher Ramamohan Brahmacari for seven and a half years; and as a man who gave his life to translating an ancient body of wisdom into the modern world for all people. Above all, Desikachar emphasised his father’s insistence that Yoga must be carefully adapted to the individual, not the individual to the Yoga. But this idea, he clarified, was by no means his father’s invention. “The importance of respecting the individual is already in the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali,” Desikachar observed. “Our ancestors ...

On what are the Yogas of Participation, the difference between temple religion and Yoga, how to practice without seeking, and the historic roots and dangers of motivated celibacy. “Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.” — William Blake Real Yoga is each person’s searchless and direct embrace of Eternity. It is your direct participation in God, arising now as the whole-body and all tangible and intangible conditions. Yoga is easy and anybody can do it. It is primarily about participation in the union of all natural opposites: left/right, above/below, front/back, inhale/exhale, male/female, strength/receptivity. By participating in the union of these opposites the source of all opposites is revealed: the hridaya ; the heart on the right; the seed of Eternity, Truth, God, Reality Itself, that is blooming now, in and as your whole form. Yoga is not a search but embrace only . The search for perfection (or connection, or Samadhi, or enlightenment, or God) only obliterates your a...

We may not have asked for this gig, but it is what we have been given: the deepening climate crisis, a global pandemic, and the epidemics of fear, racism, anxiety and mental illness that divide our communities. Everything is tinder-dry: politics, people, and our forest systems all seem set to explode at the slightest spark. I used to live and teach Yoga in California. Last night, I spoke with friends there who are sheltering from the wildfires presently tearing through the hills. They live in neighborhoods still recovering from the devastating Camp Fire in 2018. They voiced their despair at having to face yet another blaze. “The air is almost unbreathable here and the fire is getting nearer to our home. If you could see the sky out here, it feels like the end of the world.” Now, more than ever before, we need our spiritual traditions to help us turn the global machine of abuse and exploitation around. The secular must serve the sacred. What is the sacred? The power, unspeakable beauty,...

The term parampara is a beautiful word that refers to the passing of wisdom-knowledge from one teacher to the next through history. The word implies a continuous, unbroken transmission of learning; an uninterrupted sequence or thread. The gifts of indigenous wisdom cultures move along these precious lines. In Yoga, parampara refers to the long chain of guru-shisya relationships that have carried these physical wisdom practices from ancient past into modern times. It is thanks not only to Tirumalai Krishnamacharya and his son Desikachar, but also to the entire history of teachers that went before them, that we are able to enjoy these practices today — to hold Yoga for all people and to pass it on to future generations. Now, there is a tradition in India of passing teachings on through biological family lines and there is something beautiful to this; but by no means is the guru parampara confined to that. I recall a class with Desikachar in Chennai in the 1990s where he said: “Anyone ...

Clearly, we have drifted a long way from the indigenous, non-hierarchical wisdom cultures of Yoga in which the Guru function arose. The word today is associated with the very worst confluence of male power structure, hierarchy, sexual abuse, and religious/spiritual cultism. Most people run a mile if they hear the word ‘Guru,’ and rightly so. The disempowering structure of guruism across both the East and the West is clear for all to see: bands of loyal followers, self-proclaimed God-realization, political influence, special clothing, and extreme wealth accumulation. Always, there is a trail of victims — those who have suffered sexual, physical or psychological abuse within the presumption of being second to the ‘perfect person; what U.G. Krishnamurti called “the social dynamic of disempowerment.” It has created dreadful damage to human life. Sadly, civilization has been built upon this model: the axiom of patriarchal culture is the idea that someone of special social status or authorit...