He taonga rongonui te aroha ki te tangata – Love for all people is a precious treasure

Join Mark Whitwell and friends at Te Moata Sanctuary, an off-grid wilderness sanctuary in the Coromandel peninsula (jewel of New Zealand) for contemplation and immersion in nature and oneself (same thing!).

Simplicity, good company, and daily immersion in the heart of breath and yoga.

Whether you are new to yoga or a seasoned teacher, join world-renowned yoga teacher Mark Whitwell, Rosalind Atkinson and friends for six days practicing together the profound principles of breath and movement, chanting and rest that are too often neglected from the modern yoga industry.

You ARE nature. If you look at a bird or a tree or a flower and see the beauty, this beauty is no different than what you ARE. You are the beauty. But we try to capture beauty with our mind. We try to “experience” the beauty; or maybe hold on to it, savor it and try to duplicate the experience. But the mind will never capture beauty. It cannot even capture experience. It is too slow. You are beauty so you don’t have to capture it. So! Relax and stop looking. The power of the cosmos is arising as you, as utter beauty, intelligence and function, and all things. Enjoy mother nature directly, in you as you. — Mark Whitwell

Enjoy the Yoga that is right for you – adapted to your age, health, culture, needs and background. Yoga adapted to the individual, not the individual struggling to adapt to Yoga. Where “the breath is the guru”.

Who is it for:

• If you have done a class with Mark before and want to go deeper

• If you are interested in the work and lineage of T. Krishnamacharya

• If you read ‘The Heart of Yoga’ book and want to go deeper into it

• If you have tried Yoga but feel “I like it but there must be something more to it”

• Yoga teachers who are disillusioned and want to go deeper in practice and teaching

• If you have an exisiting meditation or spiritual practice, but need a physical aspect that is intelligent & complementary

• If you want to make the breath the central feature and purpose of your Yoga

• If you need a ‘reset’ and a break from the usual routines and obligations to take stock and be in touch with yourself

PREREQUISITES

• an open mind, a desire to be there

• you do not need to be super flexible or able to do complicated things with your body

• it’s recommended to have read one of Mark’s books, ‘The Heart of Yoga’ book, or have attended a workshop or online course before

• we don’t recommend initiating your Yoga while currently on some forms of mental health medication, please email rosalind@heartofyoga.com to discuss in confidence

This six-day retreat can be taken as personal retreat time, as a training/upskilling in yoga teaching (YACEP 50hrs), or as the initiation of a year-long mentorship programme leading to teacher certification. For the latter please write to studio@heartofyoga.com for more details.

COSTS

Your contribution varies by accommodation choice and is per person, including all meals, six nights accomodation, all teachings and materials. We are a registered non-profit organisation and any income goes towards our Yoga in Schools programme.

1. For a single bed / curtained cubicle in the thoughtfully-designed bunk room: NZ$1100 (top or bottom can be requested, see picture)

2. For a private cabin or courtyard room to oneself: NZ$1300 each (limited availability) (shared bathrooms)

3. For a private cabin or courtyard room shared by two people (twin or queen): NZ$1200 each (dependent on someone else also choosing this) (shared bathrooms)

4. There are two lovely self-contained cottages, Earth Hut with two double bedrooms and Phoenix Cottage with one queen bedroom and another queen bed in the lounge. See Te Moata website link below for details and photos. These are an extra $90/night ($540 total) and need to be arranged as a group. Extra cost is for the whole cottage not per person.

Not included: transport to and from, linen (we are encouraged to bring our own, or it can be hired for $25 for the week)

Food is simple vegetarian, special diets (gluten free, vegan, lots of allergies etc) are an extra $10/day to cover the chef’s time.

Deposit is approx $250 [charged in USD, $150] to reserve your bed. Balance will be invoiced after the application is made and is due by one week before the retreat starts.

Questions? Please email studio@heartofyoga.com or you can Whatsapp on +6421412747

For more images of the venue and rooms, please see https://temoata.org/retreat-venue/accommodation/

About the Teachers

Mark Whitwell

Mark Whitwell is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar, whom he first met in 1973 and enjoyed a relationship for many decades. Mark’s teachings clarify the profound passion and relevance of ancient wisdom to contemporary life.

Mark Whitwell has taught yoga for over four decades throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Australasia and is the editor and contributor to TKV Desikachar's classic book, The Heart of Yoga, now used on teacher trainings worldwide.

First ‘dropping out’ of New Zealand society and travelling to India in his teens, this was the beginning of a lifelong love affair that took him into the orbits of many of the great masters of our time, known and unknown, including falling in love with Swami Muktananda in the early seventies and accompanying him around Australia. But it wasn’t until Mark met Krishnamacharya and Desikachar in Chennai (then Madras) in 1973 that he discovered a practice that could make his inspirational experiences stable and comprehensible: Yoga. Desikachar and his father were living as ordinary humble people, sharing their meals on the floor of their home, not posturing as superior beings or powertripping. Mark fell in love with this and with the Yoga he received.

After staying India several years, he then travelled back and forth between India and Aotearoa / New Zealand, set up yoga studios including on Auckland’s vital Karangahape Road, and brought students to India to study with his teachers. He later travelled to the USA and noticed that what was being taught in Yoga studios there bore little resemblance to what he had learned in India. When Mark reported this to Desikachar, Desikachar asked him if he could perhaps do something about it. The book The Heart of Yoga: Developing A Personal Practice was the result. After arranging for the book’s publication in the US, and hosting Desikachar in New Zealand in 1995 for workshops, interviews and book promotion, Mark continued to teach around the world to carry out his teacher’s request, while always returning to his homeland of Aotearoa New Zealand.

During this time he reconnected with UG Krishnamurti (student but no relation of the famous Jiddhu Krishnamurti), a student and friend of Krishnamacharya and a huge influence on Desikachar. UG was an unusual person, whose spiritual search had finished completely, freeing up torrents of energy in his body and allowing him to live his life freely — what is called a jivamukti or liberated person in the Indian tradition. This dear friendship with UG was immensely clarifying to Mark, and helped him remove traces of struggle and religious effort from what he practiced and taught. Most of all UG raged against the power structures set up by those selling spirituality as a commodity, as something ‘they have and you don’t’, feeding the tendency in humans to feel ‘not there yet.’ Mark continues on in this vein of radical non-hierarchy and non-dualism, whereby the teacher is “no more than a friend and no less than a friend, the force of nurturing in local community—not a social identity, not a personal identity, not a status or position.” He strenuously rejects any suggestions he might want to teach “Mark Whitwell style” Yoga and aims to just pass on what he received from his teachers.

“Indeed a Soft message for a hard time... God is in this moment. God is as close as your own breath. So be here now! Mark will show you an easy way.”

— Ram Dass

ROSALIND ATKINSON

Rosalind is a yoga teacher, writer and publisher with a special interest in Yoga and Tantra history and literature. She first met Mark Whitwell in 2017 after finding his book Yoga of Heart in a second-hand shop. Something about it moved her so deeply that she tracked him down in Fiji to meet him in person. They connected immediately and have since then been sharing their work and life while living out of suitcases around the world.

Rosalind previously studied and volunteered several years at an Advaita Vedanta ashram, exploring the teachings of non-duality and a life of karma yoga. She holds a Master’s degree in mystic poetry specialising in William Blake, and an early interest in Zen took her to Japan several times, including presenting conference papers on the Japanese reception of Blake’s non-dual visions. Encountering genuine Yoga with Mark, she immediately felt the importance of how it helps us actualise the beautiful ideals of diverse spiritual traditions, and has been committed to sharing and communicating it since then.

She is interested in finding creative, poetic and funny ways to communicate in ways that help us feel the teachings for ourselves, as our own heart’s voice. Her special interests include opening up discussions around yogic sexuality, relationship, and spiritual ecology… new/old ways to relate to land and each other.

Her literature studies and prior degree in illustration and printmaking came together in 2018 to create Silver Snake Press, a small independent press to bring heart-felt books on Yoga and life to the world. For a while a direct action activist with Greenpeace, including a time crewing on the Rainbow Warrior III, she now feels that Yoga is her most effective form of activism, in that it enables people to feel for themselves how, in Blake’s words, “Everything that Lives is Holy,” and thereby intelligently respond to the people and situations around them, including the disastrous numbing effects of industrial modernity. Rosalind is a commercially certified skipper and radio operator, worked several years on the Spirit of NZ, and when in Aotearoa lives on her boat moored up at Waiheke Island.