#23 - Keen on Yoga Podcast with Mark Robberds

Welcome to the  Keen on Yoga Podcast with Mark Robberds. Mark went to his first Yoga class in 1997 (it was a mix of Ashtanga and Iyengar) and was hooked from the first day. In 1998 he started to learn Iyengar Yoga from Nicky Knoff (at the time one of Australia’s most distinguished Iyengar teachers)and James Bryant, and this is where he committed to living the Yoga way of life. Later that year he started Mysore style classes with Eileen Hall and Peter Sanson in Sydney. In 1999 he travelled in north India for two months before going to Mysore to learn from Pattabhi Jois for three months. As fate would have it later that year he ended up back in Sydney and started his teaching apprenticeship with Mathew Sweeney, and then Eileen Hall until 2005. During that time he took courses in anatomy and physiology, practiced extensively with Simon Borg-Olivier. He made yearly trips to Mysore, and learned from other teachers like Shandor Remete and Dena Kingsberg. At the time he was teaching the biggest Mysore program in Australia, as well as beginners courses, corporate classes, and privates. In 2005 I turned down an offer to manage the Yoga studio and decided that in order to truly understand Yoga and to reach my full potential in life I needed more life experiences. I sold all my possessions and took to the road, first to Vipassana in Thailand and then to practice with Rolf Naujokat. Over the next eight years, he taught Mysore programs in Singapore, NYC, Sydney, and Tokyo, before moving on to teach retreats and workshops all over the world. He continued to make annual trips to Mysore to study with R.Sharath and was Certified by him in 2010. He was also doing yearly three-week silent retreats with his teacher, Hatha Yogi, Clive Sheridan in India. In 2013 he attended Richard Freeman’s teacher training in Boulder, Colorado. In that year he decided that it was time to focus more on teaching workshops so that he could reach and help more people and spent the next four years traveling extensively while continuing with the yearly trips to Mysore to practice and also to study Yoga philosophy with Prof. Nagaraj Rao. In 2015 he began to explore other movement practices – first gymnastics and handstands as a student of Ido Portal. In 2016 he began learning hand-balancing from Yuval Ayalon and Miguel Santana. He now integrates the movement approach into his teaching. In 2017, Mark and his wife taught their first one-month immersion in Bali and in 2018 made Bali home. Currently, he and his wife Deepika are in her native India due to the Covid-19 situation.  We hope you enjoy the Keen on Yoga Podcast with Mark, you can see more details on his website and follow him on Instagram.