Mark Whitwell came to Semperviva, which he does, once a year, and I went to the Sunday portion of his weekend of workshops.
Here’s some of the gems from this often surprising, always inspiring yogi.
On happiness: The looking for happiness is an unhappy activity. My teacher said, “If you’ve never known happiness, you’ll never be unhappy.”
On sex: Intimacy and sex is the business of God. The union of opposites is God’s power. Sex is great because it’s something you can participate in.
On religion: You cannot achieve spiritual abstractions unless there’s yoga. Asana is the practical means to realzing the idealism of all religions. A woman wrote to me, after attending a class held in her synagogue: “I didn’t realize I could breathe love. I actually felt what everbody in my church just talks about.”
On the heart and the mind: The heart is the source. Without the heart, there is no mind. Return to your own direct experience with source. Don’t wait to heal the disturbances of the social mind. Engage in grace now.
On yoga: The world needs asana. Not meditation. The energy flows through the whole body into all interelatedness. You cannot practice the higher limbs of yoga. They come as gifts. Do your yoga–actually and naturally and not obsessively.
