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 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).
My Blog
Reflections on Teaching Yoga Online
Nov 3, 2020
In this time of our physical isolation from each other, we have no choice but to reach out and teach online. We have no choice but to teach or, a better word, share our Yoga. Paradoxically, Yoga has always been a personal practice that you do in the sanctuary of your own home and in the temple of your heart which is the whole body.
Precious Memories of Desikachar in India and New Zealand
Feb 24, 2020
In 1973, I went for my first lesson with Desikachar in Madras (now Chennai). I had been participating in the circus of spiritual India, and Desikachar was just one more place to go, but from the moment I met him I knew I’d found gold. When I arrived, his father, Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, was seated on the front porch in a wicker armchair reading the newspaper, dressed in traditional Brahman dhoti and shawl.
Yoga as the Technology of Love
It may seem strange, at this point in history, to suggest taking up a home Yoga practice; a bad joke in the context of the scale of global violence and grief. Yet beneath the commodification of Yoga and our resulting perceptions of it, lies a radical and ancient science of self-restoration and self-determination: a technology of love.
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Mark Whitwell 