Beginning a Yoga Practice in 2020 | An Interview with Yoga teacher Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell is one of the most celebrated Yoga Teachers of the modern era with a unique ability to make the sublime tradition of Yoga available to people as a normal part of everyday life. He is the author of four books including the beloved Yoga of Heart (2004) and most recently God and Sex: now we get both (2019). Mark Whitwell was also the editor and contributor to his teacher T.K.V. Desikachar’s classic Yoga text, The Heart of Yoga (1995).

Born into a family of teachers, (his mother and father were both schoolteachers, and his grandfather worked in providing education programs in state prisons), Mark Whitwell has dedicated his life to passing on useful teachings from the wisdom tradition of Yoga. Mark Whitwell simple mission is to bring the principles of practice that came through the ‘teacher of the teacher’s’ Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (1888-1989) into the mainstream of public life.

As a teacher, Mark Whitwell is unusual because he refuses to set up hierarchies between himself and his students. Instead, Mark Whitwell maintains that for any yoga transmission to occur the teacher-student relationship must be ordinary and non-hierarchical—mutual friendship is the model. The heart of Yoga, Mark writes, is the nurturing relationship between two individuals who meet each other as friends.  

As a result, Mark Whitwell is critical of many of the popular brands of yoga that have taken centre stage in the world in which gymnastic and/or spiritual egotists exploit innocent people looking for relationship and guidance. At workshops and in his writing, Mark Whitwell systematically demolishes the mystique of hierarchy, the hoax of enlightenment, and the model of the perfect person that we all get busy trying to duplicate. Mark Whitwell then commits himself to holding people’s hands as they feel into the inherent power and creativity of their life through the easeful technology of real Yoga.

I have been lucky to have Mark Whitwell as my Yoga teacher for a few years now. I studied with Mark Whitwell in Fiji and immediately fell in love with these potent practices.

In this interview I ask Mark Whitwell a series of questions about establishing an actual Yoga practice: how to avoid shoddy spiritual goods; how to find a good teacher; when to practice; and who can practice.  

Andrew Raba: As a beginner, how do I choose a style of Yoga?

Mark Whitwell: There are no styles of yoga. Yoga has been made up as styles and brands as part of the commodification and consumerification in the translation to the West. Most of it is made up, stylized systems designed as one-size-fits all. Students are then put in a linear struggle to achieve those styles and they are marketed and sold aggressively in the public. Always with charm and civility, but it is just business. The only Yoga that is right for you is YOUR yoga, yoga adapted to your age, health, body type, culture and background. I call this advanced yoga for perfect beginners.

Andrew Raba: So how do I find a Yoga that is tailored to me rather than selling me a style?

Mark Whitwell: You have to be lucky. I call it “Advanced Yoga for Perfect Beginners.” Yoga can be immediately empowering and healing in your life. Before Yoga was commodified in the West, there was a teacher by the name of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya who was the teacher of those responsible for the major brands and styles today. If you can find access to the principles that he brought forth — which unfortunately are a little rare in the productizing of the Yoga industry — then you’re set. Keep looking because it’s there.

Andrew Raba: Do I need a teacher?

Mark Whitwell. It’s always good to have a teacher who cares about you and is not selling you their brand. Because Yoga is relationship. Not hierarchical relationship – the teacher is no more than a friend, no less than a friend. But historically, it has always been a living transmission between two actual people who care about each other. Not a consumer product that can be sold on an impersonal production line.  

Andrew Raba: Your teaching is known as the Heart of Yoga. Is that not a brand?

Mark Whitwell: No, the heart of yoga is not a brand but a set of principles that anyone can do. The practice that each person ends up with after applying these principles looks quite different from person to person. An elderly nun might sit in her chair and do breathing with her arms, whereas a college basketballer might do ten sun salutations with kumbhaka (breath retentions) and mantra every morning. 

Andrew Raba: What has your Yoga done for you in your life? What can a beginner expect lies in store?

Mark Whitwell: My Yoga is my intimacy with life as it actually it, and life is a nurturing force. Reality is eternal and has brought us all here in the first place and is presently nurturing us. Thanks to my teachers, that’s what I know and feel life to be. Hence the need to have a real teacher who cares about you and not just a standardized product. 

Andrew Raba: How will Yoga improve my life more broadly? 

Mark Whitwell: When you are intimate with life that is how you want to live. You feel the need to make your work and function in the world aligned with that intimacy. The secular world must serve the sacred. You might find that aspects of life naturally become rearranged.

Andrew Raba: Do I need to be a vegetarian to do Yoga?

Mark Whitwell: You don’t need to be, but you may find yourself naturally eating lighter, non-toxifying plant-based food as you bring more feeling into your system. And feel the urge to protect our planet. 

Andrew Raba: If I’m already in my 60s and quite stiff, is it too late to start Yoga?

Mark Whitwell: It is never too late. If you can breathe, you can do Yoga. The principle of practice is that you start where you are. The yoga process itself will help you embrace your body and life at whatever age and step free of internalized ageism against ourselves. Many people feel a sense of failure or shame in their natural aging process and this is a tragedy. The living quality of your breath brings you back in touch with your own vitality at any age. 

But beware going to downtown studio classes where there may be pressure to thrash your body around and bully it into inappropriate gymnastics. No-one ever lay on their death bed wishing that they had mastered the splits. But they may lie there grateful that their embrace of their breath enabled kinder, more loving relationships. And that is available to everyone. 

Andrew Raba: Is Yoga a religion? Is the Heart of Yoga a religion?

Mark Whitwell: No, it is a separate philosophical system from the philosophies from which world religion came. However, many religions have found yoga to be useful in order to actualize the beautiful ideals of their wisdom texts. Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Hindus… all religions can incorporate a yoga. Athiests too, because everyone wants to feel better. Yoga is a science of perception, of breaking down the mental filters that estrange us from reality, so that is relevant to everyone, no matter what your religious or non-religious framework. 

Andrew Raba: As a beginner, how long should I practice for and how often?

Mark Whitwell: Just ten minutes a day achieves a big result. If you can’t do ten, do seven, but establish that daily routine. The practice, when the breath is actually engaged, is so pleasurable that you may naturally extend. But do no less than a seven-minute discipline.

Andrew Raba: What is the difference between yoga and meditation?

Mark Whitwell: There is no difference, meditation is something that happens naturally in yoga. But you cannot meditate just like you cannot willfully put yourself to sleep. Meditation which is clarity of mind arises naturally when you do the main meditation which is moving and breathing in the way that is right for you. The unitary movement of body, breath and mind is the means by which the mind is clarified and meditation spontaneously arises. 

Andrew Raba: In your experience, what is the single biggest predicator of success in Yoga?

Mark Whitwell: Consistent, easy practice.

Andrew Raba: Do you think it’s best to do a more physical practice first, and then move on to a more internal or spiritual practice?

Mark Whitwell: No. The main practice is the moving and breathing. Every practice has some kind of relationship between mind and body and Yoga is about union, or the two coming together as a unitary movement. So there is no such thing as a “purely physical” practice, it will be a practice of mind controlling body, treating the body / matter / nature like an object, rather than working in harmony with it. Breath is the bridge to enable the union of mind and body and give relief from the suffering that mind causes for most people. 

Andrew Raba: What do you feel looking round at the yoga industry today?

Mark Whitwell: Boredom. Sadness that yoga has been dislodged from its own tradition by the west. We are talking about something sublime and precious, utterly transformative, radical and magical. Not a casual workout system within the existing cultural logics.

Andrew Raba: As a beginner, how do I avoid feeling intimidated by flexible people and those in advanced poses.

Mark Whitwell: For all people, the power of Yoga is in the participation in the natural elasticities of muscles groups called flexors and extenders, flexing and easing in the beautiful breath rhythm. It is completely irrelevant what that looks like from the outside. You don’t need to aspire to that, and if you happen to be naturally flexible, you don’t need to feel egoic identity or triumph on that basis. Everyone is the power of the cosmos, a perfect piece of mother Nature, just like every tree in the forest is unique and precious. No comparisons. 

And yet if we are not given the correct breath technology, then it’s inevitable that our minds will keep on spinning with endless comparisons and status calculations. The breath principles must be there to give a doorway into direct experience, prior to all these nervous thoughts. If your mind is full of comparisons during a yoga class, it’s not your fault. Just keep looking until you find the breath principles and a teacher who can share them in non-hierarchical friendship.