B.K.S. Iyengar Quotes (83 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Light on Yoga

B.K.S. Iyengar

B.K.S. Iyengar: 83 quotes 19 likes

Famous B.K.S. Iyengar Quotes

“Love begets courage, moderation creates abundance and humility generates power.”

B.K.S. Iyengar book Light on Yoga

Source: Light on Yoga

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

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 61

“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

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 59-60

“Yoga allows you to find a new kind of freedom that you may not have known even existed.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xiv

“Breath is the king of mind.”

B.K.S. Iyengar book Light on Yoga

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 28
Source: Light on Yoga
Context: Health is not to be mistaken for mere existence. It is the balance of the body, mind and self... there rests the mind. If the breath scatters, the mind wanders. If mind wanders, the breath scatters. So still the breath to still the mind. Mind is the king.

“It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

B.K.S. Iyengar Quotes about life

“Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life, where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xiv

“Life itself seeks fulfillment as plants seek sunlight. The Universe did not create Life in the hope that the failure of the majority would underscore the success of the few. Spirtiuality atleast, we live in a democracy, an equal opportunity society.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xiv

“My poor health was matched, as it often is when one is sick, by my poor mood. A deep melancholy often overtook me, and at times I asked myself whether life was worth the trouble of living.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

“Seeing that the general state of my health was so poor, my brother-in-law recommended a stiff regime of yoga practice to knock me into shape and strengthen me up to face life's trials and challenges as I approached adulthood”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

“I set off in yoga seventy years ago when ridicule, rejection, and outright condemnation were the lot of a seeker through yoga even in its native land of India. Indeed If I had become a sadhu, a mendicant holy man, wandering the great trunk roads of British India, begging bowl in hand, I would have met with less derision and won more respect. At one time I was asked to become a sannyasin and renounce the world, but I declined. I wanted to live as an ordinary householder with all the trials and tribulations of life and to take my yoga practice r to average people who share my life with me the common life of work, marriage and children. I was blessed with all three…”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

“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

Source: Paul G. Balch, Jaylee Balch The Energetic Anatomy of a Yogi: Healing the Emotional and Mental Body Through Yoga http://books.google.co.in/books?id=BdDtAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA23, Strategic Book Publishing, 2013, p. 23

B.K.S. Iyengar Quotes about the soul

“You do not need to seek freedom in some distant land, for it exists within your own body, heart, mind, and soul. Illuminated emancipation, freedom, unalloyed and untainted bliss await you, but you must choose to embark on the Inward Journey to discover it.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.22

“Non-physical reality is called Parusa in Sanskrit 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

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 9

“Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 48

“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

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 22

“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

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 6

“When we free ourselves from physical disabilities, emotional disturbances, and mental distractions, we open the gates to our soul.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 22-23

B.K.S. Iyengar: Trending quotes

“Action is movement with intelligence. The world is filled with movement. What the world needs is more conscious movement, more action.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life

World , Intelligence

“Anything physical is always changing, therefore, its reality is not constant, not eternal. Nature is in this sense like an actor who has only different roles.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 8

Nature , Reality , Sense , Change

“The hardness of a diamond is part of its usefulness, but its true value is in the light that shines through it.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 27

Light , Parting

B.K.S. Iyengar Quotes

“It is through the alignment of the body that I discovered the alignment of my mind, self, and intelligence.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 8

Intelligence

“Be inspired but not proud.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life

“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. It is something that we must build up.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

Health

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

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Nancy Hine The Depression Trap: Ten Ways to Set Yourself Free http://books.google.co.in/books?id=7PxT2AJS_H4C&pg=PA61, Red Raft Publishing LLP, 2008, p. 61

“Demonstration of one's spiritual realization lies in none other than how one walks among and interacts with one's fellow beings.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 11

“There is no progress toward ultimate freedom without transformation, and this is the key issue in all lives.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 5

Freedom

“The mind and the breath are the king and queen of human consciousness.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 130

“The art of teaching is also to know when to stop. It is good when people want to be better, physically, morally, spiritually, intellectually. But a fashion? No! Yoga is a painful art. It’s not like dance or music, where the person watching gets pleasure. Only the person doing it finds joy. It has nothing to do with externals.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: BKS Iyengar – obituary http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11045993/BKS-Iyengar-obituary.html, The Telegraph, 20 August 2014

Pain , People , Pleasure , Art

“Yoga, as it was understood by its sages, is designed to satisfy all the human needs in a comprehensive, seamless whole. Its goal is nothing less than to attain the integrity of oneness –oneness with ourselves and as a consequence oneness with all that lies beyond ourselves. We become the harmonious microcosm in the universal microcosm. Oneness, what I call integration, is the foundation for wholeness, inner peace, and ultimate freedom.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

Peace , Freedom , Universe

“All games are meaningless if you do not know the rules.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 83

Game

“We are a little piece of continual change, looking at an infinite quantity of continual change.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 7

Change

“Yoga ferried me across the great river from the bank of ignorance to the shore of knowledge and wisdom.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.x

Wisdom , Knowledge

“We think of intelligence and perception as taking place exclusively in our brains, but yoga teaches us that awareness and intelligence must permeate the body. Each part of the body literally has to engulfed by the intelligence. We must create a marriage between the awareness of the body and that of the mind. When two parties do not cooperate, there is unhappiness on both sides.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 28

Marriage , Intelligence , Thinking , Parting

“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

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xxii

Soul , Freedom , Heart

“While this is a legitimate place to begin, it is not the end… Even in simple asanas, one is experiencing the three levels of quest: the external quest, which brings firmness of the body; the internal quest, which brings steadiness of intelligence; and the innermost quest, which brings benevolence of spirit.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

Intelligence

“When I stretch, I stretch in such a way that my awareness moves, and a gate of awareness finally opens.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

In Mint newspaper quoted in: BBC News India yoga guru BKS Iyengar dies http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28862979 BBC News, 20 August 2014

Way

“Spirituality is not some external goal that one must seek, but a part of the divine core of each of us, which we must reveal… For the yogi, spirit is not separate from body. Spirituality is not ethereal and outside nature but accessible and palpable in our bodies”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 18

Nature , Parting

“The union of nature and soul removes the veil of ignorance that covers our intelligence.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 9-10

Soul , Intelligence , Nature

“Patanjali is considered the father of the yoga. On reality as far as we know, he was a yogi and polymath living around the fifth century BC, India, who collated and elaborated knowledge of the yogis’ life and practices. He wrote the Yoga Sutras, lierally a thread of aphorisms about yoga, consciousness and the human condition. Patanjali also explained the relationship between the natural world and the innermost and transcendent soul…. What Patanjali said applies to me and will apply to you.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.x-xi

Life , World , Soul , Nature

“If we become aware of its limitations and compulsions, we can transcend them.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 12

“Our flawed mechanisms of perception and thought are not a cause for grief, but an opportunity to evolve, for an internal evolution of consciousness that will also make possible, in a sustainable form, our aspirations toward what we call individual success and global progress.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xv

Success

“By drawing our senses of perception inward, we are able to experience the control, silence, and quietness of the mind. This ability to still and gently silence the mind is essential, not only for meditation and the inward journey but also so that the intuitive intelligence can function usefully and in a worthwhile manner in the external world.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 12-13

World , Intelligence , Sense , Silence

“We often fool ourselves that we are concentrating because we fix our attention on wavering objects”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 13

Fools

“Do not aim low, you will miss the mark. Aim high and you will be on a threshold of bliss.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 177

“Yoga goes beyond the physical motions. The practice of yogasana for the sake of health, to keep fit, or to maintain flexibility is the external practice of yoga.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

Health

“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

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 60

People , Way , Envy

“Breath is the vehicle of consciousness and so, by its slow measured observation and distribution, we learn to tug our attention away from external desires toward a judicious, intelligent awareness.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 12

Intelligence , Learning

“Often, we hear people saying they remain active and light when they do just a little bit of asana practice. When a raw beginner experiences this state of well-being, it is not merely the external or anatomical effects of yoga. It is also about the internal physiological and psychological effects of the practice.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Light on Life: B.K.S. Iyengar's Yoga Insights

People , Light

“Nothing can be forced, receptivity is everything.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 12

“When I set off in yoga, I had no understanding of the greater glory of yoga. I too was seeking its physical benefits, and it was these that saved my life. When I say that yoga saved my life, I am not exaggerating. It was yoga that gave me a new birth with health from illness and firmness from infirmity.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xvii

Life , Health , Birth , Understanding

“I can remain thoughtfully thoughtless. It is not an empty mind.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Ellen Barry "B. K. S. Iyengar, Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West, Dies at 95"

“True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 13

“Yoga allows you to find an inner peace that is not ruffled and riled by the endless stresses and struggles of life.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xv

Life , Peace

“The head is the seat of intelligence. The heart is the seat of emotion. Both have to work in cooperation with the body.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 29

Intelligence , Heart

“When I still find some parts of my body that I have not found before, I tell myself, yes I am progressing scientifically… 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

Source: BBC News "India yoga guru BKS Iyengar dies"

Way , Parting

“Because I want to make a good death.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

To a question posed to him “Why do you practise yoga? at the end of his lecture in Bristol quoted in: Silvia Prescott My teacher, Mr Iyengar: a former pupil remembers the yoga master http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/22/my-teacher-bks-iyengar-yoga, The Guardian, 22 August 2014

Death

“Asanas keep the body healthy and strong and in harmony with nature.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, and Aesthetics. Conference Harvard Divinity School) Gardens and the Passion for the Infinite, Volume 78 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=GuImRK8_SRAC&pg=PA87, Springer Science & Business Media, 31 January 2003, p. 87

Nature , Strong

“It took me decades to appreciate the depth and true value of Yoga. Sacred texts supported my discoveries, but it was not that signposted the way. What I learned through yoga, I found out through yoga. I am not however, a “ self made man”. I am only what seventy-two years of devoted yoga sadhana has created out of me. Any contribution I have made to the world has been the fruit of my sadhana.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.x

World , Way , Support , Learning

“Yoga transformed my life from a parasitic one to a life of purpose. Later yoga inspired me to partake in the joy and nobility of life, which I carried to many thousands of people without consideration of religion, caste, gender, or nationality.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xi

Life , People , Religion , Joy

“As animals, we walk the earth. As bearers of divine essence, we are among the stars. As human beings, we are caught in the middle, seeking to reconcile the paradox of how to make our way upon earth while striving for something more permanent and more profound.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xiii

Way , Star , Animals

“The compass is ourselves. So we are able to infer that there is a universal reality in ourselves that aligns us with a universal reality that is everywhere.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 8

Reality , Universe

“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

Source: Healthiest You Ever: 365 Ways to Lose Weight, Build Strength, Boost Your BMI, Lower Your Blood Pressure, Increase Your Stamina, Improve Your Cholesterol Levels, and Energize from Head to Toe! http://books.google.co.in/books?id=JDEMOtnIVHoC&pg=PA291, Adams Media, 18 November 2011, p. 291

God , World

“You exist without the feeling of existence, existence has no meaning.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 57

Feeling

“Yoga was my Destiny, and for the past seventy years, yoga has been my life, a life fused with the practice, philosophy, and teaching of the art of yoga. Like all destinies, like all great adventures, I have gone to places I have imagined before I set out. For me It has been a journey of discovery.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, P.xi

Life , Art , Imagination , Past

“Yoga is about the will, working with intelligence and self-reflexive consciousness, can free us from the inevitability of the wavering mind and outwardly directed senses.”

B.K.S. Iyengar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 13