Yoga Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

Zen Buddhism is a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought. It is not religion or philosophy; it is not a psychology or a type of science. It is an example of what is known in India and China as a "way of liberation," and is similar in this respect to Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. As will soon be obvious, a way of liberation can have no positive definition. It has to be suggested by saying what it is not, somewhat as a sculptor reveals an image by the act of removing pieces of stone from a block. — Alan W. Watts

Yoga exercises are the best connecting tools for unity, human dignity, health, equality, global peace and compassion. — Amit Ray

Life is a series of awakenings. — Swami Mukerji

Yoga reveals to you the beauty of mindfulness and takes you into the essence of an endless present moment. — Debasish Mridha

In our life there is one side which is finite and another side which is infinite. I want you to think about both the sides and design the best life and stand in their true values. — Amit Ray

Yoga is a journey toward your inner core to find your inner bliss. — Debasish Mridha

Yoga does not start or end on your mat, but is present in every breath you take. — Evita Ochel

Yoga began as a philosophy rather than as a physical discipline. — Deepak Chopra

Tantra is not sexual yoga. When the word tantra is used in the West, very often people immediately associate it with some kind of sexual yoga in which you use sex as a vehicle for enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz

Tantra has to do with the reconciliation of opposites. All the yogas recommend that you avoid certain experiences. In tantra there is no avoidance. — Frederick Lenz

Yoga is only a means and not the end. — Yogananda Paramahamsa

Yoga is not only a process of the integration of the soul, mind, and body for self-improvement, it is a process of self -realization and self -acceptance. — Debasish Mridha

The heart of a yogi should always bear good-will and thoughts that benefit others. — Amit Ray

Yoga does not always cure stress. It neutralizes it through increasing awareness and by changing self-perception. — Debasish Mridha

When I teach a new group of students, I introduce some yoga philosophy, but I don't overload them with information. Just enough so they understand the real tradition behind this ancient practice and that it's not a stretching class. Guys come in and they're a little nervous. I tell them that when they cross the threshold of the door, they're crossing to a different dimension. They're moving from an externally-oriented reality to an internally-oriented one. — James Fox

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. — Charles Bukowski

A little exposure to the philosophy of many Eastern spiritual traditions - including yoga - could easily lead you to conclude that if you aspire to achieve goals in the material world you cannot fulfill yourself spiritually, or vice versa. However, since all of us, at some level, long for fulfillment in all aspects of our life, it is essential to understand that these two aims are not mutually exclusive. — Rod Stryker

Yoga is not just a workout, it is a natural way of enhancing flexibility, calmness, clarity, and youthfulness. — Debasish Mridha

Yoga is bringing fitness in body, calmness in mind, kindness in heart and awareness in life. — Amit Ray

Yoga is the dance of every cell with the music of every breath that creates inner serenity and harmony. — Debasish Mridha

To create a peaceful world, inhale the love of life and exhale the beauty of life. — Debasish Mridha

The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting. (127) — Swami Satchidananda

In the west we think of yoga as an exercise programme, when actually where it's from in India it's a whole philosophy. The Asanas and the exercise programme are one tiny aspect of it, and so it really, really fascinates me. — Jayne Middlemiss

To find inner bliss and happiness through yoga, learn to accept things as they are by changing your thoughts. — Debasish Mridha

You will boost your productivity with active exercise. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The more thoughtful the man, the more complicated will be the streets in his brain, and the more easily he will take to new ideas, and understand them. So with every fresh idea, we make a new impression in the brain, cut new channels through the brain-stuff, and that is why we find that in the practice of Yoga (it being an entirely new set of thoughts and motives) there is so much physical resistance at first. That is why we find that the part of religion which deals with the world-side of nature is so widely accepted, while the other part, the philosophy, or the psychology, which clears with the inner nature of man, is so frequently neglected. — Swami Vivekananda

Yoga subsumes all; God, religion, and philosophy. — Aporva Kala

With yoga, you go back to your source to bloom again with joy and inner peace. — Debasish Mridha

Create peace within yourself so that you can spread the fragrance of peace all around the world. — Debasish Mridha

Yoga is a journey of the soul through the body that creates a harmony among nature, mind, and body. — Debasish Mridha

Self-hatred is the inevitable byproduct of the culture of narcissism in which we all have been reared. We learn from day one how special and wonderful we are. Or conversely, and perhaps more pervasively, we do not learn this at all and instead are subjected to glorified views of others through the media whom we idealize and envy. At the root of it all are inappropriate expectations about life, about ourselves, and an overvaluation of self that breeds profound isolation. — Melissa Grabau

Yoga is an art, a science and a philosophy. It touches the life of man atevery level: physical, mental, spiritual. It is a practical method formaking one's life purposeful, useful and noble. — B.K.S. Iyengar

In tantra we have complete faith in the winds of eternity. The key to tantra yoga is to feel that you are not the doer, that you cannot possibly act. All you have to do in life is to accept. — Frederick Lenz

For reasons unknown, the philosophical aspect of the yoga movement has had to make way for the yoga fit revolution; today's image of a yogi is a slender and scantily clad young female doing postures on the cover of a bestselling magazine, whereas the older image was of an Indian man with long beard sitting in a cave wearing a loin cloth. — Gudjon Bergmann

You may not be able to control the whole world, but you may learn to control your inner world through yoga. — Debasish Mridha

Vibration is the core of the spirit. It is the breath of life. — Suzy Kassem

When I speak of tantric yoga, I'm speaking of a type of yoga that is best practiced by persons who live in society. It's a yoga for the last yuga. — Frederick Lenz

Yoga is a way of life; it is an art, a science, a philosophy. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Yoga, as a way of life and a philosophy, can be practiced by anyone with inclination to undertake it, for yoga belongs to humanity as a whole. It is not the property of any one group or any one individual, but can be followed by any and all, in any corner of the globe, regardless of class, creed or religion. — K. Pattabhi Jois

Yoga makes you harmonious with nature and teaches you to be joyfully curious about your inner world. — Debasish Mridha

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

She tried to do what the Equinox yoga instructor said to do and thank each thought for coming then let it float away, but the thoughts were not floating away and she couldn't force them away, not even here, where she was supposed to be able to escape. — Stephanie Clifford

Ayurveda is a sister philosophy to yoga. It is the science of life or longevity and it teaches about the power and the cycles of nature, as well as the elements. — Christy Turlington

Fall in love with all knowing manifestations of one. You may find those connections between you and all through yoga and meditation. — Debasish Mridha

Yoga is a philosophy of discipline and meditation that transforms the spirit and makes the individual a better person in thought, action, knowledge and devotion. — Narendra Modi

The Yogic system does not talk about God. It does not talk about the soul or heaven. Such talk invariably makes people hallucinatory. Yoga talks only about the barriers that you have set up, because this resistance is all that needs to be attended to. The creator is not looking for your attention. The ropes that bind you and the walls that block you- these are one hundred percent of your making. And these are all you need to unknot and dismantle. You have no work with existence. You only have work with the existence that you created. — Sadhguru

Yoga may teach you how to reveal your inner joy and inner beauties that beautify this world. — Debasish Mridha

Life is like yoga; the only way you can enjoy it is by relaxing into any position you happen to find yourself in. — Jon Wakeham

My own interest in Yoga came from a vague understanding of Indian thought and Indian philosophy in the late sixties and early seventies and from looking at the idea of meditation and at what meditation was. — Paul Harvey

I have been curious about the mind and body for as long as I can remember. I was a gymnast, a ballet dancer, and a philosophy and physical therapy major. Following the thread of curiosity about mind and body, I took my first yoga class in 1980 and knew from the start that it would be a lifelong passion. — Rodney Yee

I think that we all at some point are in search of something - a higher power, whatever you want to call it, the meaning of life. I know I was, especially at even my son's age in my 20s, and dabbling in Eastern philosophies and yoga and Buddhism and Christianity and Islam. I kind of touched them all, you know, just trying to figure out the meaning of life or if nothing else, figure myself out. — Denzel Washington

Yoga is the space where flower blossoms. — Amit Ray

Thus Jung's interest, in contrast with Dasgupta's, were with yoga not as "philosophy and religion" but as psychology. Hence his definition of yoga was a psychological one: "Yoga was originally a natural process of introversion. . . . Such introversions lead to characteristic inner processes of personality changes. In the course of several thousand years these introversions became gradually organized as methods, and along widely differing ways."44 Jung's concern was not primarily with the canonical and organized methods and teachings of yoga but with the putative natural processes of introversion that originally underlay them. — C. G. Jung

You cannot control anything except your thoughts. With yoga, you do not control yourself but you harmonize with nature. — Debasish Mridha

Yoga not only allows you to learn to control your breathing, but it ultimately enhances your abilities to harmonize your thoughts and enhances your inner beauty. — Debasish Mridha

It is very important to understand yoga philosophy: without philosophy, practice is not good, and yoga practice is the starting place for yoga philosophy. Mixing both is actually the best. — K. Pattabhi Jois

Don't try and understand this with your mind. There will be no absolute knowing, no certainty in these thoughts and philosophies and ideas. — Frederick Lenz

No art takes places without inspiration. Every artist also needs effective knowledge of his or her tools (e.g., does a certain brush function well with a particular kind of paint?). What's more, artists need effective techniques for using those tools.
Likewise, to express ourselves skillfully with maximum efficiency and minimum effort, we need to investigate the most effective ways of using the mind and body since, in the end, they are the only "tools" we truly possess in life. — H. E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way Of Dynamic Meditation

Matter is a medium of communication between minds, and everything that exists in the mind can also exist in the body. Furthermore, the body - being the expression of a mental state is developed as a manifestation of the mind. — Ashish Dalela

In our society, we often tend to ignore what our bodies are telling us and instead are encouraged to medicate the symptoms with sleeping pills, stool softeners, a few beers, and a burrito. The problem with this approach is that whatever your body is trying to tell you gets lost beneath your attempts to cover it up. — Melissa Grabau

Advanced yoga is not withdrawal from the world. That's a preliminary state. — Frederick Lenz

Yoga philosophy teaches that real man is not his body, but that the immortal I, of which each human being is conscious to some degree according to his mental evolution, is not the body but merely occupies and uses the body as an instrument. — Vishnudevananda Saraswati

I don't believe we should carry backup
plans in life's suitcase
they're too easy to unpack
like living a life in yoga pants,
so comfortable our hips spread
into new timezones ... — Kelli Russell Agodon