Mark Whitwell in Mapua 2020: CANCELLED

Debbie Sumner and Jeanette Ida are excited to be hosting Mark Whitwell again this coming March in Beautiful Mapua.
Mark will be teaching 3 workshops over a Friday evening and a Saturday at Mapua Community Hall.

Mark is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of Krishnamacharya and is son TKV Desikachar, with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than 20 years. Mark's teachings clarify the profound passion and relevance of ancient wisdom to contemporary life.

Workshop 1- The Heart of Yoga: Basic Principles of Practice- 2.5 hours. Friday 13th from 6-8:30 pm.
Asana IS Hatha Yoga, the non-dual Tantra of Direct Intimacy with Life. Yoga has exploded in popularity around the world, which is wonderful, but sometimes the key principles can be lost or diluted. In the popularization of yoga in the West, it has often become a practice of attainment towards a future result, as if we are not already the power of the cosmos, arising as a pure intelligence just as we are. Join true elder of the global yoga world Mark Whitwell to learn or re-learn the simple principles of practice as taught by Krishnamacharya, the ‘teacher of the teachers,’ to make your asana efficient, powerful, pleasurable and safe. Approx 50/50 discussion and practice of how asana itself IS our full-body prayer to life, our direct intimacy with the power of life that arising as us and everything else.

Workshop 2- Bandha is Bhakti-3 hours. Saturday 14th March 9-12 pm
This is advanced yoga for perfect beginners, perfect participation in the power of life that you are for all bodies, any shape, size, age, or flexibility. Learn the principles of alignment as created by breath and bandha as the principle components of asana. Bandha is the intelligent co-operation of muscle groups in the polarity of 'strength receiving', Ha-tha Yoga, the giving and receiving of the heart (hridaya). Feel the movement of these polarities within your own body and how this can be used to guide asana (and life) from your body's own intrinsic intelligence rather than externalised knowledge *about* the body. This is how we feel better and feel better — two sentences. Through getting intelligent about the energy within our own body we learn how to actualise the big promises of yoga in terms of less reactivity and transformed relationships etc. The body remembers how to love. 50/50 discussion and practice.

Workshop 3- Asana, Pranayama, Meditation, Mantra and Life as a Seamless Process- 3 hours. Saturday 14th March 1-4 pm
The world is becoming clued up to the fact that there is so much more on offer in the great Yoga tradition than just physical shapes. However, if we're not careful we can just end up doing "spiritual gymnastics" as well as "physical gymnastics" — flinging our body and mind around in an effort to become something better at some future point. In the Yoga lineage Mark represents, tools of practice are there for us to feel that we are already something. Learn how to incorporate pranayama, mantra, bandha and stillness into your practice or teaching, without setting up unattainable goals, but simply as expressions of intimacy. Yoga is besotted connection with yourself and all, rather than contemplation towards a future result. In intimacy there is clarity of mind and all things are given. 50/50 discussion and practice.

Early bird before 14th February $190.00 plus event finder fees.
General admission (after early bird) $240.00 plus event finder fees.

Enquires please contact Debbie Sumner dbsumner@xtra.co.nz ph 0276890558