Meet one of the Yoga Pioneers from Canada

Marion (Mugs) McConnell

Who is she?

Mugs is the lovely nickname used for Marion McConnell, who is:

• an author
• a Yoga teacher
• a Yoga teachers’ teacher
• a Yoga representative at IYTA and Yoga Alliance at the national level (IYTA = International Yoga Teachers’ Association)
• so many other things… see the quick bio-data given later on this page
• a wonderful human being 🙂

She has been teaching Yoga for 40 years, can you imagine! But what took me by surprise was the splendid book she has authored — “Letters from the Yoga Masters…”. It is so detailed, authentic and interesting all at the same time that makes one wonder how much of an effort went into writing it. Since it includes information, artifacts and as the name suggests, letters from multiple sources, it was absolutely necessary to have both authenticity ingrained and permissions taken for each one of those. And it was done with complete obeyance. The compilation is so breath-taking that one cruises in wonderland all the while reading this book. What she may have not realized yet is the fact that by collecting and putting together this kind of information that is going to be all the more difficult to discover from other sources as time goes by, she has created a jewel to be treasured for ages.

Being from India, I feel especially grateful to her for saving all this important and nostalgic detail about such great masters as Raman Maharishi and Swami Sivananda etc. from going into obsolescence.

No, I’m not done yet, bear with me!

We all watch movies, or most of us do. But sometimes when I get to watch a short behind-the-scenes clip, I’m startled. What all it takes to create a small sequence in the movie is mostly beyond imagination. Similarly, for all the great masters that are no longer with us, we mostly get to know their public-facing side, their teachings, their viewpoints and their methods. But it gives a lot of insight if one gets a chance to peep into more of their personal side, what all it took for them to become what they became. That’s exactly where this book fits in.

The great masters, well, most of them, were connected with a lot many people during their times. And before the advent of video chat and phone-over-internet in the recent times, the most convenient form of communication was letters, of course. By going through these, we really understand these great men, quite truly we get to see the “making of the masters”.

I’m thankful to her for authoring this really beautiful piece of work — this will be savored by the generations. This is the website of the book — www.lettersfromtheyogamasters.com.

Besides this book and the teachers’ training program, she is involved in many other things related to Yoga — ask your friend Google.

If you are thinking of doing a Teachers’ Training course, I strongly recommend SOYA yoga. You’ll be thrilled!

More on her here — https://randompearls.com/yoga/yogaessence/mugs/?s=rpm.