B.K.S. Iyengar: 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

Way , Change , Personality

“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

Life , Music , Soul

“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

Freedom

“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 , Feeling , Sense

“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

“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

“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

Life , Marriage , Children , People

“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

“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

Life , Health , Law , Adulthood

“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

“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

Life , Health , Way , Soul

“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

“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

“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