Yoga Teacher Quotes

When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.

Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements.

When you blame, you open up a world of excuses, because as long as you're looking outside, you miss the opportunity to look inside, and you continue to suffer.

Courage is often associated with aggression, but instead should be seen as a willingness to act from the heart.

Yoga is bringing fitness in body, calmness in mind, kindness in heart and awareness in life.

The Stone of Guilt in the River of the Mind, the block in the flow of intelligence. ~ Paramahamsa Nithyananda

My yoga teacher says to think of your thoughts like skateboarders passing through our line of vision; just watch them go by, don't try to follow them down the street.

Om is that God of love. Like a loving mother Om cleans us of our clutters collected through many incarnations.

Peace is the foundation of yoga. Karma yoga is the effort for bringing peace and happiness in the world.

The purpose of karma yoga is to transcend the bondage of selfish genes through the service of others.

Teaching yoga itself is great karma yoga, because it reconnects people to the source.

Yoga is to find union - between mind and body, between the individual and her God, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student..

The aspirant would do well to avoid those ‘spiritual teachers’ who delight in pointing out the evils of the world. These are immature egos attempting to discard their own negativities by projecting them onto others. The true yogi is one who is like a lion with himself, always striving to eradicate that which shadows his inner light, and like a lamb with others, always striving to see their inner light, no matter how dense may be the clouds that hide it. He is the king of the jungle of his world. He hides from no one and seeks escape from nothing. (88)

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.

During my travels in India I met a man at an ashram who was about 45-50. A little older than everyone else. He tells me a story. He had retired and he was traveling on a motorcycle with his wife on the back. While stopped at a red light, a truck ran into them from behind and killed his wife. He was badly injured and almost died. He went into a coma and it was unclear if he’d ever walk again. When he finally came out of it and found out what had happened, he naturally was devastated and heartbroken. Not to mention physically broken. He knew that his road ahead of rehabilitation, both physically and psychologically, was going to be hard. While he had given up, he had one friend who was a yoga teacher who said, “We're going to get you started on the path to recovery.” So, she kept going over to his place, and through yoga, helped him be able to walk again. After he could walk and move around again, he decided to head to India and explore some yoga ashrams. While he was there he started to learn about meditation and Hinduism and Buddhism. He told me that he never would have thought he’d ever go down this path. He would have probably laughed at anyone who goes to India to find themselves. I asked, “Did you get what you were hoping for?” He said, "Even though I lost my wife, it turned out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to me because it put me on this path.

S.T.O.P. = Start To Open Possibilities

So you take physical affection when you can get it, almost feeling guilty when you do. You might sleep with someone just to get to the cuddling part, knowing full well that if cuddling had been on the table, you might not have even slept with them to begin with. You might get super happy when your yoga teachers do adjustments because having someone touch you in a safe, gentle way⁠—even for two seconds⁠—feels like it changes your whole world. I know I do. Partly because human beings are designed to be physically comforted by one another.

In education the first requirement is the teacher, the second is the student. What should happen between them is learning. How it should happen is through the constant teaching of that which will be relevant to the student. That is education.

We need spend out time in feeling the moment rather then creating the moment. Let it flow as it and just feel everything. Brain is employee of mind.

Yoga is the ultimate fusion of science and spirituality.

For me, far more important than whether teachers have calm voices is how authentic they are—how much of their true selves they allow into their teaching.

Viatcheslav Goloubov is a Yoga Teacher/lecturer in Vancouver who provides the help of yin yoga, AcroYoga, and Martial arts.

at the University of Ottawa in Canada, a yoga teacher was shamed into suspending her class, “because yoga originally comes from India.” She offered to retitle the course “Mindful Stretching.

From scientific evidence and analysis, it is clear that yoga was originated in India around 5500 BCE, much before the Vedas.

Do not apologize for your sacred body. All of you is holy.

It could be said that we become so much a stranger that we disappear and find ourselves reborn in the midst of humanity which is quite a paradox.

To live the life of Yoga, to repeat, is about a faith that continuously guides the teacher toward practices leading to the harmony of body, mind, and spirit.

Although devotion is to be given to many institutes and teachers, the essence is to be taken from them all, as the bee takes the essence from many flowers.- Samkhya, 4.13, an Eastern scripture

The less I'm in a hurry, the quicker the results seem to happen. With patience, the quality of my experience has a depth that can't be measured bon the clock, but by the timelessness of my experience.

Dave’s visit eventually grew into a very active yoga program, and in due course we received the first grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the effects of yoga on PTSD. Dave’s work also contributed to my developing my own regular yoga practice and becoming a frequent teacher at Kripalu, a yoga center in the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts. (Along the way, my own HRV pattern improved as well.)

As I said, I decided to try an experiment: Right now, from within my perception of my current circumstances, and from within the starkness of this realization, I determined to conceive and focus on what I would tell—and what I have told—my younger self, and live with the consequences. Here is what I wrote down: Immediately disassociate from destructive people and forces, if not physically then ethically—and watch for the moment when you can do so physically. Use every means to improve your mental acuity. Every sacrifice of empty leisure or escapism for study, industry, and growth is a fee paid to personal freedom. Train the body. Grow physically strong. Reduce consumption. You will be strengthened throughout your being. Seek no one’s approval through humor, servility, or theatrics. Be alone if necessary. But do not compromise with low company. At the earliest possible point, learn meditation (i.e., Transcendental Meditation), yoga, and martial arts (select good teachers). Go your own way—literally. Walk/bike and don’t ride the bus or in a car, except when necessary. Do so in all weather: rain, snow, etc. Be independent physically and you will be independent in other ways. Learn-study-rehearse. Pursue excellence. Or else leave something alone. Go to the limit in something or do not approach it. Starve yourself of the compulsion to derive your sense of wellbeing from your perception of what others think of you. Do this as an alcoholic avoids a drink or an addict a needle. It will be agonizing at first, since you may have no other perception of self; but this, finally, is the sole means of experiencing Self. Does this kind of advice, practicable at any time of life, really alter or reselect the perceived past, and, with it, the future? I intend to find out. You

Sant Mat (the path and teachings as taught and practiced by saints) delineates the path of union of soul with the Divine. The teachings of the saints explain the re-uniting as follows: The individual soul has descended from the higher worlds [the Realm of the Divine] to this city of illusion, bodily existence. It has descended from the Soundless state to the essence of Sound, from that Sound to Light, and finally from the realm of Light to the realm of Darkness. The qualities (dharmas, natural tendencies) of the sense organs draw us downward and away from our true nature. The nature of the soul (atman) draws us upwards and inwards and establishes us in our own true nature. Returning to our origins involves turning inward: withdrawal of consciousness from the senses and the sense objects in order to go upward from the darkness to the realms of Light and Sound. [We experience this phenomenon of withdrawal as we pass from waking consciousness to deep sleep.] Another way to express this is to go inward from the external sense organs to the depth of the inner self. (Both of these expressions are the metaphors that signify the same movement). The natural tendencies of the soul (atman) are to move from outward to inward. The current of consciousness which is dispersed in the nine gates of the body and the senses, must be collected at the tenth gate. The tenth gate is the gathering point of consciousness. Therein lies the path for our return. The tenth gate is also known as the sixth chakra, the third eye, bindu, the center located between the two eyebrows. This is the gateway through which we leave the gates of the sense organs and enter in the divine realms and finally become established in the soul. We travel back from the Realm of Darkness to the Realm of Light, from the Light to the Divine Sound, and from the Realm of Sound to the Soundless State. This is called turning back to the Source. This is what dharma or religion really intends to teach us. This is the essence of dharma.

But don’t chase these mystical experiences or feelings of light. They are meant to be rungs on a ladder. And like most things they will change. They will disappear. They aren’t meant to stay. They are meant to be teachers. They show us what is possible, and give us hope that we can find our way home.

We see the world the way we do — as solid, lasting, and independent — because we’ve been primed to do so by our parents, teachers, and virtually everyone alive. It’s this continued reinforcement that continues into the dream state and primes us to see the dream as solid, lasting, and independent, and therefore non-lucid.

I close the loo seat and sit down. I’m not proud of what I do next. But who hasn’t done the wrong thing for the right reasons at least once in their life? I honestly thought this would be the end of something, not the beginning. I carefully peel off the Sellotape and the padded manila envelope flaps open. I just knew Lisa wouldn’t have licked it. She’s as careless with things as she is with people. I breathe in and out, as deep as I can, one hand holding the envelope, the other resting on my diaphragm as it rises to make sure that my abdominal muscles are contracting properly on the inbreath. I know more about breathing than any yoga teacher.

The Sanskrit texts make it clear that a cataclysm on this scale, though a relatively rare event, is expected to wash away all traces of the former world and that the slate will be wiped clean again for the new age of the earth to begin. In order to ensure that the Vedas can be repromulgated for future mankind after each pralaya the gods have therefore designed an institution to preserve them -- the institution of the Seven Sages, a brotherhood of adepts possessed of unerring memories and supernatural powers, practitioners of yoga, performers of the ancient rituals and sacrifices, ascetics, spiritual visionaries, vigilant in the battle against evil, great teachers, knowledgeable beyond all imagining, who reincarnate from age to age as the guides of civilization and the guardians of cosmic justice.

The literal meaning of guru yoga is ‘union with the teacher´s nature’. To blend your mind with the teacher’s mind is the most profound of all practices, and the shortest path of realization. It is the life force of the path and the one practice that includes all others. It was through relying on a spiritual teacher that all the bodhisattvas of the past generated the mind of enlightenment and reached perfection.

Each time we come to savasana, we practice dying—we surrender the body to the earth and prepare for our destiny in this life. Facing death and embracing mortality is the key to living. We may fear it, resist it, and spend untold hours dreading it, But our mortality is the place where our human nature comes face to face with our divine nature. In a very real sense, death is our greatest teacher and the one true guru.

I had tried to stop my ambition, to hide it from myself because I was too afraid I would not get to satisfy it, that I’d be devastated, again. That I was too different to ever succeed. That I would never get to move what’s within me out into the world, a fate of perpetual frustration. I told myself this so much that I forgot to see: I am hungry. Maybe hunger is not pretty in a woman. Maybe a ferocious appetite is unbecoming. But, no, those are only lies we’ve been told. Let it out. There is a fire in the pit of me and I don’t care who sees it.

There is a very interesting Hindu teacher by the name of Krishnamurti whom many of you may know about. He tells people that all of their religious inquiry, their yoga practices, their reading religious books, and so on, are nothing but the perpetuation of egocentricity on a very refined and highbrow level. Therefore he encourages disciples who studiously avoid reading any kind of philosophical or edifying book. They are reduced to reading mystery stories and they become devoted nondisciples. What a clever bind that is! It is the same as the Zen technique.

In the West everyone wants the “highest” practice, a wish that indicates a misunderstanding of the path. Everyone wants to hurry through the foundational practices (ngön dro). But great masters do these practices all their lives. They continue to contemplate impermanence, cultivate compassion, do purification practices, make offerings, and do Guru Yoga. It is not a stage to get over. The most accomplished masters and teachers do these practices and cultivate these qualities all the way to the highest stages of realization, because there is still benefit in doing them.

here’s where it gets confusing. In spiritual life, the same word is used to describe both the archetype of the divine Guide and a human teacher—who may or may not be enlightened. In India, your music teacher, your Sanskrit teacher, or even your biology teacher might be addressed as guruji, because all teachers are considered worthy of respect. In the same way, in spiritual life, you may first meet the guru-principle through a teacher or mentor who happens to be a fairly ordinary human being with some spiritual knowledge. In Sanskrit, one name for this kind of teacher is acharya, meaning “the one who instructs.” The therapist who introduces you to deep breathing, the yoga teacher who takes you into your first meditative shavasana, and the author of your favorite meditation book are all important for your practice at different stages. (And any of them, in traditional India, might be addressed as “guruji” or “respected teacher.”) Different acharyas can provide particular kinds of instruction. If you’re a serious student, you’ll learn to recognize who can help you at each stage, when to stay with a teacher despite doubts or resistances, and when it might be time to move on.

Mom, she's a yoga teacher. She doesn't do..." He lowered his voice just fractionally. "Real jobs." Aja heard it loud and clear, and looked at him incredulously. "I don't do real jobs?" "Don't be ridiculous," Lucinda said to Michael. Aja's chest tightened with gratitude before she added, "This isn't a real job, it's a task that someone needs to do, and Aria seems to fit the bill." She leveled that cool blue gaze on Aja. "Don't you?" "I don't think so," Aja said, suddenly taken over by a cool resentment. She looked from Lucinda to Michael. "I can't believe you two are arguing back and forth about how incompetent and... and... desperate I apparently seem to you. Not that I should have to defend myself to you, but my little job helps a lot of people. Would you have any more respect for me if I was called a physical therapist instead of a yoga instructor? Because that's basically what I am." Her anger rose disproportionate to the offense, and she tried to keep her voice controlled. "The hospital thinks so, anyway, as they have kept me employed there for five years. They consider it to be a real job when they pay me." For a moment, Lucinda and Michael both seemed stunned into silence.

By doing something small to honor the commencement of the various episodes of the day, our whole being has a chance to refocus, and the ensuing experience is received in a much different way. This simple yet profound practice can thus infuse us with a greater sense of ease and vitality as we advance through the dance of life. As Byrd Baylor writes:    Some people say there is a new sun every day, that it begins its life at dawn and lives for one day only. They say you have to welcome it. You have to make the sun happy. You have to make a good day for it. You have to make a good world for it to live its one-day life in. And the way to start, they say, is just by looking east at dawn. When they look east tomorrow, you can too. Your song will be an offering—and you’ll be one more person in one more place at one more time in the world saying hello to the sun, letting it know you are there. If the sky turns a color sky it never was before, just watch it. That’s part of the magic. That’s the way to start a day1.

An ancient Hindu Sutra, known as Natha-namavali, which is preserved among the Natha Yogis, has given a different version of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, whom they name as Isha Natha. Isha Natha came to India at the age of fourteen. After this he returned to his own country and began his preaching. Soon however, his brutish and materialistic countrymen conspired against him and had him crucified. After the crucifixion, or perhaps even before it, Isha Natha entered samadhi, or a profound trance, by means of yoga. Seeing him thus, the Jews presumed he was dead and buried him in a tomb. At that very moment, however, one of his gurus, or teachers, the great Chetan Natha, happened to be in profound meditation, in the lower reaches of the Himalayas, and he saw in a vision the tortures which Isha Natha was undergoing. He therefore made his body lighter than air and passed over to the land of Israel. The day of his arrival was marked with thunder and lightning, for the gods were angry with the Jews and the whole world trembled. When Chetan Natha arrived, he took the body of Isha Natha from the tomb and woke him from his samadhi, and later led him off to the sacred land of the Aryans. Isha Natha then established an ashram in the lower regions of the Himalayas, and he established the cult of the Lingam and the Yoni there.131

He begins talking to Himself inside of Himself, playing two parts as the student and the teacher or as Shiva and Shakti. ‘Hmm, why are things like this?’ ‘Well here’s why’. Becoming both, He has a dialogue within Himself. When we turn within we can still hear that rumbling, vibratory monologue. It is the fundamental vibration of the mind within. Whatever is in Shiva is in you, whatever divine powers are in God are in you. To truly get there you have to become unlimited. You have to let go of limitation, you have to let go of ego, you have to let go of ignorance. It is not a trivial process. The Mahartamanjari says: This is the way that the error of ordinary persons who think, ‘I am not the Lord’, is dissipated. This is an error with respect to the Self who shines always as the ‘I’. One repeats to them, ‘You are Shiva, gifted with the free power of Consciousness and activity: this world depends on you as a kingdom on its king. It is in you that the world shines, in you that it resides. It is you as Consciousness that the world has as its basis: from which it arises and into which it is reabsorbed. There is no world here without you. Only your awareness makes the world so for you. Contemplate this until conviction dawns. The Shiva Sutras say that such conviction is realisation of the Self. Shivo’ham. I am Shiva. All this arises and has its being in my awareness!

What possibilities are there for preventing actions with negative consequences, actions that we may later regret? One possibility is dhyāna, which in this context means “reflection.”3 Reflection can take many forms. For example, when faced with an important decision, you could imagine what would happen if you did the exact opposite of what your instincts suggest.4 Try to make the consequence of your decision as real as possible in your imagination. No matter what it is or what you feel, before you make an important decision and take action you should give yourself the opportunity to consider the matter with an open mind and a certain degree of objectivity. Dhyāna in this respect is a quiet, alert consideration, a meditation. The aim is to free yourself of preconceptions and avoid actions that you may later regret and that may create new troubles (duḥkha) for you. Dhyāna strengthens self-sufficiency. Yoga makes us independent. We all want to be free, although many of us are dependent on psychologists, gurus, teachers, drugs, or whatever. Even if advice and guidance are helpful, in the end we ourselves are the best judge of our own actions. No one is more interested in me than me. With the help of dhyāna we find our own methods and systems for making decisions and better understand our behavior. There are other ways of distancing ourselves from our actions than reflecting on how it would be if we were to act differently from what we intend. We might go to a concert or go for a walk or do something else that calms the thoughts. All the while the mind goes on working unconsciously, without any external pressure. In the pursuit of other activities we gain a certain distance. However short it may be, time becomes available to cast the mind over everything surrounding the decision that has to be made. Perhaps with ease and distance we will make a better decision. Stepping out of a situation in order to get a better look at it from another standpoint is called pratipakṣa. The same word describes the process of considering other possible courses of action.5 The time spent in dhyāna is extremely important. Through self-reflection our actions gain in quality.

No teacher of RE ever said to me: “Beyond the limited realm of the senses, the shallow pool of the known, is a great untamable ocean, and we don’t have a fucking clue what goes on in there.” What we receive through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch is all we know. We have tools that can enhance that information, we have theories for things that we suspect lie beyond that information, filtered through an apparatus limited once more to those senses. Those senses are limited; the light range we detect is within a narrow spectrum, between infrared light and ultraviolet light; other species see light that we can’t see. In the auditory realm, we hear but a fraction of the sound vibrations; we don’t hear high-pitched frequencies, like dog whistles, and we don’t hear low frequencies like whale song. The world is awash with colors unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests. Expressible only through symbol and story, as it can never be known by the innocent mind. The stories are formulas, poems, tools for reflection through which we may access the realm behind the thinking mind, the consciousness beyond knowing and known, the awareness that is not connected to the haphazard data of biography. The awareness that is not prickled and tugged by capricious emotion. The awareness that is aware that it is aware. In meditation I access it; in yoga I feel it; on drugs it hit me like a hammer—at sixteen, staring into a bathroom mirror on LSD, contrary to instruction (“Don’t look in the mirror, Russ, it’ll fuck your head up.” Mental note: “Look in mirror.”). I saw that my face wasn’t my face at all but a face that I lived behind and was welded to by a billion nerves. I looked into my eyes and saw that there was something looking back at me that was not me, not what I’d taken to be me. The unrefined ocean beyond the shallow pool was cascading through the mirror back at me. Nature looking at nature.

Following the release of Yoga Anatomy in the summer of 2007, its success took everyone by surprise. As of this writing it has been translated into 19 languages, over 300,000 copies are in print, and it remains among the top-selling yoga books in the United States. We have received tremendous positive feedback from readers, many of whom are educators who now include Yoga Anatomy as a required text in their yoga teacher training courses. Practitioners as diverse as orthopedists, chiropractors, physical therapists, fitness trainers, and Pilates and Gyrotonic instructors are making good use of the book as well.

Bondage and liberation is another important issue that Kashmir Shaivism has clarified in a unique manner. Most of the other schools of Indian philosophy assert that all beings are responsible for their own misery and can only attain liberation through their own efforts. But Kashmir Shaivism, while advocating personal effort for the attainment of freedom from limitation, finds the basic source of both bondage and liberation in the divine creative expression of God. In this philosophy, the world and our lives are often described as a divine drama or play in which Paramasiva is the sole producer, director, and cast of characters. He is everything wrapped up in one. It is He who, in the initial parts of His divine play, obscures His divinity and purity, appears as an ordinary person with limitations, and becomes progressively denser and more ignorant as a result. But in the final part of this play, He bestows His divine grace on the person He appears to be. This person then turns away from misery, becomes interested in spiritual philosophy, comes into contact with a teacher, receives initiation into spiritual practices (sadhana), attains correct knowledge of the theoretical principles of absolute non-dualism, practices yoga, and develops an intense devotion for the Lord. Finally this person recognizes that he is none other than the Lord Himself. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. xxii

I have heard stories from my Spiritual Teacher, Roy Eugene Davis, that are mesmerizing and difficult to believe at first, until you begin to see things in your own life that validate what you have read in books and heard from Masters.

If we had more Spiritual teachers around, then perhaps more people would be educated about the inadequacy of the finite to satisfy the Infinite.  Physical things come and go; your everlasting soul is forever.

Spanda Karikas II.1 says: Tadakramya balam mantrah sarvajnabalashalinah Pravartante ’dhikaraya karananiva dehinam Baba Muktananda’s colourful and informal translation of this aphorism was, ‘The mantra is the power of everything and everyone. The mantra is all-knowing and can do anything’. Jaideva Singh’s translation is, ‘Mantras derive their power from the spanda principle and finally dissolve in it’. For Baba, mantra was a method for tapping the deep source of inner energy and bringing its life to the surface of things. He considered the repetition of a mantra received from an awakened teacher to be a streamlined, easy and almost effortless path. There is tremendous emotional power in language. In fact, thought and feeling are two sides of the same coin. Thought or language is a container of feeling: words and ideas shape emotion and create upliftment or contraction. The wrong kind of language (or thought) pinches feeling and creates emotional pain, while the right kind of language is a fitting vehicle of feeling, and given such a vehicle, feeling becomes free to expand and soar. Language has the binding power of ignorance (Shiva Sutras I.2: Jnanam bandhah: Knowledge is bondage) and also the mysterious freeing power of the master of matrika. Mantra is a key method for liberating the practitioner from illusion. Do not underestimate it.

consider that you can commit to little as five minutes a day. The highest form of discipline is consistency: powerful transformation can come from regularity.

A sutra is, so to speak, the bare thread of an exposition, the absolute minimum that is necessary to hold it together, unadorned by a single "bead" of elaboration. Only essential words are used. Often, there is no complete sentence-structure. There was a good reason for this method. Sutras were composed at a period when there were no books. The entire work had to be memorized, and so it had to be expressed as tersely as possible. Patanjali's Sutras, like all others, were intended to be expanded and explained. The ancient teachers would repeat an aphorism by heart and then proceed to amplify it with their own comments, for the benefit of their pupils. In some instances these comments, also, were memorized, transcribed at a later date, and thus preserved for us.

Spinoza? I Hardly Know Her! Whether or not Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was an atheist wunderkind who saw reason as the end of superstition or a heretic with a semi-decent Latin teacher, he changed the course of intellectual history with his Ethics. Say what you will about what happens next, but the mere fact that a seventeeth-century Jew can light upon the concept of reality as perfection without ever having attended a yoga class is reason enough to include him in this illustrious tome. Other big ideas: Man is free to think and feel as reason dictates, and it’s not reality that blows; rather, it’s our perception of reality. Snuggle up to that on a cold, dark night.

Everything and everyone has been a teacher, assisting in remembrance of One.

The yogic scriptures paint a picture of perfection, and perfection can be your aim, but I can tell you sad stories about myself and others who have entered into a state of premature holiness with unpleasant consequences.

A person with less knowledge and more self-confidence (which is primarily a way of thinking and acting) will often run circles around a person with more knowledge and less self-confidence; which means that self-confidence has the upper hand to knowledge when it comes to acting in the world. It has been interesting to see many of my star academic students struggle with teaching in the real world, while others who were less qualified in the academic field but had more self-confidence have gone out and positively affected many more people through their teaching.

One of the hallmarks of great teachers is that they rejoice when their students surpass them. Encouraging an atmosphere of questioning and inviting people to grow within your classroom isn’t necessarily easy; which must explain why people who want to create cults or die hard followers discourage questioning in general. They would rather have people reciting their dogma than asking hard questions.

Co-dependency essentially revolves around the sentence: “I am not enough.” A co-dependent person will always need another person to validate their worth, their feelings, their ideas and even their existence. This either shows itself as a need to manipulate and control surroundings; or as a need to bend over backwards to make other people feel good, the reason being that “I can’t feel good if you don’t feel good.

An Italian yoga teacher, after many years, came to see U.G. in Gstaad. She brought four of her students with her. U.G. was very polite and gracious to them. She came with her students a second time, and U.G. started asking her over and over again why she was teaching yoga — each time the answer was more self-revealing. After the second visit, she and her students never came back.

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Tell your child that you love them and, if you forget to tell them, when they’re sleeping whisper in their ear that you love them,’ prescribes family yoga teacher, author and mindfulness expert Leonie Percy, who believes there are many ways to reconnect with our children. ‘That actually goes to their higher self, their consciousness, and that alleviates so much guilt of motherhood. Because they know. They hear you.’ Ever

Even the Master, in one way or another, is a student throughout life.

The Sanskrit word guru literally means “weighty one.” According to traditional esoteric sources, the syllable gu signifies spiritual darkness, and ru signifies the act of removing. Thus, a guru is a teacher who leads the student from darkness to light.

Once, in an age long passed, there were two friends who went together to study religion at the feet of a master. When it was explained to them both that the essence of innermost reality is truly spontaneous awareness, they each went off separately to practice what they had been taught. One of them relaxed his mind through meditation and yoga and allowed all negative emotions to simply float away like clouds in the sky until his consciousness was clear, open, and bright. The other began to assert his ego through murder and theft. Using his skill and intelligence to organize a criminal network, he quickly set up a chain of brothels and gambling houses so that he became very rich and powerful indeed. When the tow friends met again some time later, each was surprised to see how the other had understood the teachings they had received together. Returning to the teacher for advice about who was right and who was wrong, they were told that the goal of freedom is freedom from the ego. Hearing this, the one who had spent so much time and energy boosting his ego became very angry indeed and killed the master on the spot. Consequently, in subsequent incarnations, the student who was dominated by the evil ego was born repeatedly in the form of various wild animals and fell down into the lowest of the hell-realms.

Yoga teachers must be willing to step down from this imagined pedestal and utter the words “I don’t know” on a regular basis.

It’s a really simple formula: Your experience + Yoga = New Students.

I have seen yoga teachers, almost in frenzy, looking for something new; new postures, breathing exercises, styles of yoga, teachers and so on. But what are they really searching for? Escape from boredom.

Teaching should not be confused with personal practice.

My rule in relation to time management and teaching is simple: “If you’re on time, you’re late!” That means that if you arrive just on time to teach, you have no flexibility. In essence nothing can go wrong, and in addition to that, your mind probably won’t settle until halfway through the class.

Speaking softly and slowly, and breathing through the vocal chords in a low voice, has become the mythical ideal voice for a yoga teacher.

Clear, direct and vibrant instructions will inject energy into the class, and create a feeling of safety for the students.

Self-confidence is built from the inside out and has little or nothing to do with outside circumstances.

If you want to increase your self-confidence as a yoga teacher very fast – go out there, face your fears, and teach as much as you possibly can!

Yoga, in Sanskrit, can be translated as "union". It originally comes from the root word yuj, which means "to yoke", to attach yourself to a task at hand with ox-like discipline. And the task at hand in yoga is to find union - between mind and body, between the individual and her god, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student, and even between ourselves and our sometimes hard-to-bend neighbors.

She tried to do what the Equinox yoga instructor said to do and thank each thought for coming then let it float away, but the thoughts were not floating away and she couldn't force them away, not even here, where she was supposed to be able to escape.

In the summer of 2012, I was an unemployed grad-school dropout and relatively new to yoga. I enjoyed going to classes, but like many other yoga students who look “different,” I always left the studio feeling a vague sense of discrimination at the hands of my teachers and fellow students.

I well remember a teacher giving a talk about the yama of nonviolence (ahimsa) and saying that each time we kick someone out of our heart we develop a hole in our self and that hole cannot be repaired until we invite this person back in. My first response was: “What a lovely thought!” But almost instantaneously I rallied: “There has to be a footnote to this law! There must be some fine print at the bottom that says except your mother-in-law or that horrible colleague who gossips or the estranged friend who betrayed me.” And then it became clear—the degree to which there are exceptions is the degree to which the mind still holds to its old point of view. This is why Yoga practice involves such a methodical and painstaking examination of where we have created convenient loopholes for ourselves.

Yoga has undoubtedly altered my inner truths by expanding my mind into the body and mind connection.

Souls of Mercury illuminates us as to how we can empower all relationships, specifically with oneself, others and with the Ultimate Reality. The author invites us to awaken from the suffering illusion of life to the wisdom of the ages. —Sunder Arora M.D. FRCPC Adult and Child Psychiatrist, Interfaith Minister, Yoga Teacher. Author of” Ushering in Heaven” A psychiatrist prescription for Healing, Joy, and Spiritual awakening.

Our limited insight into our own nature is part of the human condition, and leads us into confusion and suffering time and again. From a Buddhist viewpoint, our fundamental ignorance of the nature of reality leads us to circle endlessly in the cycle of death and rebirth. While we lack the insight to free ourselves from this cycle of existence, the teacher can offer us a way to break free of our ignorance and suffering. The Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions consider the guru to be the root of the path, the source of realizations and the one who liberates us from the bondage of ignorance. The tantric teachings of guru yoga say that the guru should be considered synonymous with the Buddha, and emphasize that without the guru the student cannot proceed. Because the role of the guru is given such emphasis, it is important to examine it closely, and in recent vicars awareness has grown of the hazards involved in the guru-disciple relationship. When students meet a teacher who touches them deeply, the experience can be overwhelming. They might become aware of their potential in a way they have never recognized previously. Disciples still captivated by the inspiration of their teacher often speak as if they have fallen in love, full of wonder and admiration. The teacher has opened their eyes, and they see him or her as fundamental to that experience. What empowers this experience is partly the quality of the teacher, who acts as a catalyst to awaken an inner quality that was unconscious.

For the most part, this new breed of wellness gurus is white and female, young and attractive, engaging, and media-savvy. Some are yoga teachers, or personal trainers, or martial-arts instructors, but scant few have any qualifications that equip them to give health advice. What they do have is an Instagram account.

Was it just Graham or was Beverly awfully judgmental, especially for a yoga teacher?

Instead, I made myself do one of the relaxation exercises a long-ago yoga teacher had taught me. Name five things you can see. My mother. My father. The dining room table. The newspaper. The banana bread. Name four things you can touch. The skin of my arm. The fabric of the dining room chair cover. The wood of the kitchen table, the floor beneath my feet. The three things I could hear were the sound of cars on Riverside Drive, the scratch of my father’s pen on the page, and my own heartbeat, still thundering in my ears. I could smell banana bread and my own acrid, anxious sweat.

If you're a yoga teacher, I'm certain that your students will show up not for what your poses, your body, your practice looks like, not because you are the most innovative or brilliant or beautiful (though, I assure you, you are innovative, brilliant, and beautiful), but because you’re the only one who can teach like you, whose journey has led you exactly to this moment. And, I assure you, whatever you’ve got and whatever got you here— embrace it. We need your message.

Don't give the world what anyone else has got. Give what only you, uniquely, have to share.

I have loved and never told him. I have loved and told him and got hurt. I have been loved and I haven’t loved back. I have loved and he has loved and then I have changed my mind. I have been single and wanted to love. I have been fearful and fearless. Doubtful and trusting. Ecstatic and devastated. I have been an eat-macaroni-and-cheese-from-a-box kind of eater. I have been vegetarian. Vegan. Gluten-free. Not gluten-free. Raw foodist. Vegan, but not raw. I have been a vegan who eats eggs. And then doesn’t eat eggs. I have been a juice faster. And a rejector of juice fasts. I have said I eat healthy. And then I have said I eat whatever the f*ck I want and it’s none of your business. (That last one’s been the best.) I have been a gymnast. A runner. A dancer. I have been injured and forgot what I was anymore. I have been a walker. A yogi. A Pilates aficionado. A trampoline jumper. A push-up-doer. I have rested. I have said I am one thing and, it turns out, I am not. Or that I was that thing, but that thing isn’t true for me any longer. This is okay. It’s all okay.

The best way to create is to create from your heart—create what moves you. Teach the class you’ve always wanted to take, cook the meal you’ve always wanted to try, write the book you’ve always wanted to read. Do it your way. Do it the way that makes your heart sing.

Because we are co-creators, because we feel each other’s energy, because we are linked—what matters most when you teach is not the flawlessness of your delivery. Not your poise or whether you remembered every line you planned to say or every pose in your yoga sequence. No, it’s not your perfection, it’s your kindness.

The difference between a realized Yogi and a spiritual teacher is similar to the difference between a billionaire and a motivational speaker.

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all 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 by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” —Patanjali, an Indian teacher often called the Father of Yoga.

The more you know, the more you don't know," the further you go in your training, learning, and experience as a yoga teacher, the more you'll realize that there's an infinite universe of knowledge and wisdom to bring to the practice.

If you ask an average yoga teacher what yoga is, you usually get a little talk on “union” and how the practice is five thousand years old. They may have some poses and sequences of poses that they practice and teach, along with some information on breathing and meditation. Where did they get this information and these practices, and what relationship do they have with the great river of yoga knowledge and techniques? Without much more than an ounce of questioning we have acquired so much misinformation on yoga from our teachers. It is easy to hand down these myths and stories that twist and turn from their original form and meaning, and often lead us away from the essence of a specific lesson or practice.

A teacher’s job is to see students’ potential before they can see it themselves; teachers need to have the faith and foresight to know they can actualize that potential and the wisdom to help students chart their course. It is only with this inner knowing that a teacher can invite the student, over and over again, to the edge of their comfort—and then give them a gentle nudge. In effect, a teacher is like the mother bird who can see her chicks flying before they realize they have wings.

Like other animals, humans have the inherent ability to heal and find balance. We don’t need books, or teachers, or fancy diets. The answers we seek are encoded in our cells. While we have this innate ability to heal, purification is usually a prerequisite. That is why we do hatha yoga.

Described as “an immersive experience in dynamic mindfulness,” the Transformative Life Skills (TLS) program was developed by the Niroga Institute in collaboration with Jennifer Frank, a professor at Penn State University. The program combines mindful yoga, breathing techniques, and meditation to help children and youth deal with life challenges with greater confidence and peace.

Kripalu Yoga in Schools (KYIS) was developed to empower adolescents to learn social and emotional skills such as stress management, emotion and behavior regulation, self-appreciation, self-confidence, and relationships skills.

The Holistic Life Foundation’s program combines yoga postures, fluid movement exercises, breathing techniques, and guided mindfulness practices. The movement activities are designed to enhance muscle tone and flexibility, and students learn breathing techniques designed to help them calm themselves. Each class includes a didactic component where instructors talk to students about identifying stressors and using mindfulness and breathing to reduce stress. At the end of each class, students lie on their backs and close their eyes while the instructors guide them through a mindful awareness practice. The program has been offered in a variety of settings in school and outside school.