March 12, 2021

The Influence of UG Krishnamurti on Yoga

March 12, 2021/ Mark Whitwell

There was no denying UG Krishnamurti was an ususual and extremely attractive person, in the way that a cat is attractive. He was a natural man.

Because I was a student of Desikachar and Krishnamacharya, a student of yoga, I had to relate what UG Krishnamamurit was saying to yoga.

He made it easy, he spoke about it a lot and he sat on the ground with myself and with Melissa Forbes and showed us what natural movement looked like without any struggle, without any seeking.

It became clear that should any yoga arise, it is completely natural. It is what the body does naturally when it has been traumatised.

January 29, 2021

Polarity, Duality and Unity in Yoga

January 29, 2021/ Mark Whitwell and Rosalind Atkinson

In this interview, Rosalind Atkinson sits down with Mark Whitwell and Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi to talk about polarity and what it might mean in our lives.

August 11, 2020

Precious Memories of Desikachar in India and New Zealand

August 11, 2020/ Mark Whitwell

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. He looked up for half a second, and greeted me with a short smile and lively eyes.

August 06, 2020

An Introduction to UG Krishnamurti

August 06, 2020/ Mark Whitwell and Rosalind Atkinson

UG Krishnamurti remains an enigma to much of the world, for his life was one long dissolution of the normal human systems of making meaning. And yet Mark recalls someone who was utterly gentle, purely loving, and not pessimistic or nihilisitic at all…

August 01, 2020

"Don't Wait Until the Sh*t Hits the Fan" — An Interview with Mark Whitwell and Nico Sarani

August 01, 2020/ Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell: So tell me, Nico, how did you as a young woman from Germany transform into a Yogini?

Nico Sarani: My Yoga journey really begun in 2013 when I was studying in New York City at NYU University. At the time I was dealing with a lot of challenges in my personal life, like relationship problems, and the demands of a top American University left me feeling super stressed, leading to episodes of anxiety and panic attacks…

July 22, 2020

Yoga as the Technology of Love

July 22, 2020/ Mark Whitwell, Andy Raba, and Rosalind Atkinson

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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