27 Yoga Quotes To Ignite Change

Yoga is much more than a workout, a time to sweat, or a chance to increase flexibility. It’s an opportunity to work on you, an opportunity to find freedom in your body, but also freedom in your mind. Yoga is more than just poses. It is a way to move and train the body and the mind with the breath, to help us become more grounded, more centered, more energetic, and more loving. The mind is connected to the body, the body is connected to the mind, the breath reveals our emotional states—it is all connected. When we can harness the power of the breath, and the power of the mind through the body, we flow through life with more ease and peace.

Yoga is a lifestyle that promotes love and compassion for all beings, including you. It is an opportunity to observe the thought patterns and behaviors of the mind that we have accumulated in our lives. With this opportunity to begin slowing down the mind and engage in non-judgmental observation comes the wonderful gift of witness, awareness, and potential for change. In a nutshell, yoga provides openings and possibilities to change your life for the better so that you can live the life of your dreams. The life you deserve. Yoga provides us an opportunity to connect with ourselves, connect with others, but also connect to our Earth by enabling us to think and act with more kindness, love, compassion, empathy, respect, honor, and dedication to a peaceful way of being with all living beings, including our environment.

I have accumulated some of my favorite yoga quotes from enlightened individuals around the world that inspire me to look at my yoga and life journey with a focused intention. The intention of love and connection. Namaste.

1)“The most important pieces of equipment you need for doing yoga are your body and your mind.” ~ Rodney Yee

2) “When we do yoga, we put controlled stress on ourselves so that we can learn how to react to stresses of life." ~ Leslie Kaminoff

3) “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

4) “We are familiar with moments of freedom, but we also know how it feels to be stuck, caught, as though there are obstacles in our way. We feel imprisoned by limitations. Limitations sometimes manifest on a physical level – inflexibility appears in our body or a rigidity of the mind – we keep bumping into ourselves and other people and things. Nothing seems to work. It feels as if the sky has collapsed and clouds are hanging around us, and our limitless potential seems far away. The goal of yoga is liberation from all limitations. So how do we overcome limitations? Look what happens when you do Hatha Yoga: a stiff and inflexible body will stretch, release and relax. In the same way, if you use the other tools of yoga you will stretch your mind and bring your essential self into the Light.” ~ from Living the Practice by Swami Radhananda

5) “What we want out of yoga is ourselves, not something better than ourselves.” ~ Douglas Brooks

6) "Whatever you do in life, yoga shows you how to do it better." ~ Chuck Miller

7) "Yoga is a way of moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you are." ~ Erich Schiffmann

8) "You are not responsible for the programming you picked up in childhood. However, as an adult, you are one hundred percent responsible for fixing it." ~ Ken Keyes, Jr.

9) “Through sustained focus and meditation on our patterns, habits, and conditioning, we gain knowledge and understanding of our past and how we can change the patterns that aren’t serving us to live more freely and fully.” ~ Yoga Sutra III.18

10) “Healthy plants and trees yield abundant flowers and fruits. Similarly, from a healthy person, smiles and happiness shine forth like the rays of the sun.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

11) “The body is actually a reflection of the mind, a symbol in flesh and blood of everything you think and feel.” ~ Deepak Chopra

12) “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

13) “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

14) “Every cell in our body suffers or grows, receives a life impulse or a death impulse, from every thought that enters the mind. You tend to grow into the image of the thing you think about most.” ~ Swami Sivananda

15) “Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.” ~ Swami Sivananda

16) “Yoga takes you into the present moment, the only place where life truly exists.” ~ Unknown

17) “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl

18) “The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind, & the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

19) “Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

20) “You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.” ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

21) “The pose begins when you want to leave it.”

22) “Remember, it doesn’t matter how deep into a posture you go – what does matter is who you are when you get there.” ~ Max Strom

23) “Make an attitude to be in gratitude, you will find the whole Universe will come to you….Gratitude is the highest form of yoga.” ~ Yogi Bhajan, Guru of Kundalini

24) "We have never arrived. We are in a constant state of becoming." ~ Bob Dylan

25) “You are the universe in motion.” ~ Rumi

26) "You are very powerful, provided you know how powerful you are." ~ Yogi Bhajan

27) “Let your asanas be a prayer to yourself. Let it be a prayer of self-love. Let your breath lead the way towards loving everything about yourself.” ~ Gracious Living Lifestyle