Yoga Wisdom
Studying the yoga wisdom of great yoga practitioners offers us a way to understand the teachings of the ancient yoga philosophies believed to be more than five thousand years old. Our experiential understanding of yoga through asana practice, yoga books, spiritual teachings and even yoga quotes help prepare us for our path to enlightenment or more practically, the path to mental, physical and spiritual peace.
Yoga Books
Learning from the wisdom of other yoga practitioners whether they are great teachers or the “average” student is invaluable. Studying their books related to yoga is one great way to learn from their experiences and knowledge.
Yoga Book Suggestions – March 2010
Visit our Yoga Head To Toe Book Store
Yoga Book Suggestions – February 2010
Visit our Yoga Head To Toe Book Store
Yoga Quotes
Bhagavad Gita
Free from all thoughts of “I” and “mine,” that man finds utter peace.
It is better to do your own duty badly, than to perfectly do another’s.
B.K.S. Iyengar
Each movement is my mantra.
In asana we are chanting with our bodies.
An asana performed with total awareness is as good as a mantra or as meditation.
Awareness must be like the rays of the sun: extending everywhere, illuminating all.
If the intellectual center ascends during inhalation, you are doing egoistic pranayama. If the intellectual center descends and the emotional center ascends, you are doing true, humble pranayama.
Health is a state of complete harmony of the body mind and spirit. When one is free from .. distractions the gates of the soul open.
Yoga is a light which, once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame.
Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.
The primary aim of yoga is to restore the mind to simplicity and peace, and free it from confusion and distress. This sense of calm comes from the practice of yogic asanas and pranayama. Unlike other forms of exercise which strain muscles and bones, yoga gently rejuvenates the body. By restoring the body, yoga frees the mind from the negative feelings caused by the fast pace of modern life. The practice of yoga fills up the reservoirs of hope and optimism within you. It helps you overcome all obstacles on the path to perfect health and spiritual contentment. It is a rebirth.
The practice of yogasana for the sake of health, to keep fit, or to maintain flexibility is the external practice of yoga….While this is a legitimate place to begin, it is not the end… Even in simple asanas, one is experiencing the three levels of quest: the external quest, which brings firmness of the body; the internal quest, which brings steadiness of intelligence; and the innermost quest, which brings benevolence of spirit…Often, we hear people saying they remain active and light when they do just a little bit of asana practice. When a raw beginner experiences this state of well-being, it is not merely the external or anatomical effects of yoga. It is also about the internal physiological and psychological effects of the practice.
Cat Stevens
I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul.
Christy T. Burns
Yoga is both a philosophy and a practice that enables us to reach a place of deep lasting peace, harmony and happiness.
Learning to experience the world with equanimity in all respects is part of the goal of yoga.
Dana Holleman
Yoga is not about the body or about the mind. It is about the synthesis of body and mind, and the transformed self that is the result. It is an adventure in human potential, in going beyond the spirit identity that either body or mind alone provides, in discovering a new kind of energy and life.
Gandhi
Be the change you want to see in the world.
To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.
Language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.
Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
Have you ever sat very quietly with closed eyes and watched the movement of your own thinking? Have you watched your mind working? Or rather, has your mind watched itself in operation, just to see what your thoughts are, what your feelings are, how you look at the trees, at the flowers, at the birds, at people, how you respond to a suggestion or react to a new idea? Have you ever done this?
It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will.
It is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience – to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears – and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.
Surely, life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings.
Living is not this tawdry, mediocre, disciplined thing which we call our existence. Living is something entirely different; it is abundantly rich, timelessly changing, and as long as we don’t understand that eternal movement, our lives are bound to have very little meaning.
John Muir
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
Joseph Campbell
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
Patanjali
When you are steadfast in your abstention of thoughts of harm directed towards others then all living creatures will seize to feel fear in your presence.
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
Pema Chodron
When the energy simply flows through us, just as it flows through the grass and the trees and the ravens and the bears and the moose and the ocean and the rocks, we discover that we are not solid at all. If we sit still like the mountain Gampo Lhatse in a hurricane, if we don’t protect ourselves from the trueness and the vividness and the immediacy and the lack of confirmation of simply being part of life, then we are not this separate being who has to have things turn out our way.
It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now… with its aches and it pleasures… is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.
The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.
We cannot be present and run our story-line at the same time.
Ego could be defined as whatever covers up basic goodness. From an experiential point of view, what is ego covering up? It’s covering up our experience of just being here, just fully being where we are, so that we can relate with the immediacy of our experience. Egolessness is a state of mind that has complete confidence in the sacredness of the world. It is unconditional well-being, unconditional joy that includes all the different qualities of our experience.
Rolf Gates
Yoga is the practice of celebrating what is.
Yoga is the study of balance, and balance is the aim of all living creatures: it is our home.
How is love defined in yoga? It is nonharming, honesty, nonstealing, moderation, nonhording, purity, contentment, zeal, self-awareness, and surrender. It is being who we were born to be. Love is being who you are. Yoga is a means for eliminating the propensity to be someone else. The aim of yoga is to become still, to learn to reside on our truth………..
Rumi
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. Meet me there.
Swami Vivekananda
Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom……Our thoughts, our words, and our deeds are threads of the net we throw around ourselves.
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
My religion is kindness.
I believe that our every act has a universal dimension.
There is often a big disparity between the way in which we perceive things and the way things really are.
I believe each human being has the potential to change, to transform one’s own attitude, no matter how difficult the situation.
In the final analysis, the hope of every person is simply peace of mind.
The highest happiness is when one reaches the stage of liberation, at which there is no more suffering.
There are five billion human beings and in a certain way I think we need five billion different religions.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness … the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.
The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves.
How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
It is maybe not the best choice to have a favorite anything.
It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.
Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.
Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.
Through difficult experiences, life sometimes becomes more meaningful.
By bringing about a change in our outlook toward things and events, all phenomena can become sources of happiness.
It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.
What I believe, according to my own experience, is that a calm, peaceful mind is a very important element for sustaining the body in a balanced way.
So the smart brain must be balanced with a warm heart, a good heart -a sense of responsibility, of concern for the well-being of others.
All sentient beings have the seed of the Buddha within them.
As far as ignorance is concerned, not just Buddhism, every religion recognizes it as the source of suffering.
I believe that whether a person follows any religion or not is unimportant, he must have a good heart, a warm heart. This is essential for a happy life, which is much more important than Buddhahood.
Compassion automatically brings happiness and calmness. Then, even if you receive disturbing news, it will be easier to take, as your mind is still.
So the first step in seeking happiness is learning. We first have to learn how negative emotions and behaviors are harmful to us and how positive emotions are helpful.
World economies are always so tenuous and we are subject to so many losses in life, but a compassionate attitude is something we can always carry with us.
I think in many ways narrow minded-attitudes lead to extreme thinking.
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
“At the moment of waking up,
before getting out of bed,
get in touch with your breath,
feel the various sensations in your body,
note any thoughts and feeling that maybe present,
let mindfulness touch this moment,
Can you feel your breath?
Can you perceive the dawning of each in breath?
Can you enjoy the feeling of the breath freely
entering your body in this moment?
“Breathe in I smile,
breathe out I calm my body,
dwelling in the present moment,
it is a wonderful moment.”
T.K.V. Desikachar
Yoga serves the individual, and does so through inviting transformation rather than by giving information.
Yoga is not fixed. Yoga is creation.
Remember that yoga is the practice of observing yourself without judgment.
In yoga we are simply trying to create the conditions in which the mind becomes as useful as possible for our actions.
Humility is one of the qualities of a clear person – there is nothing to prove to anybody.
Uncredited
Love is not a thought, it is an action.
We are what we seek.
Yoga is a science that balances the energy of the body.
Yoga teaches us that we are infinitely more than our perceptions.
The goal of yoga practice, if there is a goal, is to become centered, to experience stillness, and to know yourself.
Let go of the past and embrace the future.
Yoga Head To Toe
The body is an expression of the mind.
Yoga brings you back to the present time and time again……….All we truly have are the moments that we are in.
Yoga Sutras
When a practitioner is firmly established in practice of truth his words become so potent that whatever he says comes to realization.
