The Heart of Yoga

Mark Whitwell interviews Rosalind Atkinson about her life with yoga and realisations. In particular, Mark asks about her academic studies of english literature, especially the mystic poet William Blake, and the relevance of these studies to her life in yoga. This episode will be of interest to anyone with a mixed experience in academia or poetry, who is interested in the yogic process of making in...

What is natural movement for a human being?   In this episode we are graced with the presence of Anne-Tyler, yogini of the Americas and her profound story of evolving movement patterns from the strictures of ballet into the natural forms for a human body.    Mark and Anne-Tyler discuss learning to dance from a young age in the UK and developing her skills when moved back to the US, and how it wasn...

Mark and his dear friend Patrick collude at the beach in Australia to discuss Patrick's life of Yoga and insight. They unpack the lie of "trying to get there" through Yoga. Get where? We are already here! Patrick breaks down the regular Australian conditioning of beer and sport, and relates how one sentence from a partner inspired a quest for change. They chart the murky waters of addiction to asa...

This podcast tells the story of Maja's transition from social activism to Yoga revelation. How Yoga becomes the means to enacting the change we want to see. As Gandhi said.. "be the change you want to see." In this conversation we hear once again the process to become an actual Yoga teacher in real life and community. From Sloviana Maja's background and society has had its own traumas and horrific...

In this episode we are graced by world-friend & yogini without borders Manisha Lebel. Yoga Teacher, Naturopath, Herbalist & Wisdom Holder. Manisha and Rosalind discuss how Manisha's extensive yoga practice, teaching and academic research backgrounds resonated straightaway with the breath principles Mark was passing on. We talk about being an outsider, New Zealand colonial patterning, people pleasi...

How do we make the shift from practitioner to teacher? Who should become a teacher? How do we make sure we don't become "One more monkey" in the yoga industrial complex? How to keep the heart in yoga? Mark interviews Andrew about his experience of this process and emergence from the middle-class massage into a life of meaning, play, & subversive subtlety as a practitioner & teacher. Andrew talks a...

''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 question...

A conversation between Rosalind and Alesha Keen, yogini & important teacher of the UK. Alesha is breaking new ground in England, drawing upon her decades of experience across yoga, psychotherapy, and numerous other modalities from West and East to help individuals "bloom in their own garden."  In our wide-ranging discussion, she offers us her first-hand yogic perspective on the initiations into em...

Ryan Stanley is the Heart of Yoga in San Diego. He teaches from the heart to the heart of everybody. The message from UG Krishnamurti that "there is nothing to be liberated from" hit him like a tonne of bricks, and since then he has been restructuring his practice, yoga studio and teaching around this whole-body realisation.    Here he talks with Mark about the transition from 'yoga sales' to yoga...

Mark sits down with long-time friend and German Yogini Sybille Schlegel to reflect on many things, including the dreadful shadow of war in Europe, with its grim echoes of the past. Sybille draws on her background in history and present role as co-founder and teacher of Hatha Vinyasa Parampara Studio in Mainz. A student of Sanskrit, she talks about the journey from conscientious western academic to...

From the banks of the holy Ganga to the East Village, Manhattan, Jeremiah Brimlow and Mark's friendship has flourished. Jeremiah is a bridge of the ancient world to the modern times, of east and west, but also of the early days of yoga arriving in New York City to the current situation. Mark and Jeremiah reflect on the shifts they have seen, on the legacy of the US counterculture, and staying in t...

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...

What is the relationship between Yoga and religion? Following on from last week's episode with Janet Marshall talking about Yoga and Catholicism, this week we are honoured to be joined by Devaraj from Chennai, speaking from his perspective about the relationship between religion and Yoga.  Is Yoga Hinduism? How do the two intersect? Devaraj was born and lives in the city where Krishnamacharya and...

Mark Whitwell discusses with Yoga Teacher Janet Marshall of California the process of becoming a Yogini and Transmitter of Yoga. Janet talks about how Yoga helped her to actually understand for herself what was being talked about in the sacred text of her religious culture. They discuss going beyond the restrictions of the usual life, and surviving getting lost in the sea of Yoga knowledge and com...

Ilil is the Heart behind Tali Tali collective, a social enterprise to nurture indigenous weaving traditions (tali tali means weaving) and create income for rural women, including here on Taveuni island, Fiji. Rosalind speaks with her about Tali Tali, the extraordinary hand made Yoga mats they are helping bring to the world, and the "Woven Village" program just completed, which included teaching yo...

Ronan Tang and Xi Zhu are a bridge for humanity between East and West, master translators and facilitators of the Heart of Yoga in China. Together they facilitate the unity of ancient wisdom traditions. What is the relationship between Daoism and Veda, between Yoga and Chinese Traditional Wisdom practices? What is the relationship of ha-tha yoga to the yin and yang of the Dao? How does Tai Chi rel...

Jessica Patterson is the founder and director of Root Centre for Yoga and Sacred Studies, which she offers to the world from her home in Colorado Springs, USA. Jessica is someone who has managed to successfully keep the heart in Yoga. She escaped the "Yoga Industrial Complex," and continues to teach purely as the force of nurturing in local community — and beyond.   Jessica speaks with Mark about...

Yoga is not seeking for a future idealism. Yoga is participation in the given Reality (capital R). The beauty, the wonder, the power, the harmony that is intrinsic to your life. Yoga is not to use the body or the mind to seek. Yoga is to give the body and all ordinary conditions over to the capital-R Reality, which is its context. The collaboration of great luminaries has freed yoga from the unnec...

Since psychedelics first escaped the research environment and sparked the counter-culture in the mid twentieth century, they have been aligned with the traditions of the East. But how do Yoga and psychedelics relate to each other? Are they complementary? Or antagonistic? Mark and Andy discuss the original counterculture, the current "psychedelic renaissance" and latest applications to mental healt...

Mark and Simone discuss the roots of addiction, its cause and its cure. Simone relates her journey through her husband's early death and being mother to three little boys through to adulthood. Simone holds a PhD in nursing and works in the field of chronic pain. She is the author of Yoga Rx for the 12 Steps, and working on a new book on helping friends and family deal with addiction in their loved...

Minami Takashima was a successful business woman in corporate Japan, and here she tells her story of stepping out of exploitation and corporate hierarchy and stepping into her own power. Minami and Rosalind talk about the role of Yoga in this journey and how it has inspired her to teach across different countries and languages. The key theme is finding the authority of our experience and power. Mi...

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, a...

Kelsey Barrett is a modern-day witch. She is a practicing herbalist and Yogini. Mark says: "In previous centuries she would have been burnt at the stake for her strange powers that threatened the knowledge authority of orthodoxy. She would have been shunned to the outskirts of the town, a forest dweller with twigs and moss in her hair and strange garb. These days the public realize she has useful...

Yoga IS Relationship. What does that mean? I thought it was doing the splits on the beach and posting it on Instagram? I thought it was living alone in a cave for twenty years until you could live on just air? Mark and Rosalind explore just exactly HOW yoga transforms our relationships, and lift the lid on some of the challenges and dysfunctions in relationships that make yoga sorely needed. Some...

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 wheth...