"Before you've practiced, the theory is useless. After you've practiced, the theory is obvious."
 
— David Williams

"Yoga is really trying to liberate us from... shame about our bodies. To love your body is a very important thing — I think the health of your mind depends on your being able to love your body."

 

— Rodney Yee


Through the practices of yoga, we discover that concern for the happiness and well being of others, including animals, must be an essential part of our own quest for happiness and well being. The fork can be a powerful weapon of mass destruction or a tool to create peace on Earth.

— Sharon Gannon


When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.

— Hatha Yoga Pradipika


Yoga has a sly, clever way of short circuiting the mental patterns that cause anxiety.

— Baxter Bell


Yoga, an ancient but perfect science, deals with the evolution of humanity. This evolution includes all aspects of one's being, from bodily health to self realization. Yoga means union - the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day to day life and endows skill in the performance of one's actions.

— B.K.S. Iyengar


Yoga is the fountain of youth. You're only as young as your spine is flexible.

— Bob Harper


By embracing your mother wound as your yoga, you transform what has been a hindrance in your life into a teacher of the heart.

— Phillip Moffitt


The beauty is that people often come here for the stretch, and leave with a lot more.

— Liza Ciano


I was in yoga the other day. I was in full lotus position. My chakras were all aligned. My mind is cleared of all clatter and I'm looking out of my third eye and everything that I'm supposed to be doing. It's amazing what comes up, when you sit in that silence. Mama keeps whites bright like the sunlight, Mama's got the magic of Clorox 2.

— Ellen DeGeneres


Concentrating on poses clears the mind, while focusing on the breath helps the body shift out of fight or flight mode.

— Melanie Haiken


If I'm losing balance in a pose, I stretch higher and God reaches down to steady me. It works every time, and not just in yoga.

— T. Guillemets


For me, yoga is not just a workout - it's about working on yourself.

— Mary Glover


Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.

— Buddha quotes


Change is not something that we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they're meant to be.

— anon


In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice they are not.

— Yogi Berra


"The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this lifetime." 

— Sogyal Rinpoche


yoga postures
A photographer gets people to pose for him. A yoga instructor gets people to pose for themselves.

— T. Guillemets


The most important pieces of equipment you need for doing yoga are your body and your mind.

— Rodney Yee


The yoga mat is a good place to turn when talk therapy and antidepressants aren't enough.

— Amy Weintraub


Vogue and Self are putting out the message of yoginis as buff and perfect. If you start doing yoga for those reasons, fine. Most people get beyond that and see that it's much, much more.

— Patricia Walden


Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.

— B.K.S. Iyengar


Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy. Constant practice alone is the secret of success.

— Svatmarama


Yoga has a sly, clever way of short circuiting the mental patterns that cause anxiety.

— Baxter Bell


Mountain pose teaches us, literally, how to stand on our own two feet.... teaching us to root ourselves into the earth.... Our bodies become a connection between heaven and earth.

— Carol Krucoff


The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which is identified with what's been called the relaxation response. When you do yoga - the deep breathing, the stretching, the movements that release muscle tension, the relaxed focus on being present in your body - you initiate a process that turns the fight or flight system off and the relaxation response on. That has a dramatic effect on the body. The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases, blood pressure decreases. The body seizes this chance to turn on the healing mechanisms.

—  Richard Faulds


Basketball is an endurance sport, and you have to learn to control your breath; that's the essence of yoga, too. So, I consciously began using yoga techniques in my practice and playing. I think yoga helped reduce the number and severity of injuries I suffered. As preventative medicine, it's unequaled.

— Kareem Abdul Jabbar


This calm steadiness of the senses is called yoga. Then one should become watchful, becomes yoga comes and go.

— Katha Upanishad


The Self in you is the same as the Self Universal. Whatever powers are manifested throughout the world, those powers exist in germ, in latency, in you.... If you realize the unity of the Self amid the diversities of the Not-Self, then Yoga Will not seem an impossible thing to you.

— Annie Wood Besant


Yoga is a science, and not a vague dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole consciousness of man on every plane, in every world, and applies those rationally in a particular case. This rational application of the laws of unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the same principles that you see applied around you every day in other departments of science.

— Annie Wood Besant


In truth, it matters less what we do in practice than how we do it and why we do it. The same posture, the same sequence, the same meditation with a different intention takes on an entirely new meaning and will have entirely different outcomes.

—  Donna Farhi


Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

—  Rumi


Silence is not silent. Silence speaks. It speaks most eloquently. Silence is not still. Silence leads. It leads most perfectly.

— Sri Chinmoy


The perennial wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita can teach us how to transform our character, conduct and consciousness to meet the challenges of everyday life.

— Leonard Perlmutter


Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.

— Swedish Proverb


A lot of exercise is mindless; you can have music or the radio on and not be aware. But if you're aware in anything you do - and it doesn't have to be yoga - it changes you. Being present changes you.

— Mariel Hemingway


Enormous possibilities for health and creativity are held captive by your likes and dislikes. Inspecting your desires and attachments to food and making choices intuitively with discrimination will make your spiritual practice and every other relationship more rewarding.

— Leonard Perlmutter


Our raga/dveshas make us prisoners to the mental lenses through which we view the world. No matter what actually appears before us, our vision is always skewed, and as a result we suffer.

— Leonard Perlmutter


You may think that only you are a prisoner, but other people are also prisoners. You are in a small prison, but others are in the big prison outside. When will they be released? Think that you are a yogi and that you are pursuing your sadhana in this particular place and at this particular moment. Immediately you will experience great joy. If you change your understanding, you will be free in a minute.

— Baba Muktananda


Yoga Science teaches us to 'include all and exclude none.' If the outer guru, in the form of a person or experience, reflects the Truth and light of the inner guru, the advice is to be heeded and served in thought, word and deed. If a suggestion from the outer guru is not in harmony with the inner guru as reflected by the purified discrimination of buddhi, the advice is to be honored and lovingly rejected with gratitude---for your teacher has just taught you what not to do.

— Leonard Perlmutter


Yoga is a way to freedom. By its constant practice, we can free ourselves from fear, anguish and loneliness.

— Indra Devi


Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books.

— William Cowper


Thus meditating you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but, forgetting self, you will remember only that you are seeking the Truth.

— James Allen


Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.

— Swami Sivananda


Yoga Science is not just a scholarly pursuit. It is a moment by moment and thought by thought practical guide for living.

— Leonard Perlmutter


Meditation is not what you think it is. It's a method of accessing unerring wisdom from the superconscious mind so you can experience a happy, healthy and creatively rewarding life.

— Leonard Perlmutter


Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; for it becomes your destiny.

— Upanishads


These days, my practice is teaching me to embrace imperfection: to have compassion for all the ways things haven't turned out as I planned, in my body and in my life - for the ways things keep falling apart, and failing, and breaking down. It's less about fixing things, and more about learning to be present for exactly what is.

— Anne Cushman


When I started doing asana, the yoga postures, I had a very strong feeling of many unnecessary things dropping away - especially tension and inadequacy.

— Patricia Sullivan


Through practice, I've come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I'm suffering, I find this war with reality to be at the heart of the problem.

— Stephen Cope


The word yoga comes from Sanskrit, the language of ancient India. It means union, integration, or wholeness. It is an approach to health that promotes the harmonious collaboration of the human being's three components: body, mind, and spirit.

— Stella Weller


What yoga philosophy and all the great Buddhist teachings tells us is that solidity is a creation of the ordinary mind and that there never was anything permanent to begin with that we could hold on to. Life would be much easier and substantially less painful if we lived with the knowledge of impermanence as the only constant.

— Donna Farhi


Yoga is about clearing away whatever is in us that prevents our living in the most full and whole way. With yoga, we become aware of how and where we are restricted -- in body, mind, and heart -- and how gradually to open and release these blockages. As these blockages are cleared, our energy is freed. We start to feel more harmonious, more at one with ourselves. Our lives begin to flow -- or we begin to flow more in our lives. 

— Cybele Tomlinson


This yoga should be practiced with firm determination and perseverance, without any mental reservation or doubts.

— Bhagavad Gita


Yoga is really trying to liberate us from ... shame about our bodies. To love your body is a very important thing -- I think the health of your mind depends on your being able to love your body.

— Rodney Yee


When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.

— Hatha Yoga Pradipika


Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy. Constant practice alone is the secret of success.

—  Hatha Yoga Pradipika


Chair pose is a defiance of spirit, showing how high you can reach even when you're forced down.

— The Quote Garden


Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God.

— Krishnamacharya


Warrior pose battles inner weakness and wins focus. You see that there is no war within you. You're on your own side, and you are your own strength.

— The Quote Garden


Yoga is the perfect opportunity to be curious about who you are.

— Jason Crandell


Corpse pose restores life. Dead parts of your being fall away, the ghosts are released.

— The Quote Garden


Sun salutations can energize and warm you, even on the darkest, coldest winter day.

— Carol Krucoff


Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame.

— B.K.S. Iyengar


You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.

— Mr. Yoga


"Yoga is not a work-out, it is a work-in. And this is the point of spiritual practice; to make us teachable; to open up our hearts and focus our awareness so that we can know what we already know and be who we already are."

— Rolf Gates


"Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy. Constant practice alone is the secret of success."

— Svatmarama


"Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame."

— B.K.S. Iyengar


"Yoga is the perfect opportunity to be curious about who you are."

— Jason Crandell


"Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements."

Amit Ray


Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built.

— Rumi


REAL Peace is always unshakable... Bliss is unchanged by gain or loss.

— Yogi Bhajan


When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world.

— B.K.S. Iyengar


Yoga is the practice of quieting the mind.

— Patanjali


Yoga accepts. Yoga gives.

— April Vallei


Yoga does not remove us from the reality or responsibilities of everyday life but rather places our feet firmly and resolutely in the practical ground of experience. We don't transcend our lives; we return to the life we left behind in the hopes of something better.

— Donna FARHI


When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.

— Hatha Yoga Pradipika


Karma yoga is a supreme secret indeed.

— Bhagavad Gita


The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realisation of yoga, of union; not on the side of the canvas where it is blank, but on the side where the picture is being painted.

— Rabindranath Tagore


In Karma yoga no effort is ever lost, and there is no harm. Even a little practice of this discipline protects one from great fear of birth and death.

— Bhagavad Gita


You can enter yoga, or the path of yoga, only when you are totally frustrated with your own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, yoga is not for you.

— Osho

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