B. K. S. Iyengar

"Asanas keep the body healthy and strong and in harmony with nature."

"When the yoga teacher B.K.S Iyengar (2001(2): 47) writes, “The consciousness is like a chariot yoked to a team of powerful horses. One of them is breath (prånå), the other is desire (våsanå),” he simply builds on the same tradition."

"Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured."

"When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world."

"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."

"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."

"When I stretch, I stretch in such a way that my awareness moves, and a gate of awareness finally opens. … 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."

"I can remain thoughtfully thoughtless. It is not an empty mind."

"The art of teaching is also to know when to stop. It is good when people want to be better, physically, morally, spiritually, intellectually. But a fashion? No! Yoga is a painful art. It’s not like dance or music, where the person watching gets pleasure. Only the person doing it finds joy. It has nothing to do with externals."

"Because I want to make a good death."

"I have lived a majestic life."

"My poor health was matched, as it often is when one is sick, by my poor mood. A deep melancholy often overtook me, and at times I asked myself whether life was worth the trouble of living. … Seeing that the general state of my health was so poor, my brother-in-law recommended a stiff regime of yoga practice to knock me into shape and strengthen me up to face life's trials and challenges as I approached adulthood"

"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. It is something that we must build up."

"The practice of yogasana for the sake of health, to keep fit, or to maintain flexibility is the external practice of yoga. … While this is a legitimate place to begin, it is not the end ... Even in simple asanas, one is experiencing the three levels of quest: the external quest, which brings firmness of the body; the internal quest, which brings steadiness of intelligence; and the innermost quest, which brings benevolence of spirit."

"Often, we hear people saying they remain active and light when they do just a little bit of asana practice. When a raw beginner experiences this state of well-being, it is not merely the external or anatomical effects of yoga. It is also about the internal physiological and psychological effects of the practice."

"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."

"Yoga ferried me across the great river from the bank of ignorance to the shore of knowledge and wisdom."

"Patanjali is considered the father of the yoga. On reality as far as we know, he was a yogi and polymath living around the fifth century BC, India, who collated and elaborated knowledge of the yogis’ life and practices. He wrote the Yoga Sutras, lierally a thread of aphorisms about yoga, consciousness and the human condition. Patanjali also explained the relationship between the natural world and the innermost and transcendent soul....What Patanjali said applies to me and will apply to you."

"Yoga transformed my life from a parasitic one to a life of purpose. Later yoga inspired me to partake in the joy and nobility of life, which I carried to many thousands of people without consideration of religion, caste, gender, or nationality."

"Yoga was my Destiny, and for the past seventy years, yoga has been my life, a life fused with the practice, philosophy, and teaching of the art of yoga. Like all destinies, like all great adventures, I have gone to places I have imagined before I set out. For me It has been a journey of discovery."

"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…"

"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."

"Yoga, as it was understood by its sages, is designed to satisfy all the human needs in a comprehensive, seamless whole. Its goal is nothing less than to attain the integrity of oneness — oneness with ourselves and as a consequence oneness with all that lies beyond ourselves. We become the harmonious microcosm in the universal microcosm. Oneness, what I call integration, is the foundation for wholeness, inner peace, and ultimate freedom."

"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."

"Life itself seeks fulfillment as plants seek sunlight. The Universe did not create Life in the hope that the failure of the majority would underscore the success of the few. Spirtiuality atleast, we live in a democracy, an equal opportunity society."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"Anything physical is always changing, therefore, its reality is not constant, not eternal. Nature is in this sense like an actor who has only different roles."

"The compass is ourselves. So we are able to infer that there is a universal reality in ourselves that aligns us with a universal reality that is everywhere."

"Non-physical reality is called Parusa in Sanskrit or Universal Soul is an abiding reality. It is logical, but remains conceptual to our minds under we experience it’s realization within ourselves."

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

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

"Nothing can be forced, receptivity is everything."

"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."

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

"By drawing our senses of perception inward, we are able to experience the control, silence, and quietness of the mind. This ability to still and gently silence the mind is essential, not only for meditation and the inward journey but also so that the intuitive intelligence can function usefully and in a worthwhile manner in the external world."

"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."

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

"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… For the yogi, spirit is not separate from body. Spirituality is not ethereal and outside nature but accessible and palpable in our bodies"

"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."

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

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