B. K. S. Iyengar Quotes

156 Sourced Quotes

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

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

B. K. S. Iyengar
Ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. There is a beginning but no end to knowledge.

B. K. S. Iyengar
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
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
Focus on keeping your spine straight. It is the job of the spine to keep the brain alert.

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

B. K. S. Iyengar
It is while practicing yoga asanas that you learn the art of adjustment.

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

B. K. S. Iyengar
You have to create love and affection for your body, for what it can do for you. Love must be incarnated in the smallest pore of the skin, the smallest cell of the body to make them intelligent so they can collaborate with all the other ones, in the big republic of the body. This love must radiate from you to others.

B. K. S. Iyengar
The material body has a practical reality that is accessible. It is here and now, and we can do something with it. However, we must not forget that the innermost part of our being is also trying to help us. It wants to come out to the surface and express itself.

B. K. S. Iyengar
As long as you do not feel the serenity in the body, in each and every joint, there is no chance for emancipation. You are in bondage. So while you are sweating and aching, let your heart be light and let it fill your body with gladness. You are not only becoming free, but you are also being free. What is not to be glad about? The pain is temporary. The freedom is permanent.

B. K. S. Iyengar
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
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
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
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
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.

B. K. S. Iyengar
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
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
The flexibility we gain in asana is the living symbol of the suppleness we gain in relation to life's problems and challenges.

B. K. S. Iyengar
When you cannot hold the body still, you cannot hold the brain still. If you do not know the silence of the body, you cannot understand the silence of the mind. Action and silence have to go together. If there is action, there must also be silence. If there is silence, there can be conscious action and not just motion.

B. K. S. Iyengar
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.

B. K. S. Iyengar
The primary aim of yoga is to restore the mind to simplicity and peace, and free it from confusion and distress

B. K. S. Iyengar
You must do the asana with your soul. How can you do an asana with your soul? We can only do it with the organ of the body that is closest to the soul - the heart. So a virtuous asana is done from the heart and not from the head. Then you are not just doing it, but you are in it. Many people try to think their way into an asana, but you must instead feel your way into it through love and devotion

B. K. S. Iyengar
The lotus grows in muddy waters but this flower does not show any trace of it: So we have to live in the world.

B. K. S. Iyengar
If you can adapt to and balance in a world that is always moving and unstable, you learn how to become tolerant to the permanence of change and difference.

B. K. S. Iyengar
One day you too may experience what I have experienced. So right away go and practise.

B. K. S. Iyengar