Quotes from Donna Farhi

This is why working with our most deeply held resentments and grudges can bring about the greatest change, because it is here that we start to deconstruct the scaffolding upon which all our other points of view are based.

We can assess our practice by asking only whether Yoga practice is building our integrity as a human being and helping us live as an expression of our most noble virtues. Whether our practice strengthens our ability to be present with all that we experience is the only criteria we need for what we do or don't do on the mat.

Rather, we can regularly ask ourselves these questions: Who am I becoming through this practice? Am I becoming the world in which I wish to live?

By anchoring our spiritual practice always within everyday life, we remove the arbitrary barriers between what is considered spiritual and extraordinary and what is material and ordinary.

When we cease to identify ourselves with things outside our control and when we cease to wrongly attribute our success or failure to these things, we are well on the way to finding a place of inner ease that no one and no thing can take away from us.

When we offer ourselves unqualified compassion, we start to make positive associations with our practice time. We become the kind of person we'd like to hang out with.

Very simply, we set aside time and a quiet place to engage in inquiries that will remind us of who we really are. We do this practice as often as necessary for this understanding to become an implicit part of our being. For most of us this means practicing from the first breath to the last.

Yoga is thus not something we can make happen but something that happens to us. But it does not happen by accident.

time acts as an invisible mortar for our experience; it is what stands between potentially discordant elements and, through finding their correct relationship, brings all into a unified whole.

We may assume a false sense of liberty and feel an initial resistance to putting reins on a life that we believe to be free. Yet this false sense of freedom almost always moves us further away from our true self and from real happiness.

Yoga is a technology for arriving in this present moment. It is a means of waking up from our spiritual amnesia, so that we can remember all that we already know. It is a way of remembering our true nature, which is essentially joyful and peaceful.

yoga is not about self-improvement or making ourselves better. It is a process of deconstructing all the barriers we may have erected that prevent us from having an authentic connection with ourselves and with the world. This tenet is an extremely important one because the effort to change and improve ourselves is fraught with the risk of subtle self-aggression that only produces more unhappiness. We cannot strive toward something that we already are.

Yoga is a technology for arriving in this present moment. It is a means of waking up from our spiritual amnesia, so that we can remember all that we already know.

In truth it matters less what we do... than how we do it and why.

Slowing down is the precursor to Yoga practice because this simple act allows us to consider our thoughts, feelings and actions more carefully in the light of our desire to live peacefully.

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