YOGA QUOTES IV
quotations about yoga
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
Yoga: The Poetry of the Body
Yoga is not a practice. It is not an exercise. It is not a technique. The images in popular consciousness point to a bowlderized form of yoga that has now pervaded the world.... The science of yoga is quite simply the science of being in perfect alignment, in absolute harmony, in complete sync with existence.... Yoga is the science of creating inner situations exactly the way you want them. When you fine-tune yourself to such a point where everything functions beautifully within you, naturally the best of your abilities will flow out of you.
SADHGURU
Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
What is yoga? The answers you get to this will depend on who formulates the response. The sleek 30-something clad in organic cotton leggings with a healthy glow might answer, while holding "plank pose" for an excruciating length of time, that yoga is about being simultaneously buff and chilled out. Ask a grizzly old Hindu monastic like myself and you're likely to get a more knotty and byzantine response.
SWAMI AMBIKANANDA SARASWATI
"What is yoga? You asked Google - here's the answer", The Guardian, February 22, 2017
Yoga has changed my life, in so many ways. Yes, my body is more strong and flexible. But yoga has affected my life in ways beyond the physical. It's helped me learn how to accept myself, forgive myself, and love myself. It's given me a platform to challenge myself beyond my fears, and to arise from that fear to claim my greatest passion and purpose.
HEATHER RITENOUR-SAMPSON
"The Chat: Yoga: It's 90% mental, and the other half physical", Post Bulletin, February 4, 2016
Corpse Pose sounds like no big deal, right? Then what's so difficult about this spiritualized snooze? Forget about getting your feet behind your head. Just try lying still for ten minutes. With nothing left to do, you're finally forced to come face to face with yourself.
EDWARD VILGA
Downward Dog
Balancing on one leg might seem hard enough -- but have you tried it with your eyes closed? Blindfolded yoga is increasing in popularity, enabling yogis to centre on their own abilities while letting go of any preconceived ideas about what yoga should look like.
LAUREN GROUNSELL
Daily Mail Australia, January 26, 2016
In the West, yoga is often interpreted primarily as a physical practice, but what happens on a physical level is only the tip of the iceberg. I like to say the body is like the papery part of the onion. It has a purpose, but all the sweetness and spice comes from the deeper layers. Yoga provides a means to greater mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic well-being, as well as the physical.
HEATHER RITENOUR-SAMPSON
, Post Bulletin, February 4, 2016
Yoga is the methodology with which to unveil the miracle that exists right in front of our faces and inside ourselves.
RODNEY YEE
"A Conversation with Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman Yee", Origin: The Conscious Culture Magazine
If you look at the images of yogis strewn across the Internet, you'd have to believe that all yoga practitioners are continuously and exceptionally happy. In fact, it may have been one of the reasons you've decided to take up yoga yourself. Yoga has been marketed as a positivity pill and that promise of unbreakable cheer has attracted many to it. The downfall has been an increasingly dangerous pressure on yogis and yoga teachers to cleave to a facade of positivity no matter what the situation. This skin deep display keeps us from experiencing and expressing our real truths that are much more healing and helpful to society than going around simulating bliss.
LARA LAND
"The Positivity Problem: Why Yoga Imaging Must Go Deeper", Huffington Post, February 3, 2016
Beyond yoga's increasing popularity, what's fascinating is the data shows that those who practice and teach yoga have measurably better perceptions of their individual strength, balance, dexterity, and mental clarity versus non-practitioners.
BARBARA DOBBERTHIEN
"If You Want Toned Muscles Before Summer, Skip the Gym and Head to Yoga", Elite Daily, March 8, 2017
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
Sadhana: The Realization of Life
Happiness is found in yoga, not by searching for it, not by expecting it, but by doing the practice and falling upon it. Trying for a specific result is actually not at all in alignment with the practice of yoga which asks us to be present and observe without categorization. It is in these moments that we stumble upon a feeling even more lasting and stable than happiness. This feeling can not be presented or sold. It stays with us hovering, an increased zen, a higher baseline of contentedness, an ease with the way things are. More than happiness, a long time practitioner gains a sense of self, insight into others and a strong ability to discern. She can feel energy, interpret intention and light the way with a soft touch or with a sharp word. The pressure on her to always be "happy" and "positive" diminishes and denies her power which is rooted in truth and awareness.
LARA LAND
"The Positivity Problem: Why Yoga Imaging Must Go Deeper", Huffington Post, February 3, 2016
Those who see my yoga practice now would never believe this but when I first found Vinyasa yoga, I was deeply in love yet so freaking pissed, all at the same time. Very much like a soap opera love story or novella as we call it in Southern California. Heart-wrenching and intensely fulfilling, yet, at least for me in the beginning, so incredibly dramatic. Anytime a posture or transition came up for me that was challenging, you could feel my blood boil from a mile away. I truly believe this is why it's called a yoga "practice." By no means is anger something that we get rid of but it's something that we get better at. The more we learn on our yoga mats, the more we can apply to our lives.
ANNMARIE TORREZ
"Yoga on Maui: There is an Asana for That, Maui Yogis Heal the body with Breathwork and Poses", mauitime, January 29, 2016
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
Introduction to Yoga
For all the practical purposes of Yoga, the man, the working, conscious man, is so much of him as he cannot separate from the matter enclosing him, or with which he is connected. Only that is body which the man is able to put aside and say: "This is not I, but mine."
ANNIE WOOD BESANT
Introduction to Yoga
I find that almost everyone wants to feel more self-love. When they begin practicing yoga, or any other form of physical activity, they may think they are going to look a certain way or be able to contort their bodies, but what begins to happen instead is a change in how they feel, and how they feel about themselves. It begins to translate to their work and relationships, and it's truly awesome to witness. I feel blessed to get to see it.
MANDY INGBER
"Kicking Asana and Taking Names: A Q&A with Yoga Expert Mandy Ingber", Gaiam
Everyone knows yoga is great for turning your body into a pretzel and relieving stress, but have you ever noticed how toned a yogi's arms and legs are? These people are getting ripped without even stepping one foot into a traditional gym.
CAMILLE THEOBALD
"If You Want Toned Muscles Before Summer, Skip the Gym and Head to Yoga", Elite Daily, March 8, 2017
People have been practicing yoga since 2250 BC, which is way before any gyms existed. This was back when people ran to get away from predators, Crossfit was called doing chores and yoga was a technique to release all your pent-up physical energy to prepare for meditation.
CAMILLE THEOBALD
"If You Want Toned Muscles Before Summer, Skip the Gym and Head to Yoga", Elite Daily, March 8, 2017
Yoga in the West has become over identified with the physical, with the form, and with the fashion of the form. This is problematic. If we have a good teacher, we soon see that there is nothing to fear. The idea of yoga is to take care of our physical limitations and get beyond our self-obsession. We learn that we can let go of this ego identification and have a glimpse of a much wider field of experience.
KATE POTTER
interview, LoveToKnow
Oh asana is vital to the practice of yoga, quite definitely. Yoga is, after all, a body-based practice. It is through the body that we attain freedom. The body is our vehicle to move deeper into awareness. It's what we know, what we can touch, feel, and what we see tangible results from in our practice. Yoga uses the physical body as a doorway into self-awareness and surrender.
LINDA SPARROWE
interview, Yoga Teacher Magazine