Quotes from Donna Farhi

The process of breathing is the most accurate metaphor we have for the way that we personally approach life, how we live our lives, and how we react to the inevitable changes that life brings us.

When we feel connected to the vastness of life and are confident of life's abundance, we are naturally generous and able to practice the third yama, non-stealing (asteya).

Life is not inherently meaningful. We make meaning happen through the attention and care we express through our actions.

The asanas are useful maps to explore yourself, but they are not the territory.

Shaucha, or living purely, involves maintaining a cleanliness in body, mind, and environment so that we can experience ourselves at a higher resolution.

When the body is viewed as an apparatus for carrying the head around, we leave ourselves prone to the tyranny of our intellect and the justification and defense of the rational mind.

If we profess to be teaching Yoga, which is a science and art of living, we must practice that way of living ourselves. If we wish only to teach poses or postures, it would be better to call what we do by a name other than Yoga.

The yamas and niyamas are emphatic descriptions of what we are when we are connected to our source. Rather than a list of dos and don'ts, they tell us that our fundamental nature is compassionate, generous, honest, and peaceful.2

fitness of the gross, or annamaya kosha, layer of the body is inferred from the inner health of the subtle body. Health, a light body, freedom from craving, A glowing skin, sonorous voice, fragrance Of body: these signs indicate progress In the practice of meditation. Shvetashvatara Upanishad 2.123

Yoga postures, were traditionally practiced very slowly, with each movement synchronized to the breath, in order to balance the nervous system and open a perceptual gateway to the parasympathetic nervous system. This makes us available to our feeling function.

When we practice asanas from an interior perspective, we bring our minds back into the body. Instead of directing the body as a separate entity, we relocate our minds within our body and begin to listen to the nonverbal, nonmental information contained within the soma. As we give our full attention to every breath, movement, and the subtlest of sensations, the body becomes mindful, and the mind becomes embodied.

What these first central precepts the yamas and niyamas ask us to remember is that the techniques and forms are not goals in themselves but vehicles for getting to the essence of who we are.

the purpose of Yoga, which is to realize a unitive state, concentrated asana practice, the third limb of Ashtanga Yoga, will naturally involve each of the other seven limbs of practice, especially the ten ethical precepts of the yamas and niyamas (the first two limbs).

Interesting things happen when we give up struggling with a situation or problem outside of our control.

To become a welcome vessel for the breath is to live life without trying to control, grasp, or push away. And how easy is this? The process of breathing is the most accurate metaphor we have for the way that we personally approach life, how we live our lives, and how we react to the inevitable changes that life brings us.

we" are not only breathing this life, "it" is also breathing us.

You are this vastness. This vista you see, this grandeur, this enduring strength—if you go deeply enough inside yourself, you will find not something small but something immensely spacious. This is the essence of the human spirit.

Positioning ourselves to see and experience this more encompassing view does two things: it opens us to new possibilities and freedoms, and it also makes us more vulnerable and exposed. If you have ever stood in the best vantage point for seeing a panoramic, 360-degree view, you know that such a place is necessarily completely exposed to the elements. From here you will see everything, but also from here you will feel everything in the most vivid way: the wind, the sun, and the rain.

the yamas and niyamas are actually emphatic declarations of what we are when we are connected to our true nature.4 The yamas, or "outer observances," and the niyamas, or "inner observances," are often referred to as the inner and outer "restraints.

Tibetans have a saying: "Engaging in virtuous practice is as hard as pulling a tired donkey up a hill, but engaging in negative, destructive activities is as easy as rolling a boulder down a steep slope."6

When we're not busy being somewhere else, more often than not what we participate with is our past or future version of ourselves and our life. Instead of seeing how things actually are, we continue to see them as they once were or as we imagine they will be.

we are practicing to live, not living to practice,

This is a potent moment that many of us experience daily, if not hourly—the moment of feeling a longing for happiness. If we can get comfortable in being in that pause, however it manifests for us physically, psychologically, and emotionally, we have a better chance of responding to our longing in a way that is not simply a stopgap measure.

When we contain rather than constantly discharge our feeling state, we allow ourselves to feel completely. In feeling completely, we reexperience our aliveness and the source of that aliveness. When we cultivate the discipline to pause, it becomes possible for us to make a choice that is outside our normal habit pattern. And it is in breaking through these entrained patterns that we can begin to experience a more liberated state of being.