Quotes

160+ Inspiring Yoga Quotes About Happiness and Balance

Published

5 years ago

February 8, 2020

Yoga quotes help you to stay motivated during your practice, whether you’re a beginner or a regular practitioner.

As both a yoga instructor and a writer, I love to share yoga quotes with my students. I find that sometimes inspirational words work well to deepen their practice and self yoga practice can provide a link between what’s happening on your mat to what’s going on in your life.

Therefore, we have compiled for you some of the most amazing yoga quotes to keep you motivated and excited to get on the mat.

Pick some favorites and think of them the next time you go to a yoga class, whether that’s at a studio or at home.

Best Yoga Quotes

1. Yoga is the journey of the Self, to the Self, through the Self.

– The Bhagavad Gita

2. Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.

– B.K.S. Iyengar

3. Surrender to Yoga, for where, is the conflict when the truth is known.

– Sri T.Krishnamacharya

4. Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live.

– Jim Rohn

5. The nature of yoga is to shine the light of awareness into the darkest corners of the body.

– Jason Crandell

6. Change only happens in the present moment. The past is already done. The future is just energy and intention.

– Kino MacGregor

7. Yoga begins with listening. When we listen, we are giving space to what is.

– Richard Freeman

8. Yoga does not transform the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.

– B.K.S. Iyengar

9. Yoga is not about self-improvement. It’s about self-acceptance.

– Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa

10. Yoga means addition – addition of energy, strength and beauty to body, mind and soul.

– Amit Ray

11. Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.

– Etty Hittlesum

12. If you seek peace, be still. If you seek wisdom, be silent. If you seek love, be yourself.

– Becca Lee

13. When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.

– Peace Pilgrim

14. Yoga begins right where I am – not where I was yesterday or where I long to be.

– Linda Sparrowe

15. Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.

– Osho

16. You are the sky, everything else is just the weather.

– Pema Chodron

17. Yoga is not a work-out, it is a work-in. And this is the point of spiritual practice; to make us teachable; to open up our hearts and focus our awareness so that we can know what we already know and be who we already are.

– Rolf Gates

18. It is not arrogant or egotistical to feel good inside. You had nothing to do with it. It’s simply the honest response to clearly perceived Reality.

– Erich Schiffman

19. I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.

– Gandhi

20. Yoga is a light that once lit will never dim, the better your practice the brighter your flame.

– B.K.S. Iyengar

21. Wisdom is knowing we are all One. Love is what it feels like and Compassion is what it acts like.

– Ethan Walker III

22. Have only love in your heart for others. The more you see the good in them, the more you will establish good in yourself.

– Paramahansa Yogananda

23. Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes.

– Thich Nhat Hanh

24. 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

25. Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.

– Pema Chodron

26. Your soul is your best friend. Treat it with care, nurture it with growth, feed it with love.

– Ashourina Yalda

27. The body benefits from movement, and the mind benefits from stillness.

– Sakyong Mipham

28. Follow your nature. The practice is really about uncovering your own pose; we have great respect for our teachers, but unless we can uncover our own pose in the moment, it’s not practice — it’s mimicry. Rest deeply in Savasana every day. Always enter that pratyahara (withdrawn state) every day. And just enjoy yourself. For many years I mistook discipline as ambition. Now I believe it to be more about consistency. Do get on the mat. Practice and life are not that different.

– Judith Hanson Lasater

29. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

– Lao Tzu

30. Be a lamp to yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold on to the truth within yourself as to the only truth.

– Buddha

31. For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.

– Ivan Panin

32. There will always be people who can do it better than you, but that’s a good thing! Start to see competition as inspiration — without envy.

– Kathryn Budig

34. Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.

– Eckhart Tolle

35. What you think, you become.

– Buddha

36. Once you’re in touch with the life force around us, it’s natural to want to help keep it around.

– Adi Carter

37. Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.

– The Bhagavad Gita

38. Yoga is a dance between control and surrender – between pushing and letting go – and when to push and when to let go becomes part of the creative process, part of the open-ended exploration of your being.

– Joel Kramer

39.Each of us is a lake of love, yet strangely enough, we are all thirsty.

– Swami Kripalu

40. Yoga is the perfect opportunity to be curious about who you are.

– Jason Crandell

41. Your life is a sacred journey. It is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path… exactly where you are meant to be right now… And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love.

– Caroline Adams

42. The soul is here for its own joy.

– Rumi

43. 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

44. The very heart of yoga practice is abhyasa – steady effort in the direction you want to go.

– Sally Kempton

45. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

– Mother Teresa

46. Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are. Let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it.

–C. Assaad

47. Go from a human being doing yoga to a human being yoga. – Baron Baptiste

48. Remember, it doesn’t matter how deep into a posture you go. What does matter is who you are when you get there.

– Max Storm

49. Yoga is not about touching your toes, it’s about what you learn on the way down.

– Jigar Gor

50. Yoga does not change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.

– B.K.S Iyengar

51. Live life as if everything is rigged in your favour.

– Rumi

52. Meditation is a way for nourishing and blossoming the divinity within you. – Amit Ray

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.

– Zig Ziglar

53. First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

– Aristotle

54. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.

– Helen Keller

55. The true miracle lies in our eagerness to allow, appreciate, and honor the uniqueness, and freedom of each sentient being to sing the song of their heart.

– Amit Ray

56. The ultimate goal of yoga is to always observe things accurately, and therefore never act in a way that will make us regret our actions later.

– T.K.V. Desikachar

57. Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

– Buddha

58. The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

– C.G. Jung

59. The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.

– Geeta Iyengar

60. Yoga is possible for anybody who really wants it. Yoga is universal…. But don’t approach yoga with a business mind looking for worldly gain.

– Sri Pattabhi Jois

61. Yoga is not a work-out, it is a work-in. And this is the point of spiritual practice; to make us teachable; to open up our hearts and focus our awareness so that we can know what we already know and be who we already are.

– Rolf Gates

62. My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

– Edward Abbey

63. 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

64. 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

65. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

– Maya Angelou

66. In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

– Camus

67. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

68. A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

– Willy Wonka

69. Make each day your masterpiece.

– John Wooden

70. Every moment is a fresh beginning.

– T.S. Eliot

71. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

– Lao Tzu

72. I close my eyes in order to see.

– Paul Gauguin

73. Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

– Winston Churchill

74. Light tomorrow with today.

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

75. You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.

– Sharon Gannon

76. A photographer gets people to pose for him. A yoga instructor gets people to pose for themselves.

– Terri Guillemets

77. Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy. Constant practice alone is the secret of success.

– Svatmarama

78. Before you’ve practiced, the theory is useless. After you’ve practiced, the theory is obvious.

– David Williams

79. Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements.

– Amit Ray

80. Yoga is really trying to liberate us from… shame about our bodies. To love your body is a very important thing — I think the health of your mind depends on your being able to love your body.

– Rodney Yee

81. Yoga is almost like music in a way; there’s no end to it.

– Sting

82. The gift of learning to meditate is the greatest gift you can give yourself in this lifetime.

– Sogyal Rinpoche

83. To perform every action artfully is yoga.

– Swami Kripalu

84. The peace of God is with them whose mind and soul are in harmony, who are free from desire and wrath, who know their own soul.

– Hagavad Gita

85. Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

– Rumi

86. If I’m losing balance in a pose, I stretch higher and God reaches down to steady me. It works every time, and not just in yoga.

– Terri Guillemets

87. When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of 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 you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

– Patanjali

88. One of the fundamental principles of yoga: a small action done repeatedly can make an enormous difference.

– Dr. Timothy McCall

89. Anyone can practice. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn’t have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can’t practice Ashtanga yoga.

– Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois

90. Clinging to life, flowing by its own potency [due to past experience], exists even in the wise.

– Patanjali

91. By cultivating attitudes of friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and disregard toward the wicked, the mind-stuff retains its undisturbed calmness.

– Patanjali

92. Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga.

– Kripalvanandji

93. The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perform postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships.

– T.K.V. Desikachar

94. 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.

– Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois

95. Remember the emphasis on the heart. The mind lives in doubt and the heart lives in trust. When you trust, suddenly you become centered.

– Osho

96. Hope is not a prediction of the future, it’s a declaration of what is possible.

– Yogi Bhajan

97. The purpose of life is to watch and experience living. To enjoy living every moment of it. And to live in environments, which are calm, quiet, slow, sophisticated, elegant. Just to be. Whether you are naked or you have a golden robe on you, that doesn’t make any difference. The ideal purpose of your life is that you are grateful – great and full – that you are alive, and you enjoy it.

– Yogi Bhajan

98. The harmonizing of opposing forces is a key aspect of yoga — hot energy is united with cool energy, strong with soft, and masculine with feminine.

– Tara Fraser

99. That’s exactly how it is in yoga. The places where you have the most resistance are actually the places that are going to be the areas of the greatest liberation.

– Rodney Yee

100. The aim of yoga is to eliminate the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit, to rediscover through introspective practice what the poet T.S. Eliot called ‘the still point of the turning world.

– Barbara Stoler Miller

101. You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state.

– Sharon Gannon

102. Yoga does not remove us from the reality or responsibilities of everyday life but rather places our feet firmly and resolutely in the practical ground of experience. We don’t transcend our lives; we return to the life we left behind in the hopes of something better.

– Donna Farhi

103. Practicing yoga during the day is a matter of keeping your eyes on the road and one ear turned toward the infinite.

– Erich Schiffmann

104. Yoga is a way of moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you are.

– Erich Schiffmann

105. Yoga is the unifying art of transforming dharma into action, be it through inspired thought, properly nurturing our children, a painting, a kindness or an act of peace that forever moves humanity forward.

– Micheline Berry

106. Mountain pose is an affirmation. You can conquer anything with your natural boldness and resolute strength. Only you can reach the peak of your success.

– Terri Guillemets

107. The reward for doing yoga well is simple—you get to do a better job of living a fulfilling life.

– Randal Williams

108. I was in yoga the other day. I was in full lotus position. My chakras were all aligned. My mind is cleared of all clatter and I’m looking out of my third eye and everything that I’m supposed to be doing. It’s amazing what comes up, when you sit in that silence. Mama keeps whites bright like the sunlight, Mama’s got the magic of Clorox.

– Ellen DeGeneres

109. Concentrating on poses clears the mind, while focusing on the breath helps the body shift out of fight or flight mode.

– Melanie Haiken

110.The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which is identified with what’s been called the relaxation response. When you do yoga – the deep breathing, the stretching, the movements that release muscle tension, the relaxed focus on being present in your body – you initiate a process that turns the fight or flight system off and the relaxation response on. That has a dramatic effect on the body. The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases, blood pressure decreases. The body seizes this chance to turn on the healing mechanisms.

– Richard Faulds

111. This calm steadiness of the senses is called yoga. Then one should become watchful, becomes yoga comes and go.

– Katha Upanishad

112. Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

– Rumi

113. Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace.

– Bhagavad Gita

114. Understanding without practice is better than practice without understanding. Understanding with practice is better than understanding without practice. Residing in your true nature is better than understanding or practice.

– Upanishads

115. This yoga is not possible, for the one who eats too much, or who does not eat at all; who sleeps too much, or who keeps awake.

– Bhagavad Gita

116. The more you meditate, the more helpful you can be to others, and the more deeply you will be in tune with God.

– Paramahansa Yogananda

117. Silence is not silent. Silence speaks. It speaks most eloquently. Silence is not still. Silence leads. It leads most perfectly.

– Sri Chinmoy

118. The perennial wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita can teach us how to transform our character, conduct and consciousness to meet the challenges of everyday life.

– Leonard Perlmutter

119. You may think that only you are a prisoner, but other people are also prisoners. You are in a small prison, but others are in the big prison outside. When will they be released? Think that you are a yogi and that you are pursuing your sadhana in this particular place and at this particular moment. Immediately you will experience great joy. If you change your understanding, you will be free in a minute.

– Baba Muktananda

120. Mountain pose teaches us, literally, how to stand on our own two feet…. teaching us to root ourselves into the earth…. Our bodies become a connection between heaven and earth.

– Carol Krucoff

121. The attitude of gratitude is the highest yoga.

– Yogi Bhajan

122. 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

123. Yoga is 99 percent practice and one percent theory.

– Sri Pattabhi Jois

124. Yoga is the practice of quieting the mind.

– Patanjali

125. What yoga philosophy and all the great Buddhist teachings tell 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

126. Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.

– Sri Aurobindo

127. If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

– Jack Kornfield

128. Yoga accepts. Yoga gives.

– April Vallei

129. Every waking moment we talk to ourselves about the things we experience. Our self-talk, the thoughts we communicate to ourselves, in turn control the way we feel and act.

– John Lembo

130. Habits allow us to not think about what we’re doing . . . giving us the illusion of ease. When we are under the illusion of ease, not thinking about what we’re doing. Breathing the same old way, moving the same old way, thinking the same old way we check out of the present, out of happiness itself.

– Alex Levin

131. This world is your body. This world is a great school, This world is your silent teacher.

– Swami Sivananda

132. All I’m saying is that to liberate the potential of your mind, body and soul, you must first expand your imagination. You see, things are always created twice: first in the workshop of the mind and then, and only then, in reality. I call this process ‘blueprinting’ because anything you create in your outer world began as a simple blueprint in your inner world.

– Robin Sharma

133. Basketball is an endurance sport, and you have to learn to control your breath; that’s the essence of yoga, too. So, I consciously began using yoga techniques in my practice and playing. I think yoga helped reduce the number and severity of injuries I suffered. As preventative medicine, it’s unequaled.

– Kareem Abdul Jabbar

134. 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.

– Swami Satchidananda

135. Yoga is the fountain of youth. You’re only as young as your spine is flexible.

– Bob Harper

136. For those wounded by civilization, yoga is the most healing salve.

– T. Guillemets

137. Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God.

– Krishnamacharya

138. The Self in you is the same as the Self Universal. Whatever powers are manifested throughout the world, those powers exist in germ, in latency, in you… If you realize the unity of the Self amid the diversities of the Not-Self, then Yoga Will not seem an impossible thing to you.

– Annie Wood Besant

139. When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath.

– Hatha Yoga Pradipika

140. Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.

– Patañjali

141. Yoga practice can make us more and more sensitive to subtler and subtler sensations in the body. Paying attention to and staying with finer and finer sensations within the body is one of the surest ways to steady the wandering mind.

– Ravi Ravindra

142. A person experiences life as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness.

– Albert Einstein

143. The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being.

– Sri Aurobindo

144. Do your practice and all is coming.

– Sri Pattabhi Jois

145. Feel good, be good, and do good.

– Yogi Bhajan

146. Everything is sorrow for the wise.

– Patañjali

147. When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world.

– B. K. S. Iyengar

148. The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realization of yoga, of union.

– Rabindranath Tagore

149. Yoga, an ancient but perfect science, deals with the evolution of humanity. This evolution includes all aspects of one’s being, from bodily health to self realization. Yoga means union – the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day to day life and endows skill in the performance of one’s actions.

– B.K.S. Iyengar

150. Vogue and Self are putting out the message of yoginis as buff and perfect. If you start doing yoga for those reasons, fine. Most people get beyond that and see that it’s much, much more.

– Patricia Walden

151. For me, yoga is not just a workout – it’s about working on yourself.

– Mary Glover

152. By embracing your mother wound as your yoga, you transform what has been a hindrance in your life into a teacher of the heart.

– Phillip Moffitt

153. Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.

– Osho

154. True yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life. Yoga is not to be performed; yoga is to be lived. Yoga doesn’t care about what you have been; yoga cares about the person you are becoming. Yoga is designed for a vast and profound purpose, and for it to be truly called yoga, its essence must be embodied.

– Aadil Palkhivala

155. Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind. Then there is abiding in the Seer’s own form.

– Patañjali

156. Penetration of our mind is our goal, but in the beginning, to set things in motion, there is no substitute for sweat.

– B. K. S. Iyengar

157. Meditation is a way for nourishing and blossoming the divinity within you.

– Amit Ray

158. True meditation is about being fully present with everything that is–including discomfort and challenges. It is not an escape from life.

– Craig Hamilton

159. Yoga is not just repetition of few postures – it is more about the exploration and discovery of the subtle energies of life.

– Amit Ray

160. Inhale the future. Exhale the past. – Unknown