Top 100 Iyengar Quotes
#1. I first went to India because of my interest in yoga, hoping to go to the Iyengar Centre in Pune for a while. That didn't work out, but I ended up on a beach in Goa, writing.
Damon Galgut
#2. Mostly I do Iyengar. I like anything that's hard enough to make me cry in class. I like to be pushed over my limit and broken down a little bit.
Lucy Alibar
#3. In yoga . . . many may take one path as a key in order to experience self-realisation while others take another path, but I say that there is absolutely no difference between the various practices of yoga." - B. K. S. Iyengar, The Tree of Yoga, p. 15
Georg Feuerstein
#4. If you are looking for a whale you cannot search for a whale in a pond. You must go to deep waters.
Prashant Iyengar
#5. Feeling the movement of movements is wandering to the past or future. Living in the movements of movement is being in the present.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#6. Whenever we find stiffness in the body, our mind should be especially supple. It is never the stiffness in our bodies that limits our practice, it is always the stiffness of our mind.
Geeta Iyengar
#7. As we get older, we get better at choosing in ways that will make us happy. We do a better job at picking activities that make us happy, and at spending time with people who make us happy. We're also better at letting things go.
Sheena Iyengar
#8. As the trunk is one but the branches are many, yoga is one but adaptations may vary.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#9. As a mighty river which when properly harnessed by dams and canals, creates a vast reservoir of water, prevents famine and provides abundant power for industry; so also the mind, when controlled, provides a reservoir of peace and generates abundant energy for the human uplift.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#10. But a yogi never forgets that health must begin with the body. Your body is the child of the soul. You must nourish and train your child. Physical health is not a commodity to be bargained for. Nor can it be swallowed in the form of drugs and pills. It has to be earned through sweat.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#11. During inhalation, the breath should move exactly like the clouds which are spreading in the sky.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#12. Everybody should live quietly whether his experiences are happy or sad, whether they are successes or failures.
That is contentment.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#14. People say that steadiness of mind is an end; no, it is a beginning. I am there; I can explain everything up to that point. Then I struggle to discover what comes after, so this steadiness is not an end, it is the beginning and the instrument.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#15. Asanas keep your body, as well as your mind, healthy and active
B.K.S. Iyengar
#16. When the mind is controlled and still what remains is the soul
B.K.S. Iyengar
#17. We're born with the desire, but we don't really know how to choose. We don't know what our taste is, and we don't know what we are seeing.
Sheena Iyengar
#18. There is a universal reality in ourselves that aligns us with a universal reality that is everywhere.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#19. You know, like, none of us would choose - no matter where we are in the world - would choose to you know become a member of Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" world, but how much choice is really the question.
Sheena Iyengar
#20. Yoga is firstly for individual growth, but through individual growth, society and community develop.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#21. Life itself seeks fulfillment as plants seek sunlight.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#22. Regular practise of yoga can help you face the turmoil of life with steadiness and stability
B.K.S. Iyengar
#23. Our greed comes from our fear that we will not have enough - whether it is money or love that we grasp. Yoga teaches us to let go of these fears and so to realize the abundance around us and within us.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#24. How can you know God if you don't know your big toe?
B.K.S. Iyengar
#25. My child's first word was "more," but and it's all about, "I want." "I'm going to tell you what I want and what I don't want." It's about my desire to express my preferences. And that is really innate.
Sheena Iyengar
#26. If you open the armpits, the brain becomes light. You cannot brood or become depressed.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#27. Awareness must be like the rays of the sun: extending everywhere, illuminating all.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#28. 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
#29. One day you too may experience what I have experienced. So right away go and practise.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#30. Not all practitioners can jump to that highest level. They have to climb, step by step from the physical sphere to reach the spiritual sphere. If it is treated as exercise it is not the fault of yoga but of the practitioners.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#31. In order to 'hold fast' to something, one must allow oneself to be held to something. That commitment may be one of the hardest things to practice in a world of so much choice.
Sheena Iyengar
#32. When we free ourselves from physical disabilities, emotional disturbances, and mental distractions, we open the gates to our soul.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#33. If you truly have expertise - and expertise can be say a chess master who has really mastered something or an artist or a musician of some sort you know if you give a jazz musician ...
Sheena Iyengar
#34. To do is hard, but to teach is still harder. Do not teach only to teach. Teach to improve the pupil. To be a teacher requires tremendous, vigorous discipline on oneself. We are teachers because somebody demands it from us. But the teacher should first rub his own self, and teach afterwards
B.K.S. Iyengar
#35. It is through the alignment of the body that I discovered the alignment of my mind, self, and intelligence.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#36. You know, whether it be humans or animals. So even humans - before we can speak or we can understand a baby's cognition - they're already showing us signs that they want choice.
Sheena Iyengar
#37. So for decisions about happiness you essentially need at least both and probably even more than that, you probably also need to do analysis that doesn't involve yourself to get at the answer of what will make you happy in 10 years.
Sheena Iyengar
#38. When you are practicing, do not just do that for the sake of doing. Learn to reflect while you are practising. Make your mind and brain observe and relearn what you are doing. Doing is mechanical; learning is dynamic.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#39. We can rise above our limitations, only once we recognize them.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#40. The expansion of choice has become an explosion of choice.
Sheena Iyengar
#41. The material body has a practical reality that is accessible. It is here and now, and we can do something with it. However, we must not forget that the innermost part of our being is also trying to help us. It wants to come out to the surface and express itself.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#43. The typical Walmart today offers you 100,000 products.
Sheena Iyengar
#44. This practice of yoga is to remove the weeds from the body so that the garden can grow.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#46. In whatever you are doing, be one: body, soul, mind. Do it beautifully and with purity.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#47. I don't stretch my body as if it is an object. I do yoga from the self towards the body, not the other way around.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#48. You know if they said kindness or funniness was really most important to them then they will be more likely to say yes to the person that they thought was kind and funny.
Sheena Iyengar
#49. After a session of yoga, the mind becomes tranquil and passive.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#50. What leads us astray is confusing more choices with more control. Because it is not clear that the more choices you have the more in control you feel. We have more choices than we've ever had before.
Sheena Iyengar
#51. As we explore the soul, it is important to remember that this exploration will take place within nature (the body), for that is where and what we are.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#52. Choosing is a creative process, one through which we construct our environment, our lives, ourselves.
Sheena Iyengar
#53. Our Parusa or Universal Soul is an abiding reality. It is logical, but remains conceptual to our minds under we experience it;s realization within ourselves.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#54. People who perceive the negative experiences in their lives as the result of uncontrollable forces are at a higher risk for depression than those who believe they have control
Sheena Iyengar
#55. As a fire blazes brightly when the covering of ash over it is scattered by the wind, the divine fire within the body shines in all its majesty when the ashes of desire are scattered by the practice of pranayama.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#56. By persistent and sustained practice, anyone and everyone can make the yoga journey and reach the goal of illumination and freedom.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#57. Being a Sikh meant having to do what Mom and Dad said, and going to temple, and Mom and Dad choosing who I would marry. But going to an American school taught me that I was the one who's supposed to make those choices.
Sheena Iyengar
#58. When I was in Russia I found that I thought I was going to give these people that I was interviewing a whole bunch of choice in terms of what they could drink while we were chatting.
Sheena Iyengar
#59. What we found was that of the people who stopped when there were 24 different flavors of jam out on display only 3% of them actually bought a jar of jam whereas of the people who stopped when there were 6 different flavors of jam 30% of them actually bought a jar of jam.
Sheena Iyengar
#60. We all make assumptions about the world - based on individual experience and cultural background - that affect our judgment of how that balance should look
Sheena Iyengar
#61. The physical body is not only a temple for our soul, but the means by which we embark on the inward journey toward the core.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#62. 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
#63. The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#64. I mean we know that some choice makes you better off than no choice. Now do we get better off if we go from a lot of choice versus a few choices? And there I think the answer is much, much, much more complicated.
Sheena Iyengar
#65. I mean we might even go to war as to whether we love Coke or Pepsi and our whole identity is wrapped up in that choice. You know, for the Russians they felt that these minor differences between these various sodas was just hyped up and irrelevant.
Sheena Iyengar
#66. True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#67. The mind is the king of the senses, and the breath is the king of the mind
B.K.S. Iyengar
#68. It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#69. How did people end up confusing the fear of falling to their death on the jagged rocks below with the feeling of being struck by Cupid's arrow?
Sheena Iyengar
#70. The art of teaching is tolerance. Humbleness is the art of learning.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#71. There is only one reality, but there are many ways that reality can be interpreted.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#72. What's interesting is that the way we go about finding our marriage partners today is quite different from the way it used to be in this culture.
Sheena Iyengar
#73. Practice doing yoga with an innocent mind. Then, you will be able to cognize the things happening in your body
B.K.S. Iyengar
#74. I went home and they seemed ... my parents seemed normal. They didn't seem to feel like somehow they had been victims of some Nazi camp or something.
Sheena Iyengar
#75. Yoga is an interior penetration leading to integration of being, senses, breath, mind, intelligence, consciousness, and Self. It is definitely an inward journey, evolution through involution, toward the Soul, which in turn desires to emerge and embrace you in its glory.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#76. We often fool ourselves that we are concentrating because we fix our attention on wavering objects.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#77. Do not allow past experiences to be imprinted on your mind. Perform asana each time with a fresh mind and with a fresh approach.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#78. I can remain thoughtfully thoughtless, It is not an empty mind.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#79. It took me whole decades to appreciate the depth and true value of yoga. Sacred texts supported my discoveries, but it was not they that signposted the way. What I learned through yoga, I found out through yoga.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#80. When stability becomes a habit, maturity and clarity follow.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#81. It is not yoga that injures, but the way one does yoga that leads to injury.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#82. As each individual is electrically alive and dynamic, so yoga is a living, dynamic force in life. In order to savor its essence, one needs a religiously attentive dynamic practice done with awareness and absorption.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#83. When companies try to guess what consumers want, they essentially make the choice for consumers.
Sheena Iyengar
#84. It seems we would rather have a past filled with great scientists than just great artists and writers who could dream up these wonderful and awe-inspiring creations. It's a strange irony: we're spending our time trying to find the truth in our past, but creating myths of ourselves in the present.
Aditya Iyengar
#85. What you see determines how you interpret the world, which in turn influences what you expect of the world and how you expect the story of your life to unfold.
Sheena Iyengar
#86. When an asana is done correctly the body movements are smooth, there is lightness in the body and freedom in the mind.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#87. Do not live in the future, only the present is real
B.K.S. Iyengar
#88. We also don't always know what we want. And in those cases it can actually make us worse off because it's actually easier to figure out what you want and to figure out how the options differ if you have about a handful of them than if you have a hundred of them.
Sheena Iyengar
#89. First yoga deals with health, strength and conquest of the body. Next, it lifts the veil of difference between the body and the mind. Lastly, it leads the Sadhaka to peace and unalloyed purity.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#90. To my father, Bellur Krishnamachar, my mother, Seshamma, and my birthplace, Bellur
B.K.S. Iyengar
#91. As long as you do not live totally in the body, you do not live totally in the Self.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#92. Keep your attention internal, not external, not worrying about what others see, but what the Self sees.
B.K.S. Iyengar
#94. I put out a good 10 different types of drinks for them and they just said, "Oh, okay, so it's just one choice." One choice? I gave you Coke, Pepsi, Ginger Ale, Sprite. They saw that as one choice. Now why was that one choice? Because they felt, well, it was just all soda.
Sheena Iyengar
#95. I mean it wasn't that they sat around thinking oh gosh I needed more choices in my grocery stores the way I had come to think about it as an American growing up.
Sheena Iyengar
#96. Rather than trying to trick ourselves, we can teach ourselves, avoiding temptation until the act of avoidance itself becomes habitual and automatic. III.
Sheena Iyengar
#98. We are sculptors finding ourselves in the evolution of choosing, not in the results of choice.
Sheena Iyengar
#99. Gaining maturity in yoga practice involves learning to respect the paths that other people are on and acknowledging their merits, maybe even acknowledging that your own path is lacking in some area where another one excels.
Geeta Iyengar
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
