How can you find truth in the time of shift and change? We answer this question and more in this episode of Wisdom of the Ages with host Ayn Cates Sullivan and guest Mark Whitwell. As a continuation of a previous episode on Breath, the Yoga of Life, Mark now talks about the stories of spiritual teachers such as Muktananda and Nityananda. Mark also shares his experiences when he went on a pilgrimage around Kailash, the peak of Mother Earth’s geographies. Join Ayn and Mark in today’s episode in their magical bus ride going to India and discover the power of the cosmos.
Welcome and blessings. This is Ayn Cates Sullivan, host of Wisdom of the Ages, where we invite The Sacred and the Spiritual into Modern-day Reality. This one’s seriously sacred.
This show is a continuation of a previous episode with Mark Whitwell on Breath, the Yoga of Life. You can jump in with this right now midstream, and just let this river carry you, right now, into the greatness tree. You can go back and listen to the previous episode if you want to, but there’s so much energy flowing, we decided to keep going to talk about the truth and the power of the cosmos.
In this episode, we’re going to ask our spiritual friend, Mark Whitwell to take us on a journey to sacred India. How he got from this kid in New Zealand to suddenly being this guy with these saints and rishis and yoga masters, the guys that were the origin of yoga. He’s going to take us on this journey of the truth and the Kailash. Thank you so much for coming back on it and being willing to play.
Hello, dear friends all over the globe, mother earth. I’m so privileged to be coming down to your house today. Thank you, dear, dear Ayn, for bringing this into the world, for giving birth into the world of this offering of the ancient people into modern times. Thank you so much.
It just seems so important that in this time of shift and change that we’re in, as things are collapsing and people are sick and all these things are going on, that we have something really deep and beautiful and rich that we can tap into, that we can really start to move into love and consciousness and connection together. You have taught this for so many years, Mark. How many years have you been teaching now?
I don’t know. I began last year. One year.
Right.
No, really. I don’t know, 50 years, but one year ago we really got going because something happened a year ago. My friends and I went on a pilgrimage around Kailash. Kailash’s the peak of Mother Earth’s geographies actually, where Kailash and Mount Everest and all of that, and the Himalaya range where heaven meets earth. It’s been a pilgrimage place from the beginning, for eternity or all the saints and sages of the Veda for thousands of years. It’s a shared pilgrimage place for Hindus and Buddhists and people of all faith actually. We went around that and we just sort of slipped in before the pandemic began.
Then we went down into Mysore, the palace of the Maharaja of Mysore. This is where our teachers, they’re the grandfather of modern yoga, that’s Tirumalai Krishnamacharya. We followed in his footsteps. You see, he went to Kailash for seven and a half years and studied, and then went down into Mysore to begin his world teaching, his public work of bringing yoga to all people everywhere on the earth. He got really serious about that. He lived to 101 years old and died only in 1989. He brought this, the yoga from the wisdom traditions that had really vanished from humanity from the 14th century. They got eliminated by a religious culture in India and Tibet and Haiti. They were forced into sort of isolated situations like in Tibet and Hermitage, very rare places.
He found his teacher and he must’ve been really good because he stayed with his teacher and wife and children for seven and a half years with his teacher’s family and got it, and then brought it down and began this work. This conversation is really this ongoing work of giving yoga to every kind of person, no matter who you are no matter what the body type, the age, the health and the culture that you come from, yoga adapted to individual needs and that yoga is each person’s embrace of life as it actually is. The reality, the power of the cosmos that brought us here in the first place and presently beats our heart and moves our breath and sex, this the truth and the power of life itself.
That’s so beautiful. Yoga means union, right? Is that the actual meaning of the word, union?
Yes. Yoga to the yoke. Yeah. The two become one in yoga and the yoking. This is obviously, as everybody’s birthright to be intimate with life, as it actually is, the reality. Some cultures would say, God, to be intimate with reality, the source of all.
Wow.
That is yoga. That yoga was there in the pre, for thousands of years now. That’s what we’re going to talk about.
Yeah. Let’s do this.
That’s what we’re going to bring forth for people.
So, Mark, I think people can go download these courses that you have on your website. Can you give me your website?
Yeah. Heart of Yoga. So it’s heartofyoga.com.
It’s amazing.
There’s this Submersion Into a Heart of Yoga week. It’s by donation only. I’m very happy with this because people all around the world who are in very difficult situations and people from poor countries who previously didn’t get a yoga education. They’re getting this and they’re doing it at their own time and their own pace in their own homes. The paradox of it is that yoga was something always for you personally to do and you’re in the sanctuary of your own home. You know, it was personal practice. So our present situation in the world has moved us to bring that into people’s lives in their actual living circumstances.
Absolutely.
So that’s what’s happening.
Can you give your website one more time and we’ll take a break.
Yes.
And then we’ll go right into the topic of truth and the power of the cosmos. We’re going to follow you into India. I can hardly wait. I’m so excited.
Jump on the bus. Jump on the bus. Off to India. Here we come.
I’m going. I’m coming.
You can enjoy that trip too on our website. It’s heartofyoga.com and our courses are there. We give them by donation.
That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Thank you, Mark, for all that you’re doing in the world. Okay. Everybody, we’re going to take a short break to talk about our topic about the truth. We’ll be right back. Then we’re taking the magical bus. I can’t wait. Okay.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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