krishnamacharya

''How to find a good yoga teacher?  How do you find a teacher that you trust, and can generate a connection with? Not only that, but find a teacher that does not see themselves in a position of power and does not have your monetary value as student in their ’business’ as a priority?" 

In this episode Mark and Rosalind talk about this most basic of questions, along with the even more basic questions of why we would even want a yoga teacher, and what that is anyway. 

Some aspects we cover:

- The origins of yoga as a practice of mutual respect and care for others and the community, without authority and power.

- the change in student-teacher relationships to power dynamics and business interest as the norm

- The three qualifications of a good yoga teacher according to Krishnamacharya.

- Cultism in spiritual practice; how to sense someone who is driven by social hierarchy, power and money. 

- The use of knowledge as a means to create seniority and power in the modern world of spiritual practice. And the contrasting experience had by Mark with his teachers Krishnamacharya and Desikachar.

- “Yoga is not a salvation cult”. A good teacher should not be promising any method or secret knowledge that will get you to where you think you want to go. Any promises of this nature should be treated with caution as the promise is most likely more of a product to be sold than a spiritual practice.

- A conversation about the ironic inflexibility of modern yoga, how it pushes people into predefined patterns regardless of the differences between individuals, and how this is a reflection of the patterning seen in modern society.

- What to look for: the breath as THE central element of asana practice. The unity of body, mind and breath must be present from the first moment of the yoga lesson, yet is often not given precise or any attention in modern yoga teaching.

- “You don’t do yoga, yoga does you”. Participating in the flow of life and being in the moment, as opposed to using spiritual practice to try and get somewhere you think you need to go, and how a good teacher can help thwart the latter tendency.

- Yoga as a method to release the mind from habitual thought. A symptom of modern living that affects most people in negative ways. Yoga can be a way to free yourself of unnecessary thought and be in the world's beauty.

To find out if we know a good teacher near you, please email studio@heartofyoga.com

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Malika Warda is a mystic Yogini poet currently residing in the land of ancient light, Western Australia, and co-founder of the extraordinary yoga, meditation and sound healing studio Cntrspace in Perth. She is the author of a book of poetry by the same name, a photographer, and a deep explorer of the human experience, drawing on her Yogic, Palestinian and Australian Indigenous heritage. Malika and Mark speak about her journey to find the real depth Yoga offers, the impact of finding it on her relationships with self and others, the unfolding of a profound yogic sexuality, and healing the mass social repression of the feminine.

You will hear how relatively quickly when a person receives yoga, transmission into local community can occur. Malika is a wonderful example of a yoga teacher of these recent times. 

You can find Malika on IG @malika.abuwarda___
and in person teaching at her studio in north Perth at Cntrespace.

In this episode you will hear...

03.30 How, where and why Mark & Malika met. A pivotal time in Malika's life. Finding more to Yoga.

08:00 Actual Yoga happening in and around Malika and her practice. Results and friendships.

12:00 Finding strength, beauty and form as the feminine. A process shown and shared. A feminine force repressed.

17:00 Empowered utterances of Yogic realizations. Sexual intimacy and freedom from patterning.

25:00 Spiritual wisdom was packaged as a mechanism of male authority. Adding value and actualization of a real Yoga practice.

Saison 1 - Episode 4

Histoire du yoga (3/3) : de l'Inde à l'Occident, de 1900 à aujourd'hui avec Marie Kock

Le yoga s’est mondialisé au cours du 20ème siècle. Plusieurs maîtres ont cherché à l’adapter à l’Occident pour réussir cette exportation dans un autre contexte social et culturel. Une mission brillamment accomplie par ces yogis visionnaires qui ont accordé une grande place aux exercices posturaux. 

Le yoga majoritairement transmis dans le monde en 2021 est un descendant direct de ce yoga moderne, pensé et construit pour les Etats-Unis et l’Europe.

Qui sont les yogis qui ont adapté et exporté le yoga dans le monde entier ? Pourquoi et comment ont-ils opéré pour séduire l’Occident ? Comment ont-ils redéfini cet enseignement ? 

Quel rôle ont joué les stars d'Hollywood, les Beatles, les LSD dans l'histoire moderne du yoga ? 

Le yoga a-t-il perdu son essence dans cette nouvelle mutation majeure ?

Le yoga postural, largement dominant aujourd’hui, serait-il un simple produit

de la globalisation ?

Quelle est l’influence de la culture fitness des Etats-Unis sur le yoga pratiqué

en Europe au 21 ème siècle ?

Comment la période post mai 68 a favorisé son essor en France ?

Avec Marie Kock, nous poursuivrons notre enquête pour comprendre la trajectoire du yoga de 1900 à aujourd'hui. 

Intervenants :

Marie Kock, journaliste, professeur de yoga, auteure de livre "Yoga, une histoire monde : de Bikram aux Beatles, du LSD à la quête de soi : le récit d'une conquête" 

Retrouvez-nous sur www.casayana.fr  ! 

Pour nous contacter : casayogagrenoble@gmail.com

Si vous appréciez l'émission, n'hésitez pas à nous encourager et à la faire connaître en mettant un commentaire positif et un avis 5 étoiles ⭐ sur Apple Podcasts. Vous pouvez également visiter notre page Tippee qui permet d'offrir une participation libre et consciente pour soutenir notre travail de création : https://fr.tipeee.com/casayana-le-podcast-du-yoga. Merci ! 

Mike Bucher is a musician in Los Angeles. His band, Iglu and Hartley have had hit singles around the world — great uplifting rock and roll. He now ventures forth as "Mike B and the Universe" with has solo album just released, 'Bloom Baby Bloom'.

Mike is a yogi and a teacher in the heart of yoga. Mike speaks candidly about staying real in the midst of celebrity and the life of a working musician, and speaks about how Yoga has been a catalyst for his life, music and relationship.

He teaches in Los Angeles and on his new album combines his great love of the American tradition of song and his yoga realization. Here we have a meeting of Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan and the Kinks. It is a very useful work in the world! Highly recommended. Stream or download it here!

In this episode you will hear....

In this special episode, we share (with permission) edited extracts from a May weekly “Teacher’s Gathering” in the Heart of Yoga Studio.

Mark is speaking about who can teach Yoga, about what is required to teach Yoga, and about being your authentic self.

Teachers around the world share their experience, discussing what the role of the teacher really is, how to cope with teaching on zoom, and whether you can even decide to be a yoga teacher.

A capital-R Reality check and sense of communal support for all teachers out there.

This teachers’ gathering happens weekly. It’s open to all supporting members of the Online Studio.

You can join at:

www.heartofyoga.com/studio

Follow this podcast for new episodes here: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS/XML

If you feel moved to submit a question for a future episode, you can do so here:

https://www.heartofyoga.com/podcast

You can find more from the Heart of Yoga on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Sriram is my Gurubhai – brothers of the same teacher. He is particularly interesting to me in that he is indigenous to South India, born into the society and language of Krishnamacharya and Desikachar. Whereas I migrated into that culture and knew nothing of it in my early life.

As a modern man in the West, Sriram is an extremely informed Yoga teacher who is able to communicate the nuance of the culture of our teachers in modern and useful ways.

Sriram speaks of growing up in South India as a radical young explorer of life and his journey into Yoga — a riveting and a brilliant window into how radical Desikachar himself was, absolutely not a traditionally religious or conservative yoga school. And the inspiring story of his relationship with his German wife Anjali and move to Germany.

R. Sriram has been working as a yoga teacher in Germany since 1988. In 1977 he began to systematically learn yoga with Śri TKV Desikachar in Chennai, his hometown - he received private and group lessons from him. Sriram also took private Ayurveda lessons with Dr. V. Narayanaswami and attended group lessons with Śri T. Krishnamacharya. For several years, Sriram taught under the guidance of Śri TKV Desikachar at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai Yoga and contributed to the development of the then young institute.

The philosophical source texts of yoga, therapy with yoga, mantra yoga and yoga with children from mainstream and special schools were and are his focus.

Thanks to his language skills and the support of his German wife, the Indian dancer Anjali, he has become an important link between east and west for many yoga practitioners. Since the nineties he has taught at many yoga training centers and universities and has brought many people closer to yoga in all its aspects in private lessons.

With his therapeutic knowledge he was able to give many people the opportunity to find a new, healthy way of dealing with their complaints and illnesses. In this way, R. Sriram has been able to train many students to become well-founded yoga teachers over the years. These teachers offer yoga all over Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

• Sriram's childhood in South India and his introduction into spiritual life through music
• His involvement with radical Chennai theatre communities in the 1970s
• On meeting his wife, famous German-born Indian classical dancer Anjali Sriram, and the meeting of East and West
• Memories of J. Krishnamurti and TKV Desikachar and why Desikachar ignored his questions about spirituality
• Breaking out of cultural expectations and how Yoga helped resolve conflicts
• Reflections on the culture of the Mandiram community and those teaching and studying there
• Vedic chanting and the relationship with music
• Desikachar as “no more than a friend, no less than a friend” and his radical acceptance
• Dealing with the dreaded question – “What type of yoga do you teach?”
• Dealing with religious fears and prejudice over 30 years of working as a Yoga teacher in Germany, and how it has changed in that time.
  

You can learn more and connect with Sriram on his:

Website

Facebook

Instagram

________________________________

Subscribe to this podcast for new episodes here: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS/XML

If you feel moved to submit a question for a future episode, you can do so here:

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You can find more from Mark and the Heart of Yoga on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

From dark times in Europe through to personal victory.

Croatian yoga teacher Domagoj Orlić joins Mark and Rosalind to speak about his twenty-year friendship with Mark, his evolution from a gymnast to a yogi, the influence of J Krishnamurti, and the confluence of Sri Vidya and yoga in his life.

What a precious conversation with a dear friend and holder of yoga.

“Powerful peace and peaceful power of a life lived straight from the Heart, for the Heart.” - Domagoj Orlić

Domagoj Orlić first met Mark Whitwell in about 2000, following an interest in yoga since his teenage years.

He is a yoga teacher in the traditional mode of “no more than a friend, no less than a friend,” the author of multiple books on yoga and philosophy in Croatian and English, the translator into Croatian of ‘Yoga of Heart’, and ‘The Promise’, an artist of yantra, and an accomplished martial artist.

• Teaching yoga as experienced by yourself and adapting it to individual needs of students
• How Domagoj came to discover the book, The Heart of Yoga, and how it completely changed his yoga experiments
• The development of a beautiful friendship across the world in the early days of Internet
• Why Desikachar was upset when "The Heart of Yoga" book was published
• What does it mean for a student to be "inexpensive" to a teacher
• Can teaching really be without hierarchy, just as friendship?
• How the intervention of yoga into Domagoj's life lifted off the karmas of Europe and hardships in his life
• Discovering J Krishnamurti and re-discovering freedom
• Why he gave up the idea of pursuing his spiritual life in isolation
• Cleansing the doors of perception...
• The process of yoga really entering into the body and how patience is required
• His release from the fixation on the form and softening of his yoga practice
• The realization of how life supports yoga and vice versa and the role of breath in this
• How Domagoj taught his Catholic mother to embrace and practice yoga
• Why being a yoga teacher is the highest - and possibly the hardest - occupation in the world

You can learn more about Domagoj on his Facebook.

Subscribe to this podcast for new episodes here: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS/XML

If you feel moved to submit a question for a future episode, you can do so here:

https://www.heartofyoga.com/podcast

You can find more from Mark and the Heart of Yoga on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

T.K.V. Desikachar left us a vast wealth of practical knowledge about life and yoga by passing the precious jewels of wisdom from his father, Krishnamacharya.

We continue to receive the gifts of Desikachar’s dedication to his father Krishnamacharya’s teachings and their friendships with Jiddu and UG Krishnamurti.

Mark Whitwell first met Desikachar and his father in 1973, following extensive travels in India. He had met many gurus and yogis, but was struck by the fact that Desikachar and his family had no pomp and ceremony, no business agenda, and no need for name or fame around their scholarship.

Desikachar became Mark’s yoga teacher, a friend, a true pioneer — a caring human being who attained ordinariness. Mark reflects on Desikachar as a very human friend and his relationships with the Krishnamurti in India, Saanen, and New Zealand.

In this episode, Rosalind interviews Mark on T.K.V. Desikachar and his influential friendships:

• Desikachar's relationship with Krishnamacharya and why Desikachar was at first a reluctant student of yoga
• How J Krishnamurti escaped the path of a “chosen world leader” and how he became Desikachar’s most famous student, and why he stopped studying with Iyengar
• The importance in Desikachar's life of both Krishnamurtis and how these friendships clarified Yoga for Mark
• Attaining ordinariness — why ordinary is actually extraordinary
• Remembering Desikachar's attitude of respect, humility, and learning attitude to life
• Memories of Mark organising Desikachar’s visit to Aotearoa New Zealand and hosting a workshop on a marae on the North Shore
• Desikachar’s deep love for UG Krishnamurti, and how human affection, love, and friendship are primary ingredients to any Yoga learning relationship
• The importance of Saanen, Switzerland as a hub for Yoga to enter the West
• UG Krishnamurti’s Yoga studies with Krishnamacharya
• What is "the nostril-holding arrogance of the yogis”?

If you feel moved to submit a question for a future episode, you can do so here:

https://www.heartofyoga.com/podcast

You can find more from Mark and the Heart of Yoga on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Mark Whitwell has been teaching yoga around the world ever since he first met his yoga teachers, T.K.V. Desikachar and his father T. Krishnamacharya, in Chennai in 1973.

He realised straight away that our body loves its breath, the inhale loves the exhale and vice versa, and that yoga is an immensely practical and useful tool for everyone to respond to inspiration and grace.

The Heart of Yoga is the result of these precious meetings.

In this opening podcast episode, Rosalind Atkinson interviews Mark about the origins and purpose of the heart of yoga:

• What is the heart and the philosophy behind the Heart of Yoga?
• What is Yoga all about? What is the purpose and background of yoga?
• Why Yoga is all about relationship, a practice of intimacy and love
• Mark’s relationship with his teachers and the story of Desikachar’s book, ‘The Heart of Yoga.’
• What went wrong in the translation of yoga to the west
• The benefits of Yoga practice and the risks of becoming a "bliss junkie"
• Krishnamacharya and what makes Yoga practice ‘Tantric’
• How Yoga helped one nun "stop arguing with the Pope"
• The Yoga teacher-student relationship as an intimate friendship, act of grace, and gift of life

If you feel moved to submit a question for a future episode, you can do so here:

https://www.heartofyoga.com/podcast

You can find more from Mark and the Heart of Yoga on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

Ce quatrième épisode offre la possibilité de travailler et surtout de ressentir toute la profondeur de la salutation préférée de Sri Krisnamacharya. Salutation qui propose une série de postures engageantes, pratiquées dans la fluidité du geste et du souffle.

Il sera souhaitable de refaire les épisodes 1 et 2 du "Temps du passage" pour pouvoir aborder cette salutation en s’ étant préparé avec soin. D’autre part, n’hésitez pas à regarder les dessins explicatifs avant de la vivre, imaginez vous en train de la « faire », cela vous sera très utile.  Enfin, c’est une véritable chorégraphie et une ode à la beauté du monde, une offrande en quelque sorte. Très belle séance à vous.