Mark Whitwell
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.
Mark Whitwell was born in 1949 in Auckland, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. In 1973, he traveled to India and began a life-long study of yoga with Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) and his son, T.K.V. Desikachar (1938–2016). Mark Whitwell’s simple mission is to give people the principles of practice that came through Tirumalai Krishnamacharya to make their Yoga authentic, powerful, and effective. Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga foundation and the Heart of Yoga Peace Project, an organization dedicated to developing yoga communities in conflict zones around the world. Mark Whitwell lives between New Zealand and Fiji.
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 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.
Mark Whitwell is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar, with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than twenty years. Mark’s teachings clarify the profound passion and relevance of ancient wisdom to contemporary life.
Mark Whitwell has taught yoga for over three decades throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, Australia, Fiji, and Aotearoa-New Zealand, and is the editor and contributor to TKV Desikachar’s book The Heart of Yoga.
First ‘dropping out’ of New Zealand society and travelling to India in his teens, this was the beginning of a lifelong love affair that took him into the orbits of many of the great masters of our time, known and unknown, including falling in love with Swami Muktananda in the early seventies and accompanying him around Australia. But it wasn’t until Mark Whitwell met Krishnamacharya and Desikachar in Chennai (then Madras) in 1973 that he discovered a practice that could make his inspirational experiences stable and comprehensible: Yoga. Desikachar and his father were living as ordinary humble people, sharing their meals on the floor of their home, not posturing as superior beings or powertripping. Mark fell in love with this and with the Yoga he received.
After staying India several years, he then travelled back and forth between India and Aotearoa / New Zealand, set up yoga studios including on Auckland’s vital Karangahape Road, and brought students to India to study with his teachers. He later travelled to the USA and noticed that what was being taught in Yoga studios there bore little resemblance to what he had learned in India. When Mark Whitwell reported this to Desikachar, Desikachar asked him if he could perhaps do something about it. The book The Heart of Yoga: Developing A Personal Practice was the result. After arranging for the book’s publication in the US, and hosting Desikachar in New Zealand in 1995 for workshops, interviews and book promotion, Mark Whitwell moved to the US in order to carry out his teacher’s request, teaching for many years in New York, LA, and eventually around the globe.
During this time he reconnected with UG Krishnamurti (student but no relation of the famous Jiddhu Krishnamurti), a student and friend of Krishnamacharya and a huge influence through friendship on Desikachar and Krishnamacharya. UG was an unusual person, whose spiritual search had finished completely, freeing up torrents of energy in his body and allowing him to live his life freely — what is called a jivamukti or liberated person in the Indian tradition. This dear friendship with UG was immensely clarifying to Mark Whitwell, and helped him remove any traces of struggle and religious effort towards a future result from what he practiced and taught. Most of all UG raged against the power structures set up by those selling spirituality as a commodity, as something ‘they have and you don’t’, and just feeding the tendency in humans to feel ‘not there yet.’ Mark Whitwell continues on in this vein of radical non-hierarchy and non-dualism, whereby the teacher is “no more than a friend and no less than a friend, the force of nurturing in local community—not a social identity, not a personal identity, not a status or position.”
What Mark Whitwell Teaches
Mark Whitwell teaches ha-tha Yoga, which against common understanding means ALL physical forms of Yoga practice, not a specific “style”. Hatha means the merging of sun and moon, male and female, prana and apana (two energies), and is a purifying and remedial practice where breath and body movement are one. It means powerful rather than forceful. The practice includes Asana (postures), Pranayama (breathing exercises which love, honour and obey Prana, vital energy), Bandha (co-operating muscle groups that serve the movement of energy and breath), Meditation, Relaxation and Chanting.
Recent research is confirming our understanding that there is a long history of tantric devotional postural yoga practice (i.e., a tradition that comes to us from the tantric period and scriptures of India in around 500-1400 AD), however, it was co-opted and appropriated by ascetic, monastic, male orthodox traditions after the 15th century, who went on to plagiarise tantric scriptures into body-denying, women-denying, Shakti-denying texts such as the Hathāpradipika and others. Krishnamacharya sought to restore the ancient tradition prior to this trend, citing numerous ancient texts in support of yoga sadhana as daily devotional practice for ordinary people, householders, to live fulfilled, healthy, lives and intimate relationships. Desikachar and now Mark have done their best to continue that mission, with the added benefit of profound clarification from their friend U.G. Krishnamurti.