Yoga For A Better World

Alternatively, become a supporting member of the Heart of Yoga Studio, which will give you access to this course, the ‘Online Immersion’, and also unlimited weekly classes.

yoga for a better world* is An eight-week (but self-paced) online course designed to give a home yoga practice to those who are engaged in caring about the world and each other, and to give heart and confidence to those already practicing.

Do you feel disillusioned/despairing with world affairs, overwhelmed with human and non-human suffering, burnt out, heart-broken, enraged?

Have you lost faith or interest in polarised political factions warring for cultural dominance?

Are you interested in the logic of how Yoga naturally leads to change in our lives, without guilt, doctrine, or dogma?

Do you feel how our bodies have been programmed and made tense and numb by cultures of insensitivity or violence?

Do you feel the redemptive power of love as a practice? The need for a renewed and yet open-eyed innocence in the world?

Do you know that we ARE nature, not a disembodied boss of Her, but wish for a daily practice that embeds this understanding in every cell of your body?

Are you repelled by or uninterested in commercial yoga, or frustrated with the narcissism and solipsism rife in the spiritual and ‘wellness’ scenes?

Do you feel that everything that lives is holy, and it is all hands on deck to create culture that acknowledges this?

Do you feel nothing at all?

We feel all these things and so do our friends, so we made Yoga for a Better World.

*Previously named Yoga for Activists, we have reworked this for a broader audience, for every person longing for change, not just those who feel they fit under a label or subculture of “activist.”

What is it exactly?

• Eight weeks of low screen-time materials

• Three different short and simple practices (12mins, 20mins, or 30mins lying down) designed to be repeated daily

• One 5-minute-ish “practice refinement” video each week

• A 30min–1hr audio each week that you can download and listen to offline on the weekly theme

• A weekly reading / essay written for this course on the subjects of Dissolving Hierarchy, Intimacy as Radical Practice, What is Yoga if Not Self-Absorbed Gymnastics, The World Cult of Meditation (and how it has dissociated people from life and action), Neglect of the Feminine Principle, Softness as Strength, Releasing Patterns and Programming, Yoga as a Practice of Love, Right Relationship and its relevance to our activism, and The Ecosystem of Change. Basically a small book that we have thought deeply about and written to bridge the gap between sincere activists wishing to act from love, and sincere yogis wishing to understand the implications of practice in the wider world. (Audio recordings of the essays available too for non-readers.)

• Monthly live zoom call in the Heart of Yoga global sangha to ask practice questions and receive community and support (two timezones: 7am UTC and 7pm UTC)

• Direct personal help from one of us if needed to help you establish a simple daily practice that will nurture you and enable you to continue your work in the world.

  WHAT IT IS NOT

• Telling you how to live your life, what to eat, what to believe in, etc.

• Political theory or doctrine.

• Judgement of who you are and how you live your life. All are welcome as you are.

• A fitness programme or self-improvement programme

Who IS TEACHING IT?

Mark Whitwell, Rosalind Atkinson, and Andrew Raba. We are all dedicated to transforming human life and culture, through sharing the tools of tantric hatha yoga that enable a person to step out of cultural programming and claim their life.

Mark is the original and has been teaching Yoga around the world for nearly five decades. His beloved teachers are T.K.V. Desikachar, son of T. Krishnamacharya, known as ‘the grandfather of modern yoga,’ as he was teacher to the famous BKS Iyengar and K Pattabhi Jois as young men, and his dear friend UG Krishnamurti, known as a jivamukti and the “raging sage,” who full explained how to purify Yoga of all traces of religious seeking and dissociative effort.

Mark is a ‘hippy made good,’ who discovered that yoga enabled him to actualise the beautiful ideals of peace and love of that genuinely radical moment in time. He is known as a truth-speaker in the world of Yoga, unafraid to constantly speak to the abuses and hypocrisies of modern yoga in the west, and yet always with deep love for the tradition, honouring all actual people and their sincere explorations. Mark has dedicated his life to the honouring and restoration of the Feminine in yoga and in life. He has empowered perhaps tens of thousands of lives around the world by sharing Yoga practice that anyone can do, adapted to their situation. He is born of Aotearoa New Zealand, inspired by the Beatles to get out as soon as possible and travel in India, and has lived in Chennai, New York, Los Angeles and Fiji while sharing Yoga.

Rosalind met Mark a few years ago after reading his first book, ‘Yoga of Heart.’ It alerted her to the fact that the spiritual community she was living in was perpetuating the struggles of regular society, ie “the social dynamic of disempowerment,” so she left and joined him in his world mission. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, descended from nature-loving botanists and trampers (hikers), Rosalind was involved in environmental activism for many years, including sailing in anti—deep-sea-oil-drilling flotillas, direct climate action, youth climate change movements and jet boat driving and campaign strategy for Greenpeace, including as deck crew on the Rainbow Warrior III, boarding illegal pirate fishing boats across the Pacific. She has Honours degrees in illustration & printmaking and in English literature, with a Master’s thesis specialising in William Blake. These days she works alongside Mark creating yoga education resources, as the founder of independent publisher Silver Snake Press, and writing at thedirt.media. Rosalind brings her knowledge of the joys and pitfalls of utopian change-making effort to her yoga teaching and writing, as part of the same greater project of enabling people to truly care about themselves and the world around them.

Andrew and Rosalind’s friendship began in university, where they studied utopian science fiction together and found kindred rebellious and yet playful souls. After finishing his Master’s in Situationist movements and American Pulp Fiction, and teaching at the university, combined with years of socialist political activism and organising, Andrew realised the inadequacies of academic or political theory alone for real transformation of the programming in our bodies, and turned to this dissident Yoga tradition. Learning from Mark over the last three years, he now teaches and writes about Yoga as the missing link between liberation theory and embodied political praxis. Andrew is inspired by visionary experience and the openness, unselfconsciousness, joyfulness and wild misbehaviour of the children he has worked with at urban libraries in Wellington, Aotearoa. He is currently peripatetic, teaching and writing in service to activating these latent qualities in adults. He brings his years of experience of political organising and love for radical and exuberant literature to the mix, and appreciation of outlaw cultures such as graffiti and real life.

Together, we offer you our friendship, vulnerability, life experience, and most importantly the treasure of actual yoga from the medieval Indian Tantric tradition, the key that has allowed us to “stop looking, start living” and enjoy our lives whilst working non-stop to transform the world’s utterly dysfunctional human arrangements.

We also feature interviews and writings from Lawrence Mupere and Etou Stuart (below left) of Heart of Yoga Africa/Uganda, Domagoj Orlić of Croatia (below centre, with Adisa Hajra), Namita Kulkarni (www.radicallyeverafter.com) of Mysore, and others.