Quotes About Mindfulness

Don't pressure yourself to do more than the tiniest version of your habit. If you're sick, tired, or just not in the mood, scale back to tiny.

you start eating like a person who goes to the farmers' market, your brain begins guiding you in the direction of a coherent identity, and adding pumpkin seeds to your salad doesn't sound like such a crazy thing anymore; it sounds natural.

The essence of Tiny Habits is this: Take a behavior you want, make it tiny, find where it fits naturally in your life, and nurture its growth.

One should not grieve for the past and worry for the future. The wise care for the present and chart their life's course accordingly.

If you want to overpower the entire world merely by just one action, then put restraint upon your tongue speaking ill of others.

True concentration is an unbroken thread of awareness.

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

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

You have to create love and affection for your body, for what it can do for you. Love

When you have an anger, irritability, or disappointment mound, the conditioned reflex works like this: Suppose you're irritable with your parents, and your mother comes into the room. She might only say "Dinner's ready," but the irritability reflex is ready to spring up.

disturbances of the mind and emotions fade away, and we are able to see true reality.

Stability-The Physical Body (Asana)

I am fanatical with myself when I practice yoga. It is true. You should be fanatical with yourself, but not with others.

There is something called "echo" exhalation that impresses this point even further. Exhale slowly and fully. Pause. Then exhale again. There is always a slight residue left in the lungs. In that residue is to be found the sludge of toxic memory and ego. In that brief further exhalation, let them go - and experience an even deeper state of relief from burden, of peace and emptiness.

From head to heels, you must find your center, and from this center you must extend and expand longitudinally and latitudinally. If extension is from the intelligence of the brain, expansion is from the intelligence of the heart. While doing asana, both the intellectual intelligence and the emotional intelligence have to meet and work together. Extension is attention, and expansion is awareness, I often say.

When most people stretch, they simply stretch to the point that they are trying to reach, but they forget to extend and expand from where they are. When you extend and expand, you are not only stretching to, you are also stretching from.

Overstretching occurs when one loses contact with one's center, with the divine core. Instead, the ego wants simply to stretch further, to reach the floor, regardless of its ability, rather than extending gradually from the center. Each movement must be an art. It is an art in which the Self is the only spectator.

Inhalation is tension, exhalation is freedom.

Focus on relaxing as you hold the stretch, not clenching, but relaxing and opening. This relaxes the brain as well as the body. You must relax the neck and head as well. If you keep the back skin of the neck passive and the tongue soft, there is no tension in the brain. This is silence in action, relaxation in action. As soon as you learn how to relax the tongue and throat, you know how to relax the brain, because there is also a connection between the tongue and the throat and the brain.

Notice your eyes as well, as you hold the stretch. Tenseness of the eyes also affects the brain. If the eyes are still and silence the brain is still and passive.

When an asana is done correctly, the body movements are smooth, and there is lightness in the body and freedom in the mind.

As a farmer ploughs a field and makes the ground soft, a yogi ploughs his nerves so they can germinate and make a better life. This practice of yoga is to remove weeds from the body so that the garden can grow. If the ground it too hard, what life can grow there? If the body is too stiff and the mind is too rigid, what life can it live?

When performing asanas, no part of the body should be idle, no part should be neglected.

Balance does not mean merely balancing the body. Balance in the body is the foundation for balance in life. In whatever position one is in, or in whatever condition in life one is place, one must find balance. Balance is the state of the present - the here and now. If you balance in the present, you are living in Eternity.