Quotes About Mindfulness

We use right pain like a vaccine against the unavoidable pain and suffering that life always sends our way, but the dose must be correct. Asana practice is an opportunity to look at obstacles in practice and life and discover how we can cope with them.

We all have presence of mind when everything goes well, but we need to have presence of mind when something goes wrong. If we face suffering and accept it as a necessary means, all anxiousness disappears.

Though the mass of our body is heavy, we are meant to tread lightly on this earth.

Many people focus on the past or the future to avoid experiencing the present, often because the present is painful or difficult to endure...The pain is there as a teacher, because life if filled with pain. In the struggle alone, there is knowledge. Only when there is pain will you see the light.

Pain is your guru.

The asana will not come by making faces.

You have to tame your breath to tame your brain. Live from moment to moment absorbed in the unruffled flow of the circular movement of the in- and out-breaths. It's current should be like that of a very full, stately river, whose movements cannot be seen.

Pranayama is not performed by the power of will. The breath must be enticed or cajoled, like catching a horse in a field, not by chasing after it, but by standing still with an apple in one's hand.

Sensitivity is not weakness or vulnerability. It is clarity of perception and allow judicious, precise action.

While me must recognize the existence and importance of pain, we must not glorify it. Where pain exists, there must be a reason for it.

Awareness: Every Pore of the Skin Has to Become an Eye

The challenge of yoga is to go beyond our limits - within reason.

Zoals een boer een veld ploegt en de grond zacht maakt, ploegt een yogi de zenuwen zodat ze kunnen ontkiemen en een beter leven creëren. Deze yogabeoefening is bedoeld om onkruid uit het lichaam te wieden, zodat de tuin kan groeien. Als de grond te hard is, wat kan er dan groeien? Als het lichaam te stijf is en de geest te rigide, wat voor leven heeft het dan?

If the practice of today, damages the practice of tomorrow, it is not correct practice.

Many yoga teachers ask you to do the asanas with ease and comfort and without any stress or true exertion. this ultimately leaves the practitioner living within the limits of his or her mind, with the inevitable fear, attachment, and pettiness.

By interweaving, I mean that all the threads and fibers of our being at every level are dawn into contact and communication with each other. This is how the body and the mind learn to work together.

As I have said, while doing yoga, the body must tell one what to do, not the brain. Brain has to cooperate with the message it receives from the body. I will often say to a student, "Your brain is not in your body! That is why you can't get the asana." I mean of course that his intelligence is in his head and not filling his body.

You must learn to move the brain a bit more slowly so that it follows the body, or you have to make the body move faster to match the intelligence of the brain. Let the body be the doer, the brain the observer.

After acting, reflect on what you have done. Has the brain interpreted the action correctly? If the brain does not observe correctly, then there is confusion in action. The duty of the brain is to receive knowledge from the body and then guide the body to further refine the action. Pause and reflect between each movement.

Pausing to reflect on your movement does not mean that you are not reflecting through the movement. There should be constant analysis throughout the action, not just afterward. This leads to true understanding.

When we ask ourselves, "What am I doing?" and "Why am I doing it?" our minds open. This is self-awareness.

Self-awareness is the opposite of self-consciousness. When you are self-aware, you are fully within yourself, not outside yourself looking in. You are aware of what you are doing without ego or pride.

When you cannot hold the body still, you cannot hold the brain still. If you do not know the silence of the body, you cannot understand the silence of the mind. Action and silence have to go together.

You watch yourself from the inside. It is a full silence. Maintain a detached attitude toward the body and, at the same time, do not neglect any part of the body or show haste but remain alert while doing the asana.