B.k.s Iyengar Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Be inspired but not proud.

Breath is the king of mind.

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.

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

There is only one reality, but there are many ways that reality can be interpreted.

Nothing can be forced, receptivity is everything.

One's spiritual realization lies in none other than how one walks among and interacts with one's fellow beings.

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.

There is a universal reality in ourselves that aligns us with a universal reality that is everywhere.

You do not need to seek freedom in a different land, for it exists with your own body, heart, mind, and soul.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

You exist without the feeling of existence.

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.

By drawing our senses of perception inward, we are able to experience the control, silence, and quietness of the mind.

As breath stills our mind, our energies are free to unhook from the senses and bend inward.

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.

It is Einstein’s famous equation E=MC^2, in which E is energy (rajas), M is mass (tamas), and C is the speed of light (sattva). Energy, mass, and light are endlessly bound together in the universe.

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.

True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness.

A fusion of nature and soul.

Life itself seeks fulfillment as plants seek sunlight.

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.

Meditation is oneness, when there is no longer time, sex, or country. The moment when, after you have concentrated on doing a pose (or anything else) perfectly, you hold it and then forget everything, not because you want to forget but because you are concentrated: this is meditation.

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

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.

Asanas maintain the strength and health of the body, without which little progress can be made. Asanas keep the body in harmony with nature.

There is no difference in souls, only the ideas about ourselves that we wear.

The head is the seat of intelligence. The heart is the seat of emotion.

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.

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

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

You have to create love and affection for your body, for what it can do for you. Love

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

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

Anything physical is always changing, therefore, its reality is not constant, not eternal.

Yoga is the teacher of yoga; yoga is to be understood through yoga. So live in yoga to realize yoga; comprehend yoga through yoga; he who is free from distractions enjoys yoga through yoga.

Asana has two facets, pose and repose. Pose is the artistic assumption of a position. ‘Reposing in the pose’ means finding the perfection of a pose and maintaining it, reflecting in it with penetration of the intelligence and with dedication.

Asana is perfect firmness of body, steadiness of intelligence, and benevolence of spirit.

Action is movement with intelligence.

Happy is the man who knows how to distinguish the real from the unreal, the eternal from the transient and the good from the pleasant by his discrimination and wisdom. Twice blessed is he who knows true love and can love all God's creatures. He who works selflessly for the welfare of others with love in his heart is thrice blessed. But the man who combines within his mortal frame knowledge, love and selfless service is holy and becomes a place of pilgrimage.

Patañjali is saying that yoga is a preventive healing art, science and philosophy, by which we build up robust health in body and mind and construct a defensive strength with which to deflect or counteract afflictions that are as yet unperceived afflictions.

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.

Ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. There is a beginning but no end to knowledge.

An opening is like a doorway, and there is no such thing as a doorway that you can only go through one way. Yes, we are trying to penetrate in, but what is trying to come out to meet us? It

If you have smoked since you were sixteen, every time you pick up a cigarette in the day you are also brainwashing yourself. "In this situation I pick up a cigarette" sends a little ripple down through consciousness that adds to the "take a cigarette" mound. That's why cigarettes are more difficult than almost anything else to give up. Aside from their physical cravings, we create mental cravings because the habit is very repetitive. The habit of smoking puts itself into every situation. The triggers to that situation are so many that many smokers still sometimes want to smoke even years after they have stopped because the mound is still there.

When you have an anger, irritability, or disappointment mound, the conditioned reflex works like this: Suppose you're irritable with your parents, and your mother comes into the room. She might only say "Dinner's ready," but the irritability reflex is ready to spring up.

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.

The seeker should have faith in himself and in his master. He should have faith that God is ever by his side and that no evil can touch him. As faith springs up in the heart it dries out lust, ill-will, mental sloth, spiritual pride and doubt, and the heart freed from these hindrances becomes serene and untroubled.

Life itself seeks fulfillment as plants seek the sunlight. The Universe did not create Life in the hope that the failure of the majority would underscore the success of the few.

Samadhi is an opportunity to encounter our imperishable Self before the transient vehicle of body disappears, as in the cycle of nature, it surely must.

Without education, confidence does not come.

To my father, Bellur Krishnamachar, my mother, Seshamma, and my birthplace, Bellur

Stability-The Physical Body (Asana)

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

Pain is a great philosopher, because it thinks constantly of how to get rid of itself and demands discipline.

To do nothing is an action too, with inevitable consequences, and so that is not a way to escape pain and suffering either.

There are only two ways to confront pain: to live with the pain forever or to work with the pain and see if you can eradicate it.

Extend the energy of the asana out through your extremities. Let the river flow through you.

disturbances of the mind and emotions fade away, and we are able to see true reality.

The mind (manas) and the breath (prana) are intimately connected and the activity or the cessation of activity of one affects the other.

Undoubtedly, the mind is restless and hard to control But it can be trained by constant practice and by freedom from desire." - B.K.S. Iyengar. Climbing is really great, we all love climbing. But what's interesting to me is what happens in my head or in my life because of it. Ultimately, I think climbing is a vehicle for exploration - of the world, of the self.

For one who lacks ethical discipline and perfect physical health, there can be no spiritual illumination. Body, mind and spirit are inseparable: if the body is asleep, the soul is asleep. The

The yogi uses all his resources - physical, economic, mental or moral - to alleviate the pain and suffering of others. He shares his strength with the weak until they become strong. He shares his courage with those who are timid until they become brave by his example. He denies the maxim 'survival of the fittest', but makes the weak strong enough to survive. He comes a shelter to one and all.

You watch yourself from the inside. It is a full silence. Maintain a detached attitude toward the body and, at the same time, do not neglect any part of the body or show haste but remain alert while doing the asana.

So we would say in yoga that the subtle precedes the gross, or spirit precedes matter. But yoga says we must deal with the outer or most manifest first, i.e. legs, arms, spine, eyes, tongue, touch, in order to develop the sensitivity to move inward. This is why asana opens the whole spectrum of yoga’s possibilities. There can be no realization of existential, divine bliss without the support of the soul’s incarnate vehicle, the food-and-water-fed body, from bone to brain. If we can become aware of its limitations and compulsions, we can transcend them. We all possess some awareness of ethical behavior, but in order to pursue yama and niyama at deeper levels, we must cultivate the mind. We need contentment, tranquility, dispassion, and unselfishness, qualities that have to be earned. It is asana that teaches us the physiology of these virtues.

In practical terms, most of us have built up negative habits. You want to turn them into positive habits and then into no habits. As progress reaches into the subtle levels of kosa, you don't avoid smoking because you are "a nonsmoker" or because smoking is bad. You are not invoking a duality of good versus bad. Similarly, you do not have to bite off your tongue to avoid giving an angry retort to people who irritate you; you're not being self-consciously good. It simply becomes second nature to be free. You might give an angry answer to a rude person, you might give a courteous answer to a rude person, but either way you act in freedom, you act appropriately, unconditioned by the past.

Slouching acts like a narcotic to the body. When our parents tell us not to slouch, it is because they instinctively understand that collapsing our chest caves in the very Self. It is because you mind shrinks that your soul shrinks. It is the spine's job to keep the mind alert. It is the spine's job to keep the mind alert. To do this, the spine has to keep the brain in position.

Consciousness is imbued with the three qualities (gunas) of luminosity (sattva), vibrancy (rajas) and inertia (tamas). The gunas also colour our actions: white (sattva), grey (rajas) and black (tamas). Through the discipline of yoga, both actions and intelligence go beyond these qualities and the seer comes to experience his own soul with crystal clarity, free from the relative attributes of nature and actions. This state of purity is samadhi. Yoga is thus both the means and the goal. Yoga is samadhi and samadhi is yoga. There

If the stretch is even, throughout the whole body, there is no strain at all. This does not mean that there is no exertion. There is exertion, but this exertion is exhilaration. There is no wrong stress or strain. A state of elation is felt within. When there is strain, the practice of yoga is purely physical and leads to imbalances and misjudgement. One feels weary and tired and get irritated or disturbed. When one stops straining and the brain is passive, it becomes spiritual yoga. When you have extended to the extreme, live in that asana, and experience the joy of freedom in that asana.

Patañjali describes the fluctuations, modifications and modulations of thought which disturb the consciousness, and then sets out the various disciplines by which they may be stilled. This has resulted in yoga being called a mental sadhana (practice). Such a sadhana is possible only if the accumulated fruits derived from the good actions of past lives (samskaras) are of a noble order. Our samskaras are the fund of our past perceptions, instincts and subliminal or hidden impressions. If they are good, they act as stimuli to maintain the high degree of sensitivity necessary to pursue the spiritual path. Consciousness

The chameleon nature of asmita is apparent when we set ourselves a challenge. The source of the challenge lies in the positive side of asmita, but the moment fear arises negatively, it inhibits our initiative. We must then issue a counter-challenge to disarm that fear

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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.

The yogi’s life is not measured by the number of his days, but the number of his breaths,” wrote B. K. S. Iyengar, an Indian yoga teacher who had spent years in bed as a sickly child until he learned yoga and breathed himself back to health. He died in 2014, at age 95.

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Without certain stress, the true asana is not experienced, and the mind will remain in its limitations and will not move beyond its existing frontiers. This limited state of mind can be described as the petty, small mind.

As mammals, we are homeostatic. That means we maintain certain constant balances within our bodies, temperature for example, by adapting to change and challenge in the environment. Strength and flexibility allow us to keep an inner balance, but man is trying more and more to dominate the environment rather than control himself. Central heating, air conditioning, cars that we take out to drive three hundred yards, towns that stay lit up all night, and food imported from around the world out of season are all examples of how we try to circumvent our duty to adapt to nature and instead force nature to adapt to us. In the process, we become both weak and brittle. Even many of my Indian students who all now sit on chairs in their homes are becoming too stiff to sit in lotus position easily.

When you stand in the warrior pose with your arms extended, you can see the fingers of your hand in front of you, but you can also feel them. You can sense their position and their extension right to the tips of your fingers. You can also sense the placement of your back leg and tell whether it is straight or not without looking back or in a mirror. You must observe and correct the body position (adjusting it from both sides) with the help of the trillions of eyes that you have in the form of cells. This is how you begin to bring awareness to your body and fuse the intelligence of brain and brawn. This intelligence should exist everywhere in your body and throughout the asana. The moment you lose the feeling in the skin, the asana becomes dull, and the flow or current of the intelligence is lost.

When most people stretch, they simply stretch to the point that they are trying to reach, but they forget to extend and expand from where they are. When you extend and expand, you are not only stretching to, you are also stretching from. Try holding out your arm at your side and stretch it. Did your whole chest move with it? Now try to stay centered and extend out your arm to your fingertips. Did you notice the difference? Did you notice the space that you created and the way in which you stretched from your core? Now try expanding your arm outward in every direction like the circumference of a circle. The stretch should bring the sensitivity and experience of creating space in every direction.

When we direct our eyes looking forward from the corner of the temple in its normal field of vision, the frontal brain is working with analysis (vitarka). But when we spread our ocular awareness from the back corner of the temple, near the ear, the back brain is brought into play and works with synthesis (vicara). The front brain can dismantle because of its powerful penetration. The back brain is holistic and reassembles. If you find this difficult to imagine, just think what happens when you first walk into a great medieval cathedral. Your eyes may appear to focus on what is before them, the altar for example, but your real awareness takes in the whole immense volume of the space surrounding you, its grandeur and the hum of its ancient silence. This is holistic meditative vision. While working in asana, if the action is “done” solely from the front brain, it blocks the reflective action of the back brain. The form of each asana needs to be reflected to the wisdom body (vijnanamaya kosa) for readjustment and realignment. Whenever asana is done mechanically from the front brain, the action is felt only on the peripheral body, and there is no inner sensation, there is no luminous inner light. If the asana is done with continual reference to the back of the brain, there is a reaction to each action, and there is sensitivity. Then life is not only dynamic, but it is also electrified with life force.

The yogi’s life is not measured by the number of his days, but the number of his breaths,” wrote B. K. S. Iyengar,

To make life healthy, happy and peaceful, it is essential to study regularly divine literature in a pure place. This study of the sacred books of the world will enable the sadhaka to concentrate upon and solve the difficult problems of life when they arise. It will put an end to ignorance and bring knowledge. Ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. There is a beginning but no end to knowledge.

The body is my temple, asanas are my prayers.

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

Yoga is a mirror to look at ourselves from within.

hallar un equilibrio de polaridad, no el antagonismo de la dualidad.

begins the Yoga Sūtras with atha, meaning ‘now’, and ends with iti, ‘that is all’. Besides this search for the soul, there is nothing.