Best Iyengar Quotes & Sayings

You must purge yourself before finding faults in others.
When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake.
This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement.
Do not look at others' bodies with envy or with superiority.
All people are born with different constitutions.
Never compare with others.
Each one's capacities are a function of his or her internal strength.
Know your capacities and continually improve upon them. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Stirred with passion, laced with fun, spiked with laughter & served with a smile. On the road. No sugar, no milk. Horn OK Please. Buy my books or may the wrath of a thousand locusts infest your underpants *Smack!!* — Kartik Iyengar

[Americans] think that choice, as seen through the American lens, best fulfills an innate and universal desire for choice in all humans. Unfortunately, these beliefs are based on assumptions that don't always hold true in many countries, in many cultures. — Sheena Iyengar

Yoga is meant for the purification of body and its exploration as well as for the refinement of the mind. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Whether we do it consciously or subconsciously, we tend to organize our lives to display our identity as accurately as possible. Our lifestyle choices often reveal our values, or at least what we'd like people to perceive as our values ... as we make our everyday choices, we continuously calculate not just which choices best match who we are and what we want but also how those choices will be interpreted by others. We look for cues in our social environment to figure out what others think of this or that, which can require being sensitive to the most localized and up-to-date details of what a particular choice means. — Sheena Iyengar

Why should you practice Yoga? To kindle the divine fire within yourself. Everyone has a dormant spark of divinity in him which has to be fanned into flame. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Classics postures, when practiced with discrimination and awareness, bring the body, mind, and consciousness into a single, harmonious whole. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Once the jazz musician learns all the fundamentals they can keep track of a lot of choices in an instant. — Sheena Iyengar

Many ask me whether pranayama ... postpones old age. Why worry about it? Death is certain. Let it come when it comes. Just keep working. The soul has no age. It doesn't die. Only the body decays. And yet, we must never forget the body, since it is the garden we must cherish and cultivate. — B.K.S. Iyengar

The way we frame information for ourselves or for others can make a big difference in how we see and respond to choice. Every time we encounter new information or reexamine old information, we're influenced by its presentation. We can use framing to our advantage, but sometimes it has a negative impact on the quality of our decisions. — Sheena Iyengar

They [people] start asking themselves "Well which one is the best? Which one would be good for me?" And all those questions are much easier to ask if you're choosing from six than when you're choosing from 24 and if you look at the marketplace today most often we have a lot more than 24 of things to choose from. — Sheena Iyengar

Approach each asana with freshness every day. — B.K.S. Iyengar

The aim of yoga is to calm the chaos of conflicting impulses — B.K.S. Iyengar

The best way to overcome fear is to face with equanimity the situation of which one is afraid. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Where there is yoga,
there is prosperity,
success, freedom and bliss. — B.K.S. Iyengar

When the options are few, we can be happy with what we choose since we are confident that it is the best possible choice for us. When the options are practically infinite, though, we believe that the perfect choice for us must be out there somewhere and that it's our responsibility to find it. Choosing can become a lose-lose situation: if we make a choice quickly without fully exploring the available options, we'll regret potentially missing out on something better; if we do exhaustively consider all the options, we'll expend more effort (which won't necessarily increase the quality of our final choice), and if we discover other good options, we may regret that we can't choose them all. — Sheena Iyengar

At its best, choice is a means by which we can resist the people and the systems that seek to exert control over us. But choice itself can become oppressive when we insist that it is equally available to all. It can become an excuse for ignoring inequities that stem from gender or class or ethnic differences, for example, because one can blithely say, oh, but they had a choice! We all have choices. — Sheena Iyengar

You do not need to seek freedom in a different land, for it exists with your own body, heart, mind, and soul. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Your body is the child of the soul. you must nourish and train that child. — B.K.S. Iyengar

You know the known, so go a little into the unknown. The mind that is caught up in the known - extended a little beyond reason. The moment you go beyond , you move in the soul. Releasing the bondage of your mind to extend further, reach the unknown a little more. The further you go, you realize that the known is limited and the unknown is vast. — B.K.S. Iyengar

My Maman told me that only the crazy ones and the passionate ones accomplish anything in life. — B.K.S. Iyengar

In fact, even in that store Draeger's they had 348 different kinds of jam actually in the jam aisle. And what we found over about, say, 10 years of research is that as the number of choices actually increase people are less likely to make a choice and sometimes they do this even when it's really bad for them. — Sheena Iyengar

If you practice yoga every day with perseverance, you will be able to face the turmoil of life with steadiness and maturity. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Personal happiness is always a very serious matter. — Sheena Iyengar

Yoga takes us to an unconditioned freedom, because yoga sees even good habits as a form of conditioning or limitation. — B.K.S. Iyengar

A scientist sets out to conquer nature through knowledge - external nature, external knowledge. By these means he may split the atom and achieve external power. A yogi sets out to explore his own internal nature, to penetrate the atom (atma) of being. He does not gain dominion over wide lands and restless seas, but over his own recalcitrant flesh and febrile mind. — B.K.S. Iyengar

The typical American reports making about 70 [choices] in a typical day. — Sheena Iyengar

What affected people's health most in these studies wasn't the actual level of control that people had in their jobs, but the amount of control they perceived themselves as having. — Sheena Iyengar

Undoubtedly, the mind is restless and hard to control But it can be trained by constant practice and by freedom from desire." - B.K.S. Iyengar.

Climbing is really great, we all love climbing. But what's interesting to me is what happens in my head or in my life because of it. Ultimately, I think climbing is a vehicle for exploration - of the world, of the self. — Steph Davis

The typical Walmart today offers you 100,000 products. — Sheena Iyengar

The whole thrust of yogic philosophical and scientific inquiry has therefore been to examine the nature of being, with a view to learning to respond to the stresses of life without so many tremors and troubles. — B.K.S. Iyengar

From Freedom of the Body comes Freedom of the Mind and then Ultimate Freedom! — B.K.S. Iyengar

People don't put as much of an emphasis in expanding their choices, so that, you know, one of the things that I learned when I was in Japan way back in the 1990's and there were all these quarrels happening between the U.S. and Japan about allowing more American products into the Japanese market. — Sheena Iyengar

Yoga is like music: the rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind, and the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Fear and fatigue block the mind. Face both, then courage and confidence flows into you. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Extension brings space, space brings freedom, freedom brings precision. Precision is truth. — B.K.S. Iyengar

A good teacher helps you explore the maximum. — B.K.S. Iyengar

You get to decide how you're going to look and what you're going to be when you grow up and when people learned that my parents actually had an arranged marriage people thought that was the most horrific thing on earth. I mean how could anybody allow their marriage of all things to be prescribed by somebody else? — Sheena Iyengar

Like the swimming rats in Richter's experiment, we can survive for only so long without solid ground beneath our feet; if the choices aren't real, sooner or later we will go under. It's important, therefore, that we examine our assumptions about choice and that we openly discuss how, when and why it falls short. — Sheena Iyengar

When people are given a moderate number of options (4 to 6) rather than a large number (20 to 30), they are more likely to make a choice, are more confident in their decisions, and are happier with what they choose. — Sheena Iyengar

First-generation children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents approach to choice. For them, choice was not just a way of defining and asserting their individuality, but a way to create community and harmony by deferring to the choices of people whom they trusted and respected. — Sheena Iyengar

The body is my temple, asanas are my prayers. — B.K.S. Iyengar