146 Yoga Quotes to Help You Stay Centered

1. "Yoga is the unifying art of transforming dharma into action, be it through inspired thought, properly nurturing our children, a painting, a kindness or an act of peace that forever moves humanity forward." - Micheline Berry

2. "True happiness is when the love that is within us finds expression in external activities." - Ammachi

3. "When this body has been so magnificently and artistically created by God, it is only fitting that we should maintain it in good health and harmony by the most excellent and artistic science of Yoga." - Geeta Iyengar

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4. "Follow your nature. The practice is really about uncovering your own pose; we have great respect for our teachers, but unless we can uncover our own pose in the moment, it's not practice - it's mimicry. Rest deeply in Savasana every day. Always enter that pratyahara (withdrawn state) every day. And just enjoy yourself. For many years I mistook discipline as ambition. Now I believe it to be more about consistency. Do get on the mat. Practice and life are not that different." - Judith Hanson Lasater

5. "Yoga is the space where flower blossoms." - Amit Ray

6. "Through the practices of yoga, we discover that concern for the happiness and well being of others, including animals, must be an essential part of our own quest for happiness and well being. The fork can be a powerful weapon of mass destruction or a tool to create peace on Earth." - Sharon Gannon

7. "The most important pieces of equipment you need for doing yoga are your body and your mind." - Rodney Yee

8. "Real Peace is always unshakable... Bliss is unchanged by gain or loss." - Yogi Bhajan

9. "Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured." - B. K. S. Iyengar

10. "The beauty is that people often come here for the stretch, and leave with a lot more." - Liza Ciano


11. "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape."

12. "If I'm losing balance in a pose, I stretch higher and God reaches down to steady me. It works every time, and not just in yoga." - T. Guillemets

13. "I was in yoga the other day. I was in full lotus position. My chakras were all aligned. My mind is cleared of all clatter and I'm looking out of my third eye and everything that I'm supposed to be doing. It's amazing what comes up, when you sit in that silence. Mama keeps whites bright like the sunlight, Mama's got the magic of Clorox 2." - Ellen DeGeneres

14. "Concentrating on poses clears the mind, while focusing on the breath helps the body shift out of fight or flight mode." - Melanie Haiken

15. "The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which is identified with what's been called the relaxation response. When you do yoga - the deep breathing, the stretching, the movements that release muscle tension, the relaxed focus on being present in your body - you initiate a process that turns the fight or flight system off and the relaxation response on. That has a dramatic effect on the body. The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases, blood pressure decreases. The body seizes this chance to turn on the healing mechanisms." - Richard Faulds

16. "This calm steadiness of the senses is called yoga. Then one should become watchful, becomes yoga comes and go." - Katha Upanishad

17. "Yoga is a science, and not a vague dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole consciousness of man on every plane, in every world, and applies those rationally in a particular case. This rational application of the laws of unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the same principles that you see applied around you every day in other departments of science." - Annie Wood Besant

18. "Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; for it becomes your destiny." - Upanishads

19. "Live in the present, forget the past. Give up hopes of future." - Swami Sivananda

20. "Meditation here may think down hours to moments. Here the heart may give a useful lesson to the head and learning wiser grow without his books." - William Cowper

21. "This yoga should be practiced with firm determination and perseverance, without any mental reservation or doubts." - Bhagavad Gita

22. "Beyond meditation there is the experience of now." - Ryan Parenti

23. "Meditation and concentration are the way to a life of serenity."

24. "You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state." - Sharon Gannon

25. "Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings." - Rumi

26. "When calm your mind and your senses, you become conscious of your always present inner self."

27. "To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of meditation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought - and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions."

28. "Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace." - Bhagavad Gita

29. "Understanding without practice is better than practice without understanding. Understanding with practice is better than understanding without practice. Residing in your true nature is better than understanding or practice." - Upanishads

30. "This yoga is not possible, for the one who eats too much, or who does not eat at all; who sleeps too much, or who keeps awake." - Bhagavad Gita

31. "The more you meditate, the more helpful you can be to others, and the more deeply you will be in tune with God." - Paramahansa Yogananda

32. "Silence is not silent. Silence speaks. It speaks most eloquently. Silence is not still. Silence leads. It leads most perfectly." - Sri Chinmoy

33. "The perennial wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita can teach us how to transform our character, conduct and consciousness to meet the challenges of everyday life." - Leonard Perlmutter

34. "Yoga Science is not just a scholarly pursuit. It is a moment by moment and thought by thought practical guide for living." - Leonard Perlmutter

35. "Karma yoga is a supreme secret indeed." - Bhagavad Gita


36. "Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity." - Swami Sivananda

37. "Yoga is really trying to liberate us from ... shame about our bodies. To love your body is a very important thing -- I think the health of your mind depends on your being able to love your body." - Rodney Yee

38. "In Karma yoga no effort is ever lost, and there is no harm. Even a little practice of this discipline protects one from great fear of birth and death." - Bhagavad Gita

39. "Through practice, I've come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I'm suffering, I find this war with reality to be at the heart of the problem." - Stephen Cope

40. "Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy. Constant practice alone is the secret of success." - Svatmarama

41. "Yoga is about clearing away whatever is in us that prevents our living in the most full and whole way. With yoga, we become aware of how and where we are restricted -- in body, mind, and heart -- and how gradually to open and release these blockages. As these blockages are cleared, our energy is freed. We start to feel more harmonious, more at one with ourselves. Our lives begin to flow -- or we begin to flow more in our lives." - Cybele Tomlinson

42. "You may think that only you are a prisoner, but other people are also prisoners. You are in a small prison, but others are in the big prison outside. When will they be released? Think that you are a yogi and that you are pursuing your sadhana in this particular place and at this particular moment. Immediately you will experience great joy. If you change your understanding, you will be free in a minute." - Baba Muktananda

43. "Mountain pose teaches us, literally, how to stand on our own two feet.... teaching us to root ourselves into the earth... Our bodies become a connection between heaven and earth." - Carol Krucoff

44. "The attitude of gratitude is the highest yoga." - Yogi Bhajan

45. "Yoga is not a religion. It is a science, science of well-being, science of youthfulness, science of integrating body, mind and soul." - Amit Ray

46. "Yoga is 99 percent practice and one percent theory." - Sri Pattabhi Jois

47. "Yoga is the practice of quieting the mind." - Patanjali

48. "Have only love in your heart for others. The more you see the good in them, the more you will establish good in yourself." - Paramahansa Yogananda

49. "The sun shines down, and its image reflects in a thousand different pots filled with water. The reflections are many, but they are each reflecting the same sun. Similarly, when we come to know who we truly are, we will see ourselves in all people." - Ammachi

50. "Where is the delusion when truth is known? Where is the disease when the mind is clear? Where is death when the Breath is controlled? Therefore surrender to Yoga.?"

51. "What yoga philosophy and all the great Buddhist teachings tells us is that solidity is a creation of the ordinary mind and that there never was anything permanent to begin with that we could hold on to. Life would be much easier and substantially less painful if we lived with the knowledge of impermanence as the only constant." - Donna Farhi

52. "Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use." - Sri Aurobindo
53. "The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perform postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships." - T.K.V. Desikachar

54. "If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete." - Jack Kornfield

55. "No one is wise by birth, for wisdom results from one own's efforts."

56. "When I started doing asana, the yoga postures, I had a very strong feeling of many unnecessary things dropping away - especially tension and inadequacy." - Patricia Sullivan

57. "Corpse pose restores life. Dead parts of your being fall away, the ghosts are released." - The Quote Garden

58. "Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer." - Eckhart Tolle

59. "Yoga accepts. Yoga gives." - April Vallei

60. "Yoga is not a work-out, it is a work-in. And this is the point of spiritual practice; to make us teachable; to open up our hearts and focus our awareness so that we can know what we already know and be who we already are." - Rolf Gates

61. "Remember the emphasis on the heart. The mind lives in doubt and the heart lives in trust. When you trust, suddenly you become centered." - Osho

62. "Every waking moment we talk to ourselves about the things we experience. Our self-talk, the thoughts we communicate to ourselves, in turn control the way we feel and act." - John Lembo

63. "Warrior pose battles inner weakness and wins focus. You see that there is no war within you. You're on your own side, and you are your own strength." - The Quote Garden

64. "A photographer gets people to pose for him. A yoga instructor gets people to pose for themselves." - T. Guillemets

65. "Habits allow us to not think about what we"re doing . . . giving us the illusion of ease. When we are under the illusion of ease, not thinking about what we're doing. Breathing the same old way, moving the same old way, thinking the same old way we check out of the present, out of happiness itself." - Alex Levin

66. "Why do we need money beyond a point? If we are free of ill health, enmity, and debt, is that not enough? Too much money only leads to less peace."

67. "Yoga is 99 percent practice and one percent theory." - Sri Pattabhi Jois

68. "It is not arrogant or egotistical to feel good inside. You had nothing to do with it. it's simply the honest response to clearly perceived Reality." - Erich Schiffman

69. "Wisdom is knowing we are all One. Love is what it feels like and Compassion is what it acts like." - Ethan Walker III

70. "In meditation and in our daily lives there are three qualities that we can nurture, cultivate, and bring out. We already possess these, but they can be ripened: precision, gentleness, and the ability to let go." - Pema Chodron

71. "This world is your body. This world is a great school, This world is your silent teacher." - Swami Sivananda

72. "All I'm saying is that to liberate the potential of your mind, body and soul, you must first expand your imagination. You see, things are always created twice: first in the workshop of the mind and then, and only then, in reality. I call this process "blueprinting" because anything you create in your outer world began as a simple blueprint in your inner world." - Robin Sharma

73. "The chakras are very intelligent - they are like the software of the whole computer body." - Dharma Mittra

74. "Basketball is an endurance sport, and you have to learn to control your breath; that's the essence of yoga, too. So, I consciously began using yoga techniques in my practice and playing. I think yoga helped reduce the number and severity of injuries I suffered. As preventative medicine, it's unequaled." - Kareem Abdul Jabbar

75. "The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting." - Swami Satchidananda

76. "Yoga is the fountain of youth. You're only as young as your spine is flexible." - Bob Harper

77. "For those wounded by civilization, yoga is the most healing salve." - T. Guillemets

78. "By our stumbling the world is perfected." - Yogi Bhajan

79. "The word yoga comes from Sanskrit, the language of ancient India. It means union, integration, or wholeness. It is an approach to health that promotes the harmonious collaboration of the human being's three components: body, mind, and spirit." - Stella Weller

80. "Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. Hold the exhalation, and surrender to God." - Krishnamacharya

81. "The Self in you is the same as the Self Universal. Whatever powers are manifested throughout the world, those powers exist in germ, in latency, in you... If you realize the unity of the Self amid the diversities of the Not-Self, then Yoga Will not seem an impossible thing to you." - Annie Wood Besant

82. "Master your breath, let the self be in bliss, contemplate on the sublime within you."

83. "Thus meditating you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but, forgetting self, you will remember only that you are seeking the Truth." - James Allen

84. "Yoga exists in the world because everything is linked." - Desikashar

85. "Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on." - Jiddhu Krishnamurti

86. "When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore, one should learn to control the breath." - Hatha Yoga Pradipika

87. "Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked." - Patañjali

88. "Yoga practice can make us more and more sensitive to subtler and subtler sensations in the body. Paying attention to and staying with finer and finer sensations within the body is one of the surest ways to steady the wandering mind." - Ravi Ravindra

89. "A person experiences life as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. Our task must be to free ourselves from this self-imposed prison, and through compassion, to find the reality of Oneness." - Albert Einstein

90. "The practice of Yoga brings us face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being." - Sri Aurobindo

91. "Yoga is the perfect opportunity to be curious about who you are." - Jason Crandell

92. "Do your practice and all is coming." - Sri Pattabhi Jois

93. "Feel good, be good, and do good." - Yogi Bhajan

94. "In truth, it matters less what we do in practice than how we do it and why we do it. The same posture, the same sequence, the same meditation with a different intention takes on an entirely new meaning and will have entirely different outcomes." - Donna Farhi

95. "The quality of our breath expresses our inner feelings." - T.K.V. Desikachar

96. "These days, my practice is teaching me to embrace imperfection: to have compassion for all the ways things haven't turned out as I planned, in my body and in my life - for the ways things keep falling apart, and failing, and breaking down. It's less about fixing things, and more about learning to be present for exactly what is." - Anne Cushman

97. "Your mind is your instrument. Learn to be its master and not its slave."

98. "Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on." - Jiddhu Krishnamurti

99. "In the practice of Yoga one can emphasize the body, the mind or the self and hence the effort can never be fruitless."

100. "Our raga/dveshas make us prisoners to the mental lenses through which we view the world. No matter what actually appears before us, our vision is always skewed, and as a result we suffer." - Leonard Perlmutter

101. "Yoga is invigoration in relaxation. Freedom in routine. Confidence through self-control. Energy within and energy without." - Ymber Delecto

102. "Your life is a sacred journey. It is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path... exactly where you are meant to be right now... And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love." - by Caroline Adams

103. "Everything is sorrow for the wise." - Patañjali

104. "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

105. "Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have, happiness comes." - Thich Nhat Hanh

106. "The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realization of yoga, of union." - Rabindranath Tagore

107. "Before you've practiced, the theory is useless. After you've practiced, the theory is obvious." - David Williams

108. "You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside." - Mr. Yoga

109. "Plant the seed of meditation and reap the fruit of peace of mind."

110. "You can enter yoga, or the path of yoga, only when you are totally frustrated with your own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, yoga is not for you." - Osho

111. "Tree pose grows confidence." - The Quote Garden

112. "Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success." - Swami Sivananda

113. "Don't just do something - sit there!"

114. "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

115. "I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul." - Rumi

116. "If you choose to see everything as a miracle, then where you are right now is perfect. There is nowhere to run to; there is nothing else to do except be in this moment and allow what is to be. From that place of radical acceptance, major change can happen. The first step in any transformational experience is acceptance and surrender to the present moment, the way that it is. From that place we have the awareness, humility and power to change what is." - Mastin Kipp

117. "Be a lamp to yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold on to the truth within yourself as to the only truth." - Buddha

118. "Yoga does not remove us from the reality or responsibilities of everyday life but rather places our feet firmly and resolutely in the practical ground of experience. We don't transcend our lives; we return to the life we left behind in the hopes of something better." - Donna Farhi

119. "Yoga is possible for anybody who really wants it. Yoga is universal... But don't approach yoga with a business mind looking for worldly gain." - Sri Pattabhi Jois

120. "True meditation is about being fully present with everything that is--including discomfort and challenges. It is not an escape from life." - Craig Hamilton

121. "Sun salutations can energize and warm you, even on the darkest, coldest winter day." - Carol Krucoff

122. "When asked what gift he wanted for his birthday, the yogi replied: I wish no gifts, only presence."

123. "Healthy plants and trees yield abundant flowers and fruits. Similarly, from a healthy person, smiles and happiness shine forth like the rays of the sun." - B. K. S. Iyengar

124. "Vogue and Self are putting out the message of yoginis as buff and perfect. If you start doing yoga for those reasons, fine. Most people get beyond that and see that it's much, much more." - Patricia Walden

125. "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built." - Rumi

126. "For me, yoga is not just a workout - it's about working on yourself." - Mary Glover

127. "By embracing your mother wound as your yoga, you transform what has been a hindrance in your life into a teacher of the heart." - Phillip Moffitt

128. "Don't move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move." - Osho

129. "Change is not only inevitable, but always happening. When you truly embrace this concept of change being constant, the only thing left to do is grow, detach, venture inwards, touch the spirit and find your source - the one responsible for keeping you grounded through the ever-changing seasons of life." - Julie Weiland

130. "Love is how it feels to recognize our essential unity. Awakening to oneness is the experience of Big Love. Knowing you are one with all, you find yourself in love with all." - Timothy Freke

131. "Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. Crying includes all the principles of Yoga." - Kripalvanandji

132. "Meditation brings wisdom; lack of mediation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what hold you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom." - Buddha

133. "The yoga mat is a good place to turn when talk therapy and antidepressants aren't enough." - Amy Weintraub

134. "Rid your body of its impurities, let your speech be true and sweet, feel friendship for the world, and with humility seek wealth and knowledge."

135, "Change is not something that we should fear. Rather, it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom, and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they're meant to be."

136. "Yoga has a sly, clever way of short-circuiting the mental patterns that cause anxiety." - Baxter Bell

137. "The ultimate goal of yoga is to always observe things accurately, and therefore never act in a way that will make us regret our actions later." - T.K.V. Desikachar

138. "Compassion is the religion of the heart." - Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

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

140. "Kindness and awareness work together. Through awareness we understand the underlying beauty of everything and every being." - Amit Ray

141. "True yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life. Yoga is not to be performed; yoga is to be lived. Yoga doesn't care about what you have been; yoga cares about the person you are becoming. Yoga is designed for a vast and profound purpose, and for it to be truly called yoga, its essence must be embodied." - Aadil Palkhivala

142. "Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind. Then there is abiding in the Seer's own form." - Patañjali

143. "Penetration of our mind is our goal, but in the beginning to set things in motion, there is no substitute for sweat." - B. K. S. Iyengar

144. "Meditation is a way for nourishing and blossoming the divinity within you." - Amit Ray

145. "The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in." - Geeta Iyengar

146. "When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others." - Peace Pilgrim