Mark Whitwell on The Seduction of Yoga Knowledge with Rosalind Atkinson

“Without understanding these intricacies and secrets of yoga, some people look at the books and try to do yogabhyasa (like looking for Ganesa and ending up with a monkey). They get disastrous results and bring a bad name for yoga sastra. We need not pay any attention to their words.” T. Krishnamacharya, Yoga Makaranda 2.4

When I first went to Yoga teacher training, I imagined that I would have my head stuffed full of yoga knowledge. I imagined I would come back incandescent with learning, able to bleed Sanskrit onto anyone who came near me. In hindsight, I can see that this was a fantasy of power, believing that knowledge could make me somehow bulletproof, and more importantly, protected from my own self-doubt. As it turned out, this wasn’t how it worked.

I had been thinking about doing yoga teacher training for a while, as I was volunteering at a retreat centre and had watched some disastrous yoga offerings given there. Perhaps arrogantly, I felt that I would like to try and offer something halfway decent myself. The bar had been set very low! 

I had criticism in me of all systems that proposed to be getting a person closer to some idea of connection or love as if those weren’t already the fabric of our reality, but I had resolved to just go to a standard, reasonably in-depth training, and to strip away any seeking philosophies myself, discarding what I found in conflict with my understanding. This betrayed my ignorance because I see now that every little part of a yoga education depends on that one question at the root of it: is it about participating in reality, or is it about reaching for a future result. The teacher’s state determines absolutely every aspect of the process. You cannot take Iyengar’s movements outside of his personality as an authoritarian bully, for example. You cannot rebrand Bikram’s abusive systems as hot yoga and continue on as before. There is a deep logic between teacher and what they teach. The system is cohesive all the way. “Take the teaching, leave the teacher” is not possible. 

So thank God that I happened to pick up the book Yoga of Heart by Mark Whitwell before I managed to enrol in one of those sensible courses. Otherwise, I would have ended up with a deep disconnect between the yoga I shared (a mere physical practice) and my ideals and understanding of life as something that didn’t need progress towards a future result. I would have unwittingly absorbed the modern, externally focused yoga that the West has arrogantly created in its belief that it can improve upon an ancient Indian system of Furthermore, I would never have had the seed of criticism of spiritual authority planted in me that led to me leaving that retreat centre for good. 

As soon as I read Yoga of Heart, I felt a mysterious attraction toward knowing its author. It was a strange and lovely book, an intoxicating, free-wheeling, non-linear ride filled with assurance and sublimity. I could feel that the author, Mark Whitwell, was speaking from his own experience. This was something that would take a while to sink deeper into. “Step outside of the social dynamic of disempowerment,” he urged. “I’ve done that already,” I smugly thought. Of course, I had not. 

And so I made the pilgrimage to the Heart of Yoga Ashram in Taveuni Island, Fiji. I kept the mission secret from all but my closest friends, as I was embarrassed to be associated with the idea of going to a tropical island yoga retreat. I was broke and sold my clothes and couch to pay for the airfare. I felt myself to be some kind of activist radical and didn’t want to be seen as someone swanning around at a neospiritualist navel-gazing luxury retreat. 

I soon forgot these image-maintenance concerns. My first gathering with Mark Whitwell was at a musical concert given by his Indian classical music friends, whom he had flown over to play for the group and the wider Fijian community. Perhaps it was appropriate to begin with music, as music is the best metaphor I have for communicating how Yoga is a skill and yet an experience, not a verbal accumulation of knowledge. The raaga played by Bruce Hamm and Joanna Mack somehow entered into me, rearranging my cells with its accelerating rhythms. A young local Fijian Indian man accompanied them to the table, and I could feel how this was a tradition of sacred music, not merely entertainment. A perfect accompaniment for the yoga we were about to learn. 

Over the next few days, we sat around in a diverse group of bodies, more like a scene from the Decameron than what I imagined yoga teacher training would be like. There were no whiteboards, no diagrams, no tests, no need to learn the names of the asana unless we felt motivated to do so in an autonomous impulse. And yet something was absolutely going on. Mark Whitwell engaged each person in the room in sincere dialogue, finding out their reasons for being there, why they were attracted to Yoga, what they hoped for. I marvelled at his ability to enter deeply into sincere interest for the person he was speaking to, and yet I admit that at first, I thought this was just “Mark Whitwell’s personality,” not the very thing we were learning. For what does a yoga teacher need more than anything else? The ability to care about others, to relate to people where they are at and truly see a person beneath all their social patterns and coping mechanisms. I had expected Mark Whitwell to pour information into us, like a bird feeding desperate baby birds. I had not even realised the extent to which a currency of information structured my whole understanding of knowledge and wisdom. 

I started to truly wonder what made him capable of such kindness to all the very varied souls who were present. How was he able to engage each person with such good humour and sincerity, even the people I would have been tempted to write off as idiots? What was it that enabled him to not react to people’s projections and patterns?

“Well, are there any questions,” announced Mr Mark Whitwell after all the introductions were complete, “Or shall we gossip.” Shocked, I realised that he was not going to teach us anything that we did not explicitly want and need to know. There was no “syllabus”, no knowledge economy. I would get answers to whatever questions I was able to sincerely formulate, no more and no less. I realised that all my other teachers had been power tripping on the basis of a point of difference from their students, usually more knowledge.

He led us through long simple practices that stirred something deep in me and released many tears. Sometimes, I felt like I was floating in a cosmos of stars. Other times, overwhelmed with anger. I discovered a voice to stand up for myself and started straightening out some of my messy affairs at home via email with a newfound sense of self-worth. I belong in this cosmos, I felt. I am not a scabby loser needing to impress people. Old identities fell away in the face of the force of reality in the simple practice of uniting the inhale with the exhale. 

I realised that there was some precious knowledge: no one had ever taught me how to breathe before, how to really receive my inhale with receptivity. It changed everything to make my yoga practice all about the breath. So many classes and I had never leant this. I was so inspired to share this with others, not as something that I knew, but as something that everyone could do. I found myself drawing rather than writing in my journal, colourful plants, a picture of myself with no head and open palms with eyes in them. Space opened up for the non-verbal and the pre-verbal, in me, a talkaholic knows it all and knowledge junkie. What a miracle. 

I realised that’s Mark’s kindness was not just his personality, but a direct result of his own practice, his own yoga process of loving his teachers, being with them, and releasing his own reactivities. I saw how most human relationships are just people reacting to a reaction to a reaction. And that to be a decent teacher, we had to release some of our own baggage so we would not react to potential students. So we would not play out games of power and control with them, to satisfy our imaginary ego complexes. 

When I returned home, people could see the difference in me. Something was standing up straight that before used to be quivering in the corner. I had been given the means to see everyone as my equal, no matter how much knowledge they had. The heart of yoga. No longer manipulable. My old identities were weakened, and I had my means of practicing reminding my brain who I really was. A person with no need to hoard knowledge or play games. The power of life itself. I am forever grateful to Mark Whitwell for this gift!