“Your whole being should be symmetrical. Yoga is symmetry. That is why yoga is a basic art.”

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.

I think overall the majority of people who are practicing it as a subject are following the right line. For the aberration, don’t blame yoga or the whole community of yogis

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.

As a mighty river which when properly harnessed by dams and canals, creates a vast reservoir of water, prevents famine and provides abundant power for industry; so also the mind, when controlled, provides a reservoir of peace and generates abundant energy for the human uplift.

You must purge yourself before finding faults in others. When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake. This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement.

Yoga is about the will, working with intelligence and self-reflexive consciousness, can free us from the inevitability of the wavering mind and outwardly directed senses.

We are creatures that are designed for continual challenge. We must grow or we begin to die….So just standing still isn’t really an option. We have to move on. If not, disturbances will come.

Life itself seeks fulfillment as plants seek sunlight.

Persistent practice alone is the key to yoga. As you take pains to learn, continue with devotion what you have learn.

I also say with backbends, you have to be cautiously bold. Not carelessly bold. You have to descend to the dictation of the spine. You cannot command from the brain to do the poses. As you play with a child, guarding the child from injuries, similarly you have to play in backbends, guarding your spine.

Any action done with beauty and purity, and in complete harmony of body, mind and soul, is Art.

Your body exists in the past and your mind exists in the future. In yoga, they come together in the present.

The material body has a practical reality that is accessible. It is here and now, and we can do something with it. However, we must not forget that the innermost part of our being is also trying to help us. It wants to come out to the surface and express itself.

Nothing is achieved by a mind that doubts

Know your capacities and continually improve upon them.

Extension brings space, space brings freedom, freedom brings precision. Precision is truth.

Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.