Not all practitioners can jump to that highest level. They have to climb, step by step from the physical sphere to reach the spiritual sphere. If it is treated as exercise it is not the fault of yoga but of the practitioners.
In backbends, one touches the body physically, mentally, intellectually, consciously and spiritually everywhere.
Backbends are to be felt more than expressed. The other postures can be expressed and then felt. Like in meditation each person has to feel backbends.
In forward bends, one uses the outer mind while in backbends the outer mind is silenced and the inner mind is made to work.
Backbends are not poses meant for expressionism. Backbends are meant to understand the back parts of our bodies. The front body can be seen with the eyes, but the back body can only be felt. That’s why I say these are the most advanced postures, where the mind begins to look at the back.
A lamp does not flicker in a place where no wind blows; so it is with a yogi, who controls his mind, intellect and self, being absorbed in the spirit within him.
Yoga has a threefold impact on health. It keeps healthy people healthy, it inhibits the development of diseases, and it aids recovery from ill health.
Willpower is concrete, not ethereal. When you do something, you demonstrate your willpower, and it becomes all the easier to have the same power of will the next time.
When every asana is multi-petaled, why do you make it single petaled?
The supreme adventure in a man’s life is his journey back to his Creator. To reach the goal he needs well developed and co-ordinated functioning of his body, senses, mind, reason and Self.
Giving does not impoverish us nor does withholding enrich us.
People say that steadiness of mind is an end; no, it is a beginning. I am there; I can explain everything up to that point. Then I struggle to discover what comes after, so this steadiness is not an end, it is the beginning and the instrument.
The commercialism may wash off sometime later.
Learning is as much an art as teaching.
Yoga is the method by which the restless mind is calmed And the energy directed into constructive channels.
I planted the seed, now you must work a lot otherwise the tiny plant will die.
As long as you do not live totally in the body, you do not live totally in the Self.
The whole thrust of yogic philosophical and scientific inquiry has therefore been to examine the nature of being, with a view to learning to respond to the stresses of life without so many tremors and troubles.
All games are meaningless if you do not know the rules.
Happy is the man who knows how to distinguish the real from the unreal, the eternal from the transient and the good from the pleasant by his discrimination and wisdom.