Yoga Quotes

Without education, confidence does not come.

~ B.k.s. Iyengar

Yoga is just gymnastics for uncoordinated people.

~ Claire Dederer

Yoga practices shift our identity away from the ego-personality and its struggles so that we can begin to reconnect with the essential nature of our being, which is bliss.

~ Sharon Gannon

We create the world we live in. If we want to change what we don't like in the world, we must start by changing what we don't like about ourselves.

~ Sharon Gannon

Matter is a medium of communication between minds, and everything that exists in the mind can also exist in the body. Furthermore, the body—being the expression of a mental state is developed as a manifestation of the mind.

~ Ashish Dalela

Many of us attend a few yoga classes and find that we like the glimpse of another way of life that yoga offers. We are delighted by the way we feel after class and we are pleasantly surprised as certain behaviors start to fall away. Perhaps we no longer need coffee in the morning; or staying out late at night becomes less attractive; or we find ourselves calmer and more compassionate. Suddenly we're convinced that we've hit upon a painless way to solve all our problems. Sadly, this is not the case. Practice is not a substitute for the difficult work of renunciation. The postures and breath work that you do in a typical yoga class will change your life. These practices—asana and pranayama—suffuse us with the energy we need to take on the hard choices and to endure the inevitable highs and lows. What yoga practice will not do, however, is take the place of the hard lessons each of us has to learn in order to mature spiritually.

~ Rolf Gates Katrina Kenison

Through the deeply theraputic practice of asana, we begin to purify our karmas, thereby healing our past relationships with others and reestablishing a steady and joyful connection with the Earth, which means all beings.

~ Sharon Gannon

Things that we do every day make up who we are and the results we have in our life. Bank accounts collect from constant deposits and good health is achieved or maintained from what we put into our bodies daily.

~ Malti Bhojwani

Is there cure of love? I Think not, but David you can tame it, I mean Yoga.Says Bhutta

~ M.k. Bhutta

care for your body as you care for your home, and care for your home as you care for your body.

~ Jennifer Carter Avgerinos

…When you’re in the darkness, know that the light will come. We are light and dark, sun and moon, male and female, yin and yang; life is composed of opposites, in a continuing cycle of change…. When you are in the light, don’t step back into the darkness. Live in that light, and breathe it in fully. I’ve spent so much of my life going over and over the sadness and fear of the past. But we don’t need to go there when we’re not there. When we are in the light, be here, now.

~ Kathryn E. Livingston

It’s not just about recognizing how ‘precious’ every moment is, or about ‘living for today.’ It’s about finding the sacred center of now, and living there, moment to moment, always.

~ Kathryn E. Livingston

Vairâgya or renunciation is the turning point in all the various Yogas. The Karmi (worker) renounces the fruits of his work. The Bhakta (devotee) renounces all little loves for the almighty and omnipresent love. The Yogi renounces his experiences, because his philosophy is that the whole Nature, although it is for the experience of the soul, at last brings him to know that he is not in Nature, but eternally separate from Nature. The Jnâni (philosopher) renounces everything, because his philosophy is that Nature never existed, neither in the past, nor present, nor will It in the future.

~ Swami Vivekananda

I just know about sweat and frustration. And that what I once thought was impossible somehow doesn't always stay that way permanently. One day it's suddenly easy and accessible, and mostly because I've stopped struggling against it. I've just accepted where I am, keep showing up, and then the change just happens.

~ Edward Vilga

Controlling the position of one's body and keeping a straight back are not contemplation, but can in fact become an obstacle to contemplation. ...when leaving the body 'uncontrolled' is spoken of, what is meant is simply allowing the body to remain in an authentic, uncorrected condition, in which it is not necessary to modify or improve anything. This is because, since all our attempts at correcting the body come from the reasoning mind, they are all false and artificial.

~ Namkhai Norbu

Maybe it’s something to do with the movements: the Cat and then the Cow, the twist to the left and then to the right, the reaching up, and then bending to the ground, the constant training of the body to move one way, and then to move in the opposite way. Hatha: sun, moon opposites, dark and light, yin and yang. This must be key in the way yoga shapes the mind and heart, in the way it helps one to understand that every movement has a counter movement, that every action has an opposing action, that the happy parts of life will be met by the sad, and the sad, in turn will be met by the happy.

~ Kathryn E. Livingston

Don't wait for life to happen, life is happening now!

~ Kathryn E. Livingston

The mystic's idea of deliberately stupefying and stultifying himself is an abomination unto the Lord. This, by the way, does not conflict with the rules of Yoga. That kind of suppression is comparable to the restrictions in athletic training, or diet in sickness.

~ Aleister Crowley

To believe all you have to do is look at the sky.

~ Kathryn E. Livingston

Without yoga, my breast cancer experience would have been much more difficult. The trust, courage and strength one develops through the practice of yoga will set anyone up to face life's most challenging experiences. I've heard folks say «Oh, I don't do yoga.» Give yoga a chance, and you will find that it's so much more than pretzel poses. Yoga is about finding your own balance in our crazy, tempestuous times. It's about standing tall with confidence even when the winds of your world are swirling around you.

~ Kathryn E. Livingston

The past does not exist unless you carry the remains of it with you.

~ Alanna Zabel

All phenomena of which we are aware take place in our own minds, and therefore the only thing we have to look at is the mind; which is a more constant quantity over all the species of humanity than is generally supposed.

~ Aleister Crowley

She had streaked blonde hair, long and straight, parted in the middle framing high cheek bones, an aquiline nose and beautiful deep blue eyes. She was young, around 30, tall and lithe with a good body, athletic, not skinny. She wore a sleeveless black dress that exposed her toned arms and shoulders, indicating regular workouts or yoga. There was a hint of vein running the length of her lean muscle. This girl stood out like an arabian in a corral full of draft horses.

~ Nick Hahn

By becoming clearly contemplative in a matter of weeks, my prayer had been given a particular and novel cast; and this was matched by the distinctness in the reprecussions my daily sessions of exercises were having on my everyday life, as well as on the many different occupations which a monk is vowed to carry out. The genuine sense of euphoria that followed the exercises persisted in me and transfigured my day. During the early months I had to face up to the sort of difficulties which put one's nerves to the test, and which would certainly have put me on my back before. As it was, everything went off so smoothly and I took it all so well that I trained everyone under my charge to develop the attitude of 'accepting rather than undergoing.

~ Jean Déchanet

Although yoga is supposedly noncompetitive, I can’t help that my Alpha nature requires that I go for the hardest variation of every pose, always pushing my limits as far as possible.

~ Edward Vilga

[Let] go of your attachments: your attachment to being right, to having total control, or to living forever. This process of letting go is integral to the process of becoming whole.

~ Judith Hanson Lasater

Yoga talks about cat-pose, dog-pose, camel-pose, monkey-pose, bird-pose etc. Why there are so many animal poses? Animals release their emotions and tensions by movements based on their body sensations. But our amygdala in the brain is carrying the “fight or flight response”; it has forgotten the art of releasing the tensions. As human beings, when we are aware about the sensations, we can release that by aware, slow movements. If you do not give movements to the body parts, energy will be stuck and blood circulation will be disturbed. Gradually, that creates chronic physical and mental health problems.

~ Amit Ray

In the holy solipsism of the youngNow I can't walk thru a citystreet w/out eying eachsingle pedestrian. I feelthier vibe thru myskin, the hair on my neck--- it rises.

~ Jim Morrison

It's very simple. Keep your body as clean as possible, your mind as clear as possible. That's all you need. And do it in anyway you can, in your own way. It doesn't matter. That's why I say 'peaceful body, peaceful mind'. And then you'll be useful. You don't have to become a useful person. You will be useful.

~ Swami Satchidananda

....and on occasion I like to write in pencil, because I need to know that I can erase the words, even if I never do.

~ Bruce Black

The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt trips and mysticized by yoga.

~ Ross Douthat

Be the same still mountain self and mountain peace no matter what the external conditions.

~ George Minot

In the end, what I love most about contemporary yoga is its ability tosynthesize the everyday with the extraordinary, the practical with thevisionary, the mundane with the sacred. I love that yoga can work torelease my tense muscles, negative emotions, and psychic detritus at thesame time. That it can connect me to my body in ways that create newneural pathways in my brain. That it offers a practical tool for copingwith everyday stress, as well as an intuitive opening to the hidden magicof everyday life.

~ Carol Horton

I understood that the attachment to myself and my image ... was actually taking me away from my self, away from this wonderful opportunity to just sit, just breathe, just feel the warm animal of my body, just feel the soft, sultry heat of June. The density of my attachment was making it impossible for me to have a truly satisfying experience of life in my body just as it was in the moment. When under the sway of this obsession, my mind's attention was always in the fantasized future, or the idealized or devalued past - never present to the reality of the moment.

~ Stephen Cope

Many of us ordinary folk have tasted these moments of union - on the ladder, in the pond, in the jungle, on the hospital bed. In the yogic view, it is in these moments that we know who we really are. We rest in our true nature and know beyond a doubt that everything is OK, and not just OK, but unutterably well. We know that there is nothing to accept and nothing to reject. Life just is as it is.

~ Stephen Cope

It is only when the correct practice is followed for a long time, without interruptions and with a quality of positive attitude and eagerness, that it can succeed.

~ Patañjali

In the morning, I practice 15 minutes of yoga.

~ Vivienne Westwood

My mom is a yoga instructor: 100% black with dreadlocks.

~ Meghan Markle

I'm really into fitness, so my hobbies are yoga, Pilates, and working out.

~ Charlotte Mckinney

Yoga's an amazing release.

~ Monica Keena