The tiny, one-room Bhakti Yoga Shala studio in Santa Monica is packed for Mark Whitwell’s Heart of Yoga workshop. Students sit on nearly overlapping mats in the typical pre-class buzz, chatting, meditating or contemplating the framed portraits of famous yogis that decorate the room, but all noise subsides when teacher enters. Tall and lanky, Australian-born Whitwell strides to the front and sinks into a half lotus. As he pulls his very long, grey locks back into a ponytail, his slightly grouchy expression softens into a smile. “Let’s start with a kirtan,” he says in his resonant Kiwi twang.
Studio owner Radha hypnotizes with his harmonium as Whitwell intones the call-and-respond chant, his voice melodic and soothing. Afterward he excuses himself briefly, then reemerges ready for yoga in nonchalant faded purple sweats and a shirt that billboards “Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.”
During the brief asana practice, Whitwell devotes meticulous attention to our breathing, the delicate balance between inhale and exhale, or “strength receiving” and “strength giving,” as he calls it. “Yoga must be adapted to the individual,” he insists, “not the individual adapted to yoga.” It’s a short class because this yogi doesn’t believe in endless hours of practice.
“Seven minutes of asana a day is all you need,” he declares. “Not the ‘physical gymnastics’ that have been popularized in most studios in the West.” But it’s not just any seven minutes, it should be unique to each person. “If your asana practice is adapted to you, you’ll experience a state of natural meditation, or enlightenment,” he promises.
This flies in the face of the common belief that hours of yoga practice are essential to finding enlightenment, which is not part of Whitwell’s curriculum.
“We have to get away from this idea of yoga as a path to enlightenment,” he asserts. “There’s no physical and spiritual goal in yoga. There’s nowhere to get to. The ideal exists already and is called reality. All yoga does is help us experience an intimate connection with that reality. To celebrate the wonder that is our life.”
Emerging to the Feminine
Whitwell’s yoga philosophy harkens back to T. Krishnamacharya, a South Indian yogi master of the 20th century. Krishnamacharya sought out the ancient Tantric practices that emphasize the dominance of feminine energy as the creator and nurturer of life.
“When male force in this world is delivered in the context and sensitivity of the feminine, the nurturing force of life,” writes Whitwell in his book, Yoga of the Heart, “our world will change.”
He studied the work of Krishnamacharya with T.K.V. Desikachar; and also learned from renowned teachers like Nityananda and J. and U.G. Krishnamurti. His heartfelt references to his mother make it easy to see that she also was among his great teachers. “I felt absolute love for and from my mother, the natural, ferocious force of life that brings us into existence,” he writes.
This same love is expressed in regard to our small planet, which he also passionately refers to as Mother. “I feel her in everything and every person as my own life and breath and heart.”
Whitwell is intent on conveying that message of love to all with whom he comes into contact, that “you are fully loved, you are fully able, you are perfectly capable the way you are.”
For some reason, it’s difficult for most people to believe that their lives can be this simple, this perfect. That there is nothing to solve, nowhere to look but in the intimate, fleshy ‘now’ of their own bodies, their own breath, their own reality.
Intimate Connections
Whitwell’s brand of yoga is a daily practice of intimacy—“the healing power of intimate connection”—that includes intimate relationships with others as well as ourselves. “Only a fully individualized yoga practice allows you to develop an intimate relationship with your own body, breath and life, your own perfection,” says Whitwell. “That’s real yoga.
“The problem is,” he continues, “that religious doctrines have conditioned us to believe that intimacy with oneself and others is a ‘lowly’ desire. That our own body’s needs, our breath and our sexuality prevent us from reaching enlightenment. No wonder our world is burdened by sex negativity and pornography! That’s what happens when you suppress anything that’s natural. It comes out as an aberration, an illness. Look at what happens if you stop breathing for a while.”
Desire in this context is neither denied nor indulged. “Yoga can be defined as mastery of desire, not the suppression of desire,” he explains.
Ironically, it is this kind of sensual simplicity that magnetizes people to him. Students besiege him with questions after class, and then queue up to hug him good-bye.
Yoga with the Enemy
Despite an obvious distaste for religious doctrine, Whitwell has no doubt that religion and yoga can coexist, “because yoga is not a religion. It’s a hands-on philosophy.” He rejoices that, “Yoga has the ability to transcend national, religious, racial and cultural boundaries, because it allows us to connect with ourselves and others on an intimate, basic human level. To yoga, we’re all human first.”
One of Whitwell’s passions is to use the power of that transcendence to promote understanding and commonality among ethnic and national groups in the Middle East.
“We’re recruiting teachers from countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine and other war regions. In all these places, there are people who are not stuck in their belief systems. They take up yoga and understand that they’re human, that we’re all human, that we are all life. That we’re not separate. This is the feeling yoga can give you,” he says.
His vision is one of hope, compassion and tolerance in this troubled region, but the methodology is almost subversive.
“We’re seeding this message into communities all over the world by training people from these regions in America and paying for their education. Then they go back and teach in their local cities or villages and they create livelihoods for themselves, they create a community of friends who practice yoga, spreading peace by celebrating just being human.”
American retreat centers like Esalen, Kripalu and the Omega Institute have jumped on board with the project, waiving training fees. Thus far there’s been great success with teachers and students of the same faith connecting through yoga, and there have also been some surprising cross-religious connections, like the Jewish Israeli woman who teaches yoga to Arab Muslim women in Jerusalem. Initially the Arab students were shocked, yet they came back. It’s results like these that nurture and validate Whitwell’s vision as his nonprofit continues to travel, support and fund additional teacher training and education through a combination of non-profit grants, corporate and individual donations.
Being Happiness
When asked over coffee after class to define happiness, an enigmatic smile flashes across Whitwell’s face. He leans back in his chair, his seemingly endless legs stretched out in front of him.
“Let me define unhappiness for you instead,” he says. “Unhappiness is looking for happiness. You see, the problem is we have to get out of that whole framework of being happy or unhappy because it creates positive and negative patterns. Dualties. So even when you feel happy, that positive pattern becomes binding because you want to keep feeling happy, and that will eventually make you feel unhappy. It’s like changing your steel handcuffs for golden handcuffs. Golden handcuffs are even harder to get off because we are enamored of the gold.’”
He sits quietly for a moment, then chuckles. “Life is not rocket science, you know. It is an extreme intelligence as it is already in every person. Our heartbeat, breath and sex, what our body is in all its perceiving capabilities—it’s an extreme wonder. Yoga is just a way to participate in that wonder that is your life.”
