MEANING OF YOGA
“Experience the boundaries in your practice tonight. Explore and identify where the restrictions are in your body, your heart and your mind. What is preventing you from going just a little deeper and farther in your practice and life? Let your practice dance on the edges of these limitations, like dew on the tip of a leaf. “- David Scott
“I am rooted but I flow, I am grounded but I bend. I am deep but my worries are shallow. My dreams and hopes are limitless, but I am content where I stand. What I own is meaningless, how little I truly need allows me the freedom and lightness to fly. Never intent on arriving, it is the journey where I explore my passions. I have the heart of the yogi and the wisdom inspired by the Buddha.” – David Scott
“Practice is about patience, control, and breath. Enjoy the moments when it clicks and the moments when everything unravels — they are both phenomenal teachers.” ~ Kathryn Budig
“There is no need to be perfect to inspire others. Let people get inspired by how you deal with your imperfections.” – Kathryn Budig
“Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.” ~ Alan Cohen
Why you do Yoga?, What you wish to gain from Yoga? But more importantly, What do you wish to leave behind?”
“The most important part that happens during a yoga class, is not what happens outside the body, but what happens inside the body.” David Scott
When you get tired, learn to rest and not to quit.
In every asana tonight try to find peace within yourself.
“I am rooted but I flow,” Virginia Woolf
“Breath, the universe is taking care of everything else.”
“Remember the entrance to the sanctuary is inside you.” – Rumi
Lie is a balance of holding and letting go.
Sthira sukham asanam Sthira‘ means steady or stable or grounded or strong and ‘Sukha’ means comfortable or easy (or ‘easeful’) or peaceful.
Yoga practice – dreaming while awake
From the Gita:
[of yoga] “On this path no effort is wasted, no gain is ever reversed; even a little of this practice will shelter you from great sorrow.”
“When he sees all things being equal in suffering or in joy because they are like himself, that man has grown perfect in yoga.”
Inhale the future. Exhale the past.
You’re only as young as your spine is flexible. Quality of life is determined by our health.
I was looking for someone to inspire me, motivate me, support me, keep me focused… Someone who would love me, cherish me, make me happy, and I realized all along that I was looking for myself.
Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.
Wisdom is knowing we are all One. Love is what it feels like and Compassion is what it acts like.
“In meditation and in our daily lives there are three qualities that we can nurture, cultivate, and bring out. We already possess these, but they can be ripened: precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go.” – Pema Chodron
Your soul is your best friend. Treat it with care, nurture it with growth, feed it with love.
“When you witness someone in life, doing something better than you, instead of thinking of that person as competition, think of that person as inspiration.” – David Scott
“The best thing you could do is master the chaos in you. You are not thrown into the fire, you are the fire.” -Mama Indigo
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little bit of extra effort.” – David Scott
“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
“If you hear a voice within you say, “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh
When you are looking in the mirror, you are looking at the problem. But, remember, you are also looking at the solution.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.” – Zen Shin
“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” – Rumi
“The study of asana is not about mastering posture. It’s about using posture to understand and transform yourself.” – B.K.S Iyengar
Your soul is your best friend. Treat it with care, nurture it with growth, feed it with love.
“Here and now is where yoga begins” – The Yoga Sutras
“Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul.” ― Amit Ray,
“Yoga is a light, which once lit will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter your flame.” — B.K.S. Iyengar
“The nature of yoga is to shine the light of awareness into the darkest corners of the body.” – Jason Crandell
“The yoga pose you avoid the most you need the most.”
“I bend so I don’t break.”
“Yoga is especially necessary at this point in time, when life appears especially confusing and filled with tension, stress and distractions. It helps one to slow down in life and re-align oneself with the harmony of the universe and find peace within. It will help diminish cravings and bad habits, and bring you a disease-free body, a balanced mind, radiant health and long life. Yoga brings very special results. It is the door-opener to intuitive knowledge and Eternal Bliss.” ~ Yogi Guptan
“We are all just walking each other home.” Ram Das
To philosophize and do nothing is for a dreamer. To philosophize and take action is the path of a yogi
“No one ever says, ‘I wish I hadn’t done Yoga today…'” Unknown
“Yoga is not about touching your toes, it is about what you learn about yourself while trying to touch your toes.”
“Try to let go of the idea that you need to do yoga perfectly in order to see its benefits. Rather, let it be a process of waking up to who you really are. If you do this, you will know joy. And that joy will be your gift to a world that very much needs our healing,” ~ Darren Main
“Yoga is the perfect opportunity to be curious about who you are. ” ~ Jason Crandell
“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
“Yoga uses the body to discipline the mind and to reach the soul.” ~ BKs Iyengar
“The light that Yoga sheds on life is something special. It is transformative. It does not just change the way we see things; it transforms the person who sees. ” ~ BKS Iyengar
Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured. ~ B.K.S. Iyengar
“A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself.” ~ Bruce Lee
Our yoga practice teaches us that we have a lot more in common than we have as differences.
“Yoga is not about self-improvement, it is about self-acceptance.” – Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa
“You have a right to your action, but never to your actions’ fruits. Act for the action’s sake. And do not be attached to inaction. Self-possessed, resolute, act without any thought of results, open to success or failure. This equanimity is yoga…The wise man lets go of all results, whether good or bad, and is focused on the action alone. Yoga is skill in actions.” pp. 54-55 BG
My body is my temple and the asanas are my prayers. B.K.Iyengar.
Yoga teaches us to create a life that feels good on the inside and not just the outside.
“Do your practice and all is coming.” ― Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
Mastery of yoga is really measured by how it influences our day-to-day living, how it enhances our relationships, how it promotes clarity and peace of mind. T.K.V. Desikachar
“Yoga is 99% practice and 1% theory.” – Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois
Yoga adds years to your life and life to your years. – Allan Finger
He who performs his duty with no concern for results is the true man of yoga—not he who refrains from action.
From the Gita
With no desire for success, no anxiety about failure, indifferent to results, he burns up his actions in the fire of wisdom. Surrendering all thoughts of outcome, unperturbed, self-reliant, he does nothing at all, even when fully engaged in actions. There’s nothing that he expects, nothing that he fears. Serene, free from possessions, untainted, acting with the body alone.
“Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”– The Bhagavad Gita
“Yoga is a dance between control and surrender – between pushing and letting go – and when to push and to let go becomes part of the creative process, part of the open-ended exploration of your well-being.” –Joel Kramer
If you seek peace, be still. If you seek wisdom, be silent. If you seek love, be yourself.
There are no strangers here, only friends you have not met.
Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
“The goal of yoga and meditation is not to control your thoughts, but to stop them from controlling you.”