Less linear. Less push/pull. More dynamic, fluxive, loopy and cascading and impossible to jam into a bland, tidy package. Here's a potent little Devotional Intensive to remind of that exact lesson regarding time, life and of course, Consciousness itself, all centering on a Warrior II-based mandala sequence to delight the soul and remind you that life is never just forwards/backwards, because how boring would that be? Get to it.

Spotify playlist for Devotion Intensive V: Spinning Warrior

Yoga is not interested in your hardcore striving. Yoga is in mad love with your breath, your intention, your complete and unbridled devotion to the moment you are in, no matter what it might contain or how uncomfortable, or clumsy, or baffled you might be. Here's a 30-minute Vinyasa ignition that invites exactly that understanding. Work hard to find stillness and grace, not aggro aggression. You're gonna love it.

Spotify playlist for Deep 30 Vol. III

We are, if nothing else, an overly hunched culture. This short but energetically delicious Intensive focuses on a handful of potent camel pose variations (among others) to really open the chest, invigorate the upper spine and bring space to the heart and head, so real devotional energy can swirl and inspire. Move slowly. Don't get dizzy. Stop analyzing everything. You'll be fine.


Spotify playlist for Devotion Intensive IV: Smoking Camels

It's not all heat and grunt and push. Sometimes you gotta slow it down a little, get down to the floor and just be a little more patient. This short, potent practice really admires your hamstrings, appreciates your lower back, and of course, encourages lots more of your devotional attention. Can you handle it? You can totally handle it.

Spotify playlist for Devotion Intensive III: Do It On the Floor

Look, going "deep" has nothing to do with force, push, cranking it out and getting it done. It has everything to do with diving through various layers of psycho-emotional crap so you can be fully present with what you're doing, even if (especially if?) it's challenging or normally makes you whimper and whine.

Here's a brief but vivid, 30-minute full-body plunge into exactly what that might mean. Is it enough? Hell, no. But it's a most excellent taste.

Spotify playlist for Deep Vol 1I

This is a FREE vigorous, deeply felt 30-minute full-body swirl to bring you NOT into a state of more agitation and let's-attack-the-day, but rather a potent form of... stillness. What? You read that right.

Look, you can't go "deep" through mere force and push and hurry up already. That's just exhausting. You go deep through intention, watching your breath, and practicing keeping your attention from scattering about like a manic chihuahua, especially when things get challenging. It's the only way.

Spotify playlist for Deep Vol 1

Yoga will not make you a better person. Not happier or kinder or more compassionate, no matter how much you do it. This is a silly (Western) myth, disproven daily by "expert" yogis with gorgeous bodies and immaculate practices who are still, somehow, total jerks.

Yoga's prime function, as I've come to understand it, is to create an environment, a more fertile soil in which transformation can, potentially, occur, should you be willing to do the REAL yogic work of self inquiry and ego taming.

Translation: After this gorgeously attuned, 60-minute Absolution Flow practice, full of swirls and warriors and spinal whoops, you will NOT automatically become a nicer human. But you *might* be more ready, just a little, to dispel with some egoic bullshit and show up more fully in the moments of your life. And isn't that even better?

Spotify playlist for Mindful Movement 2

Arms aren't just for lugging heavy loads, hanging on for dear life, for shoving away that which doesn't please you. This short but potent Intensive also brings attention to how you may, or may not, wish to truly EMBRACE your life's moments, and with what sort of devotional intention. What, you think it's all just a workout? How boring. Let's get to it.

Spotify playlist for Devotion Intensive II: Arms to Hold

You think core is just about strong muscles and ripped abs? You're missing most of the good stuff. This short but potent practice focuses on abdominal, oblique and pelvic floor areas to enliven physical AND devotional aspects of your innate stability, to enhance both posture AND innate calm, so the world can't so easily throw you around like a doll in a hurricane. Let's get to it.

Spotify playlist for Devotion Intensive I: Core of Now

Have you heard? Fatalism is in. Dour prognostications of the downfall of, well, pretty much everything you love and care about – these are swarming the culture like a million locusts of despair.

How do we dispel all this addictive nihilism? Yoga suggests: Shift your gaze. That is to say, to be of real service to yourself and the world, it’s imperative to aim your attention toward things sacred, beautiful, nourishing, healing. Wallowing and spinning out into impossible scenarios that never really come to pass, serves no one. Reconnecting to Self and quieting the storm of psycho-emotional melodrama so as to be fully available to the moment as it arises, serves everyone.

Here’s a deep, grounding to do just that: tonify the body, bring attention in to the heart, untie those karmic knots of cruel injustice and bleak headline, so they can transmute back into useful action. What else you gonna do, wallow?

Spotify playlist for Yoga Alchemy: The Doomed

It's an all-too-common western cultural affliction: You think you're a certain "type" of person (AKA morning person, Type A, a hot mess, lazy, manic, chronically late, super serious, shy, emotional, gimme my morning coffee or else, etc). You think that definition is, in some way, "true," because everyone tells you it is, and you seek to have it reinforced all the time. Is it healthy? Helpful? Dynamic and open? Who cares? It's *familiar.* It's safe. You can rely on it. Which is why anyone who dares mess with your desperately clung-to list of defining characteristics better watch out.

Oh, yoga is going to mess with it, all right. Here's a vigorous, well-breathed, hip-intensive practice designed to help you dissolve whatever psycho-emotional, culturally-imposed nonsense you've come to believe about yourself (AKA maya, illusion, socially constructed BS) and then replace it with... well, nothing at all. No hard, fixed identity, no stuck labels, no staid cultural conditioning whatsoever - just spacious, flowing possibility, one breath at a time.

Easy, right? Not even close. But so very refreshing.

Spotify playlist for Yoga Alchemy: Coffee, or Else

The wind-down. The unspooling. The end-of-day, devotional acknowledgement, a final cleanse and release before the dive into the dream-state. Definitely not a collapse, a slump away, an exhausted numbing out to rid yourself of another tepid turn at the grindstone. What are you, a wretched machine? You are, most certainly, not.

How do you wrap up another day? With what sort of ritual, breath, offering? Here’s a suggestion: It’s 40 minutes of full-body gratitude, lots of grounding poses, low lunges, supported bridges and deep, slow stretches to tame the relentless noise of the day and bring the attention inward. It’s nothing crazily vigorous, but it’s also not exactly for the meek or lazy, either. Get a strap and a block. Prepare a calming space. Don’t hurry. Have a glass of wine or a hot bath (or both) ready, for afterward. Turn off your devices. Because obviously.

Spotify playlist for Yoga Ritual: Evening Practice

Just two? Yes, just two. Just the essentials, really.

Just the breath, and your intention. Pranayama, and sankalpa. With these, miracles happen. With these, you can transform worlds.

It begins with nadi shodhana (alternate nostril breathing – literally “channel purification”) to clear and tonify the primary left, right and center (ida, pingala, shoshumna) energy pathways – essential to moving pranic dynamism more freely through the body. There is core work to awaken heat and enhance stability. There is increased awareness of the depth and pacing of the breath, to calibrate effort and control heat, without exhaustion or slumping out. Throughout it all, a continuous refreshing of the intention set at the beginning of the practice, to prevent the mind/emotions from wandering hither and yon.

Listen. If nothing else, hone and revere these two potent yogic tools. After all, you can practice juicy asana all day, you can meditate and chant and drink gallons of organic grass-fed tea made from the laughter of baby dolphins, but without these two vital guides, none of it makes much sense.

Spotify playlist for Yoga Alchemy: The Two Tools

Part one of my special, five-part Absolution Intensive series of vigorous, ultra-focused 20-minute challenges: Here we zero in on some feisty, aerobic-flavored leaps and bounds, how to jump forward or back with control and balance, without banging the toes, slamming the floor or crunching the shoulders. Enhanced with dolphins and planks, deep lunges and core twists to bring increased awareness not merely to how you fly, but perhaps more importantly, how you *land*.

Spotify playlist for Absolution Intensive I: Jump to It

Part two of my special, five-part Absolution Intensive series of vigorous, ultra-focused 20-minute challenges, this one centered around a not-at-all-easy Garudasana sequence to develop true balance and potent focus even when you’re all wrapped up and entwined by life. Flavored with some deep lizards and forward folds to bring it all back in.

Spotify playlist for Absolution Intensive II: You're Grounded

Part three of my special, five-part Absolution Intensive series of vigorous, ultra-focused 20-minute challenges, and it’s all right there in the title: A looping sequence that moves very dynamically (read: a continuous mandala) though a flipped dog, three primary warrior poses, and one deeply humble one, all repeated three times, or perhaps 108 (you know, time depending). You’ve got a 20-minute burst of nectar to ignite your world just right.

Spotify playlist for Absolution Intensive III: All the Warriors

Part four of my special, five-part Absolution Intensive series of vigorous, ultra-focused 20-minute challenges; the centerpiece of this one is a Warrior III/crescent lunge/knee dip combination that brings heat, strength and potent symmetry to the legs and hips, so as to walk the world neither floating numbly on top of it, nor stomping carelessly all over it.

If you’re not feeling more steady in your foundation and less lopsided in your gait/posture/attention when this one’s over, something’s wrong. Refresh your intention, and try it again. And again. And again. Every day. Forever. Call me after that, let me know how it went.

Spotify playlist for Absolution Intensive IV: A Leg to Stand On

Volume five of my special, five-part Absolution Intensive series of vigorous, ultra-focused 20-minute challenges, and this one’s a divinely devious mix of leg/hip swings, flipped downward dogs and a unique chaturanga variation that delights your IT band and your shoulders alike. Not for the faint of resolve, and not for beginners. You’ll be fine. I’m almost positive.

Spotify playlist for Absolution Intensive V: Dip & Swing

Slower. No, I mean *slower*. More potent, more deliberate, less fire and push and heat, more supple and enquiring and cool.

Can you do it? Can you change it up, upend your normal Vinyasa rhythm and *not* speed through a bunch of badass postures so as to build a good sweat, and instead move with a more intuitive, compulsive flavor of devotion? Of course you can. Is it worth it? Oh, you have no idea.

Make no mistake: This is still a deeply challenging, physically engrossing practice. Lunar Namaskar is a low, swirling, flowy, fertile dedication to Chandra, the lunar goddess (later depicted as a male god, in the mythology), AKA the Unknown and the Unknowable, the subconscious mind, the emotions, intuition, mystical, higher perception and imagination.

But never mind that now; just allow yourself to dive in deep. Did I mention slow? And the triple yoni/full-body mudra to start it all off? Ah, the moon. You’re soaking in it.

(Special shout-out to the always-luminous Shiva Rea, whose ‘moon salutation’ sequence from many years ago inspired a portion of this sequence).

Spotify playlist for Chandra (Lunar)Devotion Flow

You have patterns. Lots of them. You have conditioned beliefs, cultural programming, mental and emotional constructs, things you truly believe you like and do not like, want and do not want, fear and doubt and OMGWTF. We ALL do. Question is, are they working for you? Are all those patterns, tribal affiliations, certainties and opinions helpful and nourishing, or depleting and numbing? To you AND to those around you? Are they even really yours? How do you know?

This class invites the idea, the practice of *re-patterning.* Which is to say: Observing your various samskaras (habituated behaviors and programmed reactions) and perhaps, through practice, clearing and dissolving them, and then replacing them with the unexpected, the fluxive, the healthy and the divine. Read: swooping, looping, trance-like body movements to get you to stop knowing what you think you know. Which you actually don’t. Isn’t that marvelous?

Spotify playlist for The Body Mandala: Level I

Little-known fact: Backbends are often just as much, if not more, about opening the front body – the chest, the heart, the thighs, the belly – as they are about getting the spine to give up its deep, psycho-emotional traumas and delights.

Here’s a relatively advanced (read: do be careful, OK?), backbend-heavy practice designed, on the physical level, to explore multiple modes and intensities of spinal flexion: deep folds, multiple flavors of backbend, a strappy Natarajasana, challenges to both your focus and balance. But on the other, less obvious levels? Far more interesting possibilities for deep release, expansion.

How intense do you want it? How deep are you willing to go? How much release can you truly handle, without harming yourself and without obeying your nagging ego’s urges to either push harder or collapse and give up? Shall we find out?

Spotify playlist for Absolution Flow: Wheel of Fire

Do you know Surya? Do you know what Surya Namaskar, an exceedingly common “warm-up” Vinyasa sequence practiced in roughly 108 million yoga studios across the land, is actually all about? Here’s the thing: Most yoginis don’t.

Not to worry; here’s a brief, powerful, thoroughly light-soaked overview, and vigorous morning (pre-dawn, ideally) ritual practice, dedicated to the “true” meaning of Surya and his famous “sun salutation,” which might not be quite what you think it is. Just an exercise? A classic warm-up? Sort of. But oh, also so much more. Also a ritual, a prayer, an offering of devotion to life itself, like you cannot believe. Or can you? Of course you can.

Spotify playlist for Surya Devotion Flow

It can be a dangerous mindset we all fall into at some point: We start believing that life really IS what we often say it is: Same ol’ same ol’, back to the grind, just another slog, hoping to survive. In other words, life is, we numbly come to think, just a burden to be endured. Joy is an exception, fleeting and unreliable.

Nonsense. Here’s a vigorous wake-up practice designed specifically to remind you that you get to CHOOSE your alignment, your particular “vibe” in the world, every single day, and watch as the world orients itself around THAT (not the other way around). Foundational core work, hip releases, swirls and loops and warriors, all meant to dissolve nonsense conditioning and fatalistic “survivalist” thinking, and replace them with the vigorous and the alive.

Will doing this class every day make you a happier, nicer person, beloved by all? Of course not. But maybe, just maybe, a little less whiny.

Spotify playlist for Morning Badass Flow II: Just Another Day

What’s your favorite addiction? If you’re a good American, chances are, it’s to fragmentation, to some bogus idea of multitasking (a toxic myth, btw), to nonstop busyness, to the point that we believe being crazily harried all the time – to being a sloppy “hot mess” – is some sort of virtue, and that something is wrong with us if we’re not living in a manic state of barely controlled chaos, all the time.

This is, of course, madness. Fun to say, dumb to believe.

Here’s a vigorous, fiery sequence designed to help you unify, to calm the hell down, and to focus on the single, perfect, un-fragmented moment you are in, right now. Every pose offers a chance to focus on what you are doing – *and nothing else.* To, quite literally, identify your body, your attention, and your breath in the room, on your mat, in the space and moment where you are. No multitasking, not “crazy busy,” not drunk on turmoil, not splaying out all over the place. Just present, charged, awake to the now. Deal?

Spotify playlist for Yoga Alchemy: The Hot Mess

Behold this giddy, delightful and VERY shoulder/arm/chest intensive practice, core stable and alignment precise. That’s right! It’s all manner of chaturangas, double dips, planks and half-handstands and pincha mayurasanas, moves both familiar and, perhaps, not so much. Prediction: You will love it, even when you hate it.

And why? For the sake of real stability, of course. For the sake of true strength – not just bulk muscle or brute force, but functional, useful upper-body energy that can reach and rotate, lift and hold with dexterity and ease, and not get hurt.

Be careful with this one. Do what you can. Do not overdo it. Ignore your ego. Build up to it. Try a few, then try again. Come back to what didn’t seem remotely possible, and try it again. And then again.

Reminder: Upper body strength is NOT about the ability to hoist heavy things or grunt through a pile of dumb pushups. It’s about a particularly confident, poised flavor of grace and physical integrity. It’s for holding up the weight of the world, and then dancing.


Mark recommends using the following playlist for this class: Spotify playlist for Absolution Flow: A Call To Arms

Yogis! Yoginis! Be forewarned: There exists a persistent, entirely obnoxious myth in the yoga world – that of yoga as squishy, love-n'-light ball of feel-good smarm, the sole purpose of which is to fill the universe with pretty mala beads, overpriced yoga tights and adorable fluffy bunnies made out of 108 flavors of sighs.

This myth is, in the words of the ancient gurus, total bullshit.

Know this now: A truly aligned yoga practice avoids nothing. We do not ignore or hurriedly bypass all the difficult, dark, messy parts of human existence just to soak in “the good parts,” nor do we cling too hard to the blissful and pleasant, lest they, too, turn calcified and poisonous. We embrace the entire range of human experience and expression, bowing to ALL the names of the goddess (and lo, she has thousands).

This hour-long blast of challenge is designed to help you NOT race through difficult moments, or clutch too tightly to only the ones you like. The nature of consciousness, after all, is 'spanda': vibration, movement, pulse and flux, the eternal inhale and exhale, not getting stuck anywhere for too long. Hell, even the bunnies know that.

The practice of locating, if you will, the true center of your being, your essence nature, your divine Self.

You’ve heard these yogic buzzwords before? Doubtless you have. But what the hell do they mean?

We begin with some potent core work, moving into vigorous, decidedly physically demanding series designed specifically to draw your attention *away* from the unreliable, addictive noise of the mind and those ever-fickle emotions, toward the deep, eternal, always-on, always-there, incorruptible “place” in you, the sacred axis around which everything else – your wants, doubts, judgements, melodramas, issues, text messages, relationship dramas – orbits and swirls.

You know this place? Of course you do. It’s been with you your entire life. Locate this place, brighten it, work and dance and pray and practice and bless others from it, and watch the world transform.

Mark recommends using the following playlist for this class: Spotify playlist for Yoga Alchemy: The Axis

Yogic reminder: You’ll never see fluid opportunity (i.e.; luck) – and opportunity certainly won’t see you – if you’re dead-set on behaving, reacting, gripping your day-to-day reality in the same tired ways you always do.

Here’s a condensed, FREE 25-minute blast from my HTGL series, designed to help you consciously unravel yourself and any constricted rhythms, patterns, habits that block you from noticing luck’s surreptitious wink.

Translation: longer warrior holds, faster switches, slower breaths, changing rhythms, defying your pre-programming. What could be better? After all, luck wants you the way saliva wants chocolate. Be ready.

Mark recommends using the following playlist for this class: Spotify playlist for How to Get Lucky Vol. III: Get Luckier Still

Shiva and Shakti. Sita and Ram. Solar and lunar, masculine and feminine, light and dark, earth and sky, right and left, energy and spaciousness, chocolate and vanilla, salt n’ pepper.

It’s not about dualities or making rigid distinctions. It’s about intermixing and conjoining – rapturous, intertwined, the divine dance of opposites that aren’t really opposites, just thinking makes them so.

Here’s a relatively simple, but fiery and potent dedication flow that offers mad gratitude to both sacred aspects of the Self, as they merge and mingle and (ideally) become entirely indistinguishable in the sacred pranic engine of the heart.

You have a preference? Does one “side” still dominate you, your body, your ego? Can you really tell them apart? Dive into this sequence with enough dedication and devotion – and do it enough times – and watch your definitions blur and fall away. Hari OM!

Mark recommends using the following playlist for this class: Spotify playlist for Absolution Flow: Sun & Moon

Here’s a question: How do you respond to challenge? With what sort of intention, attention? Do you push, strain and drive, or breathe and allow? How do you roll with intensity and devout physical demands? Shall we find out?

Here’s your intensely felt, gleefully advanced 90-minute deep dive into the entirely of your body, your breath, your true yogic intention, as we work all parts, all rhythms, messing with expectation and, with any luck, centering your heart and calming your frenzied mind so you can get to back to the core, your true divine nature, where the real nectar resides.

Translation: Multiple flavors of warrior, deep lunges, hip and leg work, bows and dolphins, deep twists and wild things galore, all woven with powerful mandalas (spinning around this way and that) and fiery intention to burn off your resistance.

I mean, enough whining, already. Let’s get to it. You’ll be fine, I’m almost sure of it.

Mark recommends using the following playlist for this class: Spotify playlist for Absolution Flow: Deepen Your OM