Yoga for a Better World with Mark Whitwell and Jonathan Cassell
Release Date: 05/29/2025
Yoga for Every Body: An Interview with Mark
The Heart of Yoga
What if real Yoga begins with feeling more alive, not just more flexible? Ari is a Yoga teacher from Korea on a mission to investigate the depth of the Yoga tradition. She discovered a passion to bring the teachings of Krishnamacharya to Korea, along with her dear friend Ray and friends from the Gabbi community. This is a community of young people from Korea who are dropping out of corporate life and patterned conformism, in favour of finding their own path in life. This conversation gets to the heart of the matter — what is Yoga, really? How can it be integrated into the lives of...
info_outline
The Tables Turned: David Interviews Mark
The Heart of Yoga
In this episode, David turns the tables and interviews Mark. We dive into the roots of Mark’s life, growing up in New Zealand’s church and school systems, confronting injustice early on, and stumbling into my body through sport and the natural world. David grills Mark on the long journey that led him to the heart of Yoga with his teachers Krishnamacharya and Desikachar. This is a very personal conversation, going into the sincere “teachers” (aka friends)who helped Mark see through the spiritual industrial complex, and the simple, traditional yoga practices that smoothed out all...
info_outline
Stop Looking, Start Living with David Fardi
The Heart of Yoga
What if the life you’re seeking is already unfolding beneath your feet? David Fardi's path from spiritual confusion to grounded clarity is a powerful reminder that real Yoga begins when we stop chasing and start participating in what is. A Yoga teacher and founder of the men’s fashion brand Le Nirvana, David shares how he moved through disillusionment in Europe and neo-tantric circles to find a deeply embodied practice in Bali. His story touches on healing generational wounds, living in rhythm with nature, and discovering how simple breath and movement can reshape a life. David now teaches...
info_outline
Yoga Sutras Talk Recorded at Bali Teacher Untraining
The Heart of Yoga
What does it mean to begin Yoga now—right here, in your breath and body, with your life exactly as it is? This talk, recorded during our teacher untraining in Bali, is a direct experience of the first four Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Together, we chanted, laughed, and explored what it means to practice Yoga in a way that’s grounded, personal, and alive. These Sutras are a living guide, not a doctrine. They point us to something we already are. Your life, your interests, your body in its natural context—this is where Yoga begins. Key Takeaways The Sutras Come Alive in Relationship – Their...
info_outline
Why Do We Gather in Bali?
The Heart of Yoga
What makes us leave home and come together in person to share Yoga? In this episode, Mark and Rosalind reflect on hosting Yoga gatherings in Bali. They speak about the deeper meaning of these meetings, the beauty of Balinese blessing culture, and what it really means to offer something useful in a spiritual tourist economy. Can travel be justified as Bali groans under the weight of tourism and the expansion of the concrete jungle? What are we doing here, and what are the potential They discuss how seeking makes us vulnerable to exploitation, the nature of real practice, and the...
info_outline
Walt Whitman was a Yogi | Dylan Giles
The Heart of Yoga
Imagine words so sincere, that the author appears as a close friend, speaking directly through time to the deepest part of who we are? This week, Dylan Giles joins Rosalind to share how reading Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” in a time of personal drift opened a direct experience of connection. Dylan describes nights spent under the Californian moon, feeling Whitman’s words as a living presence, breaking him free of rigid traditions. In this episode I find out from Dylan about Whitman as mystic, and we use him to understand yogic ideas such as shaktipat, ishta, and guru...
info_outline
Healing from the Need to Heal: Ayurveda, Orthorexia & Yoga with Konstanze Weiser
The Heart of Yoga
What happens when healing becomes another form of harm? When the search for purity, wellness, and relief becomes a maze of restriction, shame, and exhaustion? In this quietly radical conversation, Konstanze Weiser joins us to speak not as an expert, but as someone who lived it from childhood illness to orthorexia, Panchakarma to spiritual burnout. We explore the parts of wellness culture we don’t often talk about: the obsession with food, the spiritualization of suffering, the silent shame around digestion and embodiment. Konstanze shares what it took to finally stop outsourcing authority,...
info_outline
Kali and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Heart of Yoga
What if our anger is sacred? What if the rage we feel in our bodies, in our culture, in our Earth, is not something to suppress, but something to honor? This week, Mariana Garcia Flores and I sit again in the Garden of the Moon to invoke the presence of Kali, the fierce face of the Divine Feminine, and the part of us that says no more. We speak into the places where softness meets strength, where grief becomes action, where Yoga becomes the healing of the rift between Shakti and Shiva, within us and in the world. This conversation is not sanitized. It’s raw, truthful, necessary. Kali is not...
info_outline
Shakti is Not a Concept - Rosalind Atkinson & Mariana Garcia Flores
The Heart of Yoga
What if everything you were taught to fear is actually sacred? In this intimate, resonant conversation, I sit down with Mariana, a dear friend and fellow teacher whose life story continues to unfold in powerful ways. Raised in a strict Catholic school environment in Mexico, Mariana shares how years of religious repression shaped her understanding of sexuality, embodiment, and spirituality and how the practices of Yoga, meditation, and humanistic psychotherapy helped her unravel those beliefs and come home to her own sacred aliveness. This episode is not a theoretical conversation. It is an...
info_outline
Alive as Life: An Interview with Mariana Garcia Flores
The Heart of Yoga
What if you are already everything you're looking for? What if the power of the cosmos is not out there, but pulsing through your breath, your body, your life right now? In this conversation, I welcome Mariana Garcia Flores, a radiant presence from Mexico City, and a Woman of the Americas in her full power. Mariana shares her story of transformation from counselor and seeker to embodied yogini and teacher. She speaks of the moment the search ended, when she realized: I am that. Not as an idea, but as a lived, undeniable reality. It is the story of Yoga as life itself, not a technique, not a...
info_outlineWhat if true activism doesn’t begin with protest signs or policy change, but with the way we breathe?
In this episode, I sit down with Jonathan Cassell in the lush Fijian islands to explore the profound intersections between Yoga, ecology, and the urgent need for human change. We speak about our shared grief for a world in ecological crisis and ask: how can we act from love, not just outrage?
Yoga for a Better World isn’t a lofty ideal, it’s a daily, grounded intimacy with life. We explore the emotional cost of caring deeply, why burnout is so common among changemakers, and how a consistent practice can nourish resilience, compassion, and courage. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world, this conversation is for you.
Subjects Explored
-
The emotional weight of ecological collapse and climate activism
-
Why true activism begins with caring for your own body
-
Eco-grief, burnout, and the need for deep rest
-
How Yoga creates the energy for meaningful action
-
Moving from overwhelm to embodied intimacy with life
-
The illusion of separation and the urgency of reconnection
Key Phrases or Quotes
-
"If you're not grieving, you're not paying attention."
-
"Yoga is intimacy with what life actually is."
-
"Depressed means deep rest—we need to honor what our biology is telling us."
-
"You can't repair the ecosystem without repairing the wild of Mother Nature here—your own body."
-
"The purpose of Yoga isn't to escape fear or grief—it’s to act from them with clarity and care."
Key Takeaways
Rooted Activism – Real change begins with embodiment, not burnout.
The Wisdom of Grief – Pain is not a flaw, but a biological function that signals connection.
Eco-Grief is Real – Honoring our emotions is part of collective healing.
Yoga is the Ground – A daily practice nourishes the clarity and energy needed for action.
You Are the Ecosystem – Caring for the planet begins by caring for the body.
From Despair to Movement – Yoga helps transmute grief into grounded, life-sustaining action.
Resources Mentioned
The Heart of Yoga course: https://www.heartofyoga.com
Support the Heart of Yoga Foundation: https://www.heartofyoga.com/foundation
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Opening in Fiji and naming the ecological crisis
[00:01:00] Why the course name changed from "Yoga for Activists" to "Yoga for a Better World"
[00:02:00] Activism as intimacy with life and caring for the body
[00:03:00] The risk of burnout among changemakers
[00:05:00] Honoring legitimate emotional responses: anger, grief, pain
[00:07:00] The necessity of inner repair for ecosystem repair
[00:09:00] Depression as deep rest and a call to stillness
[00:11:00] The myth of "overcoming" grief; honoring emotions as biology
[00:22:00] Reframing civilization and reconnecting to the body as sacred
[00:30:00] The power of receptivity and nurturing in embodied activism
[00:33:00] Course insights: daily Yoga as a way to care for life
[00:36:00] The chaos of culture and the need for a new attractor
[00:37:00] Yoga as the movement of life: a shift from thought to participation
[00:40:00] A non-dramatic, non-obsessive Yoga that supports sustainable action
You are the beauty. You are the intelligence. You are already in perfect harmony with life. You don’t need to seek it. You need only participate in it.
Learn more and access the course at https://www.heartofyoga.com. Support the Heart of Yoga Foundation. This podcast is sustained by your donations.