Listen here: Mark Whitwell, asking ashtangis to please just understand the yoga…
…Yoga has been branded as something that a slim, white woman can do… yoga is participation in the nondual… intimacy with the ordinary… connection…
…Spine, breath, sex…
…You could finally admit that what you wanted was sex, was intimacy…
… connection to rocks and ground and each other…
…Daily, actual, natural, not-obsessive practice… such a gift to know how to practice without obsession as a pleasure… it’s a little bit of work because relationship IS work: you have to turn up…
…We need to put Patthabi Jois’s [and Krishnamacharya’s] principles [back] in to the ashtanga vinyasa practice. …Just learn the principles [of Krishnamacharya] so that you are playing with a full pack of cards so that it can become the nondual practice of abundance nurturing continuity healing…
…You’ve got these obsessed exercise fanatics feeling buzzy and putting it out there as if it’s YO-GA, and they have the body types to do it… don’t be seduced by the orthodoxy that want to tell you that you know less than their text, their gymnastics, their effort to get to a future state… [but] you stand in your own ground as strength receiving…. And in time you might be called on to teach what you know… the principles of hatha yoga… PUT IT in to Ashtanga Vinyasa, in to Iyengar, in to Anusara, in to Bikram…
It’s difficult when you meet the orthdoxy and they claim generational authority… “my guru said, my forefather said”…
…You are a yogi [because] you are feeling what you’re feeling…
…The whole body becomes relaxed and absorbed in its own condition… intimacy arrives in that condition… this ability for you to feel as the whole body is there… self-generated practice… re-generation, not our parents’ generation… having your own generation and empowerment… even your mother wants you to go beyond her conditioning… become committed to practice, not obsessed with practice… but daily, naturally… you can actually do this now…
…And I DO want you to enter in to a friendly, diplomatic dialogue with the orthodoxy, with the power-holders who have their strict ideas…
…what’s needed is intimacy… meditation arises from intimacy… in relatedness…
…put the five basic principles back in to your Ashtanga Vinyasa Practice…
–Body movement is breath movement: the breath begins and ends each movement
–There are four parts to the breath: inhale, retention, exhale, retention
–The inhale is from above as receptivity the exhale from below is strength
–Asana creates bandha and bandha serves the breath, in that order
–Asana creates pranayama and pranayama allows for meditation and clarity of mind
…We want the ordinary conditions to be participating in their source, to be acknowledging their source… that is what bandha is doing… acknowledging the whole body participation in asana…
… witness consciousness of “I am not the body, I am witness consciousness” is not a yogic point of view. It is a religious dogma. Yoga is the acknowledging of individuation and all relatedness… you have the Eckhart Tolles out there expressing “awareness” as being the point… and people read the book and they fall in to the point of no-relatedness as a kind of satori and then they try to get back to that place… all this has become a substitute for what we really want, which is intimacy… yoga is a tool to enjoy your life now… intimate connection now… you can connect now, inhale now… I’m quite certain that moving and breathing as strength receiving… it can create a crisis of people feeling stuff of hidden stuff they have hidden in the back… releasing what we don’t need…
…intimacy that heals… the immediate connection to our own body… intimate connection is god-realizing which has been denied us because relationship has been denied… the dogmatic version is the denial of the ordinary life… telling you there is something wrong that you have to conquer… it’s just politics, power structure… that’s all it is…
…continue your daily practice which is intimate connection with source… THIS life, THIS body, THIS sex… AAAAH! When discontent is there, just honor it and continue to practice… in might take months or even years but it HAPPENS, this reduction of concern…
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