“Fear and fatigue block the mind. Face both, then courage and confidence flows into you.”

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.

Yoga releases the creative potential in life.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields!

In my clinical experience, the greatest block to a person’s development is his having to take on a way of life which is not rooted in his own powers.

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it… Success is shy – it won’t come out while you’re watching.

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically – for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist – but then what isn’t?

You hit road blocks in life, but I’m living proof that you can overcome those road blocks and become what you want to become.

The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot.