Quotes by Yoga Instructors

It is, after all, far too easy to pinch and kick the bizarre Mormon Church; to say it's ripe for satire and parody is to say a Catholic schoolgirl is ripe for debauchery. It's like shooting polygamist fish in a barrel of coffee.
Mark Morford
When Benedict dies, he will have the pleasure of standing before whatever furious God he believes in, to answer for how it was that he knew for undeniable fact that one -- if not dozens -- of his priests repeatedly molested, abused and/or raped young children for decades, and he did nothing to stop it. How much does God believe the pope's argument that Vatican PR trumps pedophilia? Joe Ratzinger, 82, will soon find out.
Mark Morford
Balance is key. In everything you do. Dance all night long and practice yoga the next day. Drink wine but don’t forget your green juice. Eat chocolate when your heart wants it and kale salad when your body needs it. Wear high heels on Saturday and walk barefoot on Sunday. Go shopping at the mall and then sit down and meditate in your bedroom. Live high and low. Move and stay still. Embrace all sides of who you are and live your authentic truth! Be brave and bold and spontaneous and loud and let that complement your abilities to find silence and patience and modesty and peace. Aim for balance. Make your own rules and don’t let anybody tell you how to live according to theirs.
Rachel Brathen
You’re never too old, never too bad, never too late and never too sick to start from the scratch once again.
Bikram Choudhury
I just know about sweat and frustration. And that what I once thought was impossible somehow doesn't always stay that way permanently. One day it's suddenly easy and accessible, and mostly because I've stopped struggling against it. I've just accepted where I am, keep showing up, and then the change just happens.
Edward Vilga
The past does not exist unless you carry the remains of it with you.
Alanna Zabel
Although yoga is supposedly noncompetitive, I can’t help that my Alpha nature requires that I go for the hardest variation of every pose, always pushing my limits as far as possible.
Edward Vilga
care for your body as you care for your home, and care for your home as you care for your body.
Jennifer Carter Avgerinos
Just as the light bulb allows the electricity within it the opportunity to express its power, the body allows prana—life energy—to express itself. In yoga, our goal is to slowly increase the wattage of the subtle body, allowing prana to flow within us and through us, leaving health and balance in its wake.
Darren Main
The great spiritual tension between the contemplative life of the monk andspiritual activism in the world dissolves entirely with one word—namaste: thelight in me bows to the light in you.When meditation reveals the light in ourselves, we naturally want to bow tothe light in all beings—to act on their behalf in reverence and devotion.When we truly see the light in another being, our own light shines forth, dissolving the seemingly eternal ache in our hearts and the near constant struggle of the ego mind. To see the light in one being—your own light or thatof another—is to win the cosmic game of hide and seek and ease the suffering of the world.
Darren Main
Do numbers hold spiritual significance? Perhaps they do. For me, the most powerful numbers are two and six because when you multiply those numbers, you get the exact amount of square feet required to roll out a yoga mat. Even after years of practice, I’m continually astounded that all I really need to heal my body, open my heart, and still my chaotic mind is twelve square feet.
Darren Main
To the unaware person, karma is the prison in which the mind is held hostage. Because of karma, an unaware person is doomed to repeat the past in perpetuity as the seeds planted yesterday bear bitter fruit tomorrow. But to the mindful person, karma offers the promise of freedom. Mindfulness allows us to change our mind in the present, plantingnew seeds that will bear sweet fruit.
Darren Main
A Kula or spiritual community is like a nudist camp for the soul. Not only are we given the permission to remove our robes of guilt, our suits of shame, and our masks of false identity—we are encouraged to do so. To become naked and hold nothing back is to become truly beautiful.
Darren Main
On a physical level, water is often called the universal solvent because of its ability to dissolve almost anything at the molecular level. On a spiritual level it is the breath which acts as a universal solvent, because there is no trauma so great, no wound so deep, no delusion so convincing, that deep and mindful breathing will not dissolve it.
Darren Main
True spiritual virtues can have no opposite, but they can wear masks and costumes.Joy often masquerades as anger; innocence often dresses up as guilt; lovepretends to be fear. At the end of the day, we discover that we don’t need tobe fearful of these internal monsters—we simply need to unmask them.
Darren Main
Forcing Your body into a yoga pose is like brushing your teeth with a wire brush. You may get rid of the plaque but gingivitis will be the least of your concerns.
Darren Main
Resolutions, like all spiritual virtues, can be misused by the ego when mindfulness is absent. There are few things that will keep you in the bondage of habit like a grand resolution. It is like an empty box wrapped in the best ofintentions, yet lacking anything of substance.
Darren Main
...it's most important to accept that your yoga poses may not look like everyone else's. That's okay. Just adapt the poses to your current state of being.
Jessamyn Stanley
I learned early on that most yoga poses are about showing off. You find something amazing you can do, and suddenly, Shazam—you’re a guru, ready for your groupies.
Edward Vilga
Most people believe that pain and suffering are synonymous—that one begets the other. A yogi recognizes that pain is an unavoidable aspect of life and that suffering is a choice. Pain is what happens when you stub your toe, suffering is what your mind does with the sensation.
Darren Main
It has been said that the body is the temple of the spirit and the mind is the altar within that temple. When we practice hatha yoga we allow ourselves to come fully into the temple of the body—not simply as a tourist wishing to admire the fine architecture, but as a seeker on a pilgrimage of deep devotion and reverence.Meditation is the devotional practice of placing on the altar of the mind that which is sacred, holy, and revered. Just as you would not place garbage on the altar of a great temple, meditation allows a yogi to place on the altar of her mind that which is noble, pure, and free from attachment.
Darren Main
While religions and mystical traditions attempt to address the same spiritual questions with which all human beings wrestle, a religious person demands answers to questions that have no answers and attempts to demand harmony from the paradox of life. The result is less wisdom and varying degrees of bothinternal and external chaos. A mystic, on the other hand, contemplates and makes peace with unanswered questions. The great paradox is that sitting quietly with unanswered questions is the doorway to wisdom, balance, and peace.
Darren Main
Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel the mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you make might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids have a better life? Or the day we realize that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death, a little part of us is dying so that another part can live.
Matthew Sanford
Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs. I love them, in fact. It’s their human counterparts I could sometimes do without.
Tracy Weber
If there is a true measure of a person's soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes.The Dalai Lama's eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope's eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson's eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don't use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else's.
Mark Morford
Think of the jazz improv artist responding to the musical banter among her fellow players onstage. Aside from whatever training they've done in advance, as soon as the curtain opens, they move into unknown territory together, creating something new each time by remaining in a state of undivided presence.
Donna Quesada
Each situation is a blossom to be picked with a curious spirit.
Donna Quesada
For the record, telling your boyfriend that your not-as-dead-as-you-might-have-implied mother has been arrested for murder doesn’t go over well
Tracy Weber
Choose this life. Choose this body. Say yes to all of it. Say yes to the beauty and the good and the ugly and the difficult. Choose what you have, what you are. Choose this moment. Choose to love and remember. You are full. You are alive.
Kimber Simpkins
This body needs me to say yes to it, just as it is right now. No more singing that same old jingle of body-shame and dieter's promised lands.
Kimber Simpkins
Whether you’re at the peak or the valley of any given wave, remember that this too shall pass.
Dashama Konah Gordon
When we return continually to the present moment and our centered awareness within it, we remember we are eternally connected to the Supreme Source that lives within us.
Dashama Konah Gordon
We will attract potential partners who reflect back to us what we need to heal, balance and strengthen in ourselves- until we become whole. At that point, we can attract our twin flame or soul mate and enjoy a peaceful co- creative partnership that benefits all of mankind.
Dashama Konah Gordon
When we are open, strong and fluid in our body, we are experiencing the best that life has to offer with very little limitation or constraints.
Dashama Konah Gordon
When you release a trauma on one level of your energetic being, you will experience relief on all other levels simultaneously.
Dashama Konah Gordon
When we carry the thoughts of negativity and self-criticism, we inspire just what we don’t want: poor health and an unattractive physical body.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Be Generous with your Kindness, Compassion & Forgiveness.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Be Grateful- Your Life is a Miracle.
Dashama Konah Gordon
The physical concerns and misalignment we experience in the spinal vertebrae of our body are often directly correlated with the spiritual energetic ability to flow freely as well.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Thoughts are one of the most creative powers we have as human beings. If you hold the mantra in your mind that you are continually becoming more healthful and radiant, that is what you will become.
Dashama Konah Gordon
See yourself as the perfect creation that you are, but at the same time, recognize with sincere honesty, the areas of your life that are out of balance and get to work to improve and grow.
Dashama Konah Gordon
When you grasp the yogic principles and philosophies, you can apply them to any activity you are doing. Then every thing you do is spiritually enhancing your life. And this leads to the ultimate experience where everything you do is YOGA. It is all Union, unifying you with the Supreme Source.
Dashama Konah Gordon
The path to wholeness starts by loving yourself. It always starts there. If you love yourself, you will do whatever it takes to restore your health and happiness.
Dashama Konah Gordon
The yoga asana practice was developed to get the body in the best physical condition possible, so that the yoga practitioner would be able to sit for many hours comfortably in meditation. In order to reach the higher spiritual vibrations we must be as strong, flexible and open as possible.
Dashama Konah Gordon
If we are not living IN our bodies, honoring them as our TEMPLE, we are closing off the divine channels (nadis) of energy that run through us. Additionally, when we are not in good physical shape, we limit our enjoyment of our life experience. Thus, yoga is spiritual and physical.
Dashama Konah Gordon
In every moment we are faced with choices that will serve our highest intentions, or gratify our unconscious desires.
Dashama Konah Gordon
When you are mindful of Spirit and connecting to the breath with an open heart, that is yoga.
Dashama Konah Gordon
The asana practice is extremely powerful and unique in design. In addition to improved flexibility, circulation, muscular strength and increased energy, and detoxification of the organs, each pose unblocks life force energy (prana) pathways in your body, reprograms your cellular DNA and connects us to our spiritual origin.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Please don’t worry that yoga will contradict your religious belief systems, as Pranashama Yoga embraces all religions and beliefs systems. I believe we are all One and that Love is the highest truth. Love is my Religion.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Please maintain an open mind while exploring the depth and wealth of wisdom that is available through the practice of yoga. You may soon come to see the Union of all religions and philosophies if you maintain an open mind and heart.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Feel whatever arises fully, and then let go of any identification with what you’re feeling. You are at choice. You don’t have to go through another moment of suffering. Break free from the societal constructs that say, 'Life is meant to be a challenge.' This is not true. You have the capacity to become the observer of your emotional reactions and check in with your heart each time, to respond from love and compassion. This is the key to becoming liberated from the bonds of emotional suffering.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Know, in every moment, that you have attracted this situation into your life experience so you can grow and learn the lessons necessary to get to the next level.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Every moment is an opportunity to become more enlightened, more open and expanded. Continually choose that path and you will be free.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Your body is a physical representation of the cumulative effect of all the experiences you’ve had throughout your life.
Dashama Konah Gordon
By justifying our harmful negative habits, we live in delusion. We are lying to ourselves. And worse yet, we waste the precious opportunity of living our truth.
Dashama Konah Gordon
In a world resistant to change, we have to take matters into our own hands. Modern society and culture fails to support our healing by literally encouraging us to sustain our addictions.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Our greatest opportunities are to let go and surrender to that which is greater than our egoistic needs and desires.
Dashama Konah Gordon
As with all things in the physical plane, nothing is permanent, and the only thing we can truly count on is change. Things come and go, people are born and die and move in and out of our lives. The dreams and goals of today will one day either materialize or evolve into something different with time. If we become rigidly attached to any of this, we set ourselves up for the inevitable suffering that will ensue when the thing, person or idea flows out of our lives, or our desire for it shifts.
Dashama Konah Gordon
It is key to remember we can maintain a genuine enthusiasm and love for what IS, in the PRESENT moment, enjoy it with gratitude for all of the blessings in our lives.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Corpse Pose sounds like no big deal, right? Then what’s so difficult about this spiritualized snooze? Forget about getting your feet behind your head. Just try lying still for ten minutes. With nothing left to do, you’re finally forced to come face to face with yourself.
Edward Vilga