Top 15 T.K.V. Desikachar Quotes

The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perform postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships.

Whenever you are in doubt, it is best to pause. Few things are so pressing that they cannot wait for a moment of breath.

The quality of our breath expresses our inner feelings.

Another meaning of the word yoga is “to tie the strands of the mind together.

Yoga exists in the world because everything is linked.

However powerful or disturbing something may appear to be, it is our reaction to it that determines its effects.

The ultimate goal of yoga is to always observe things accurately, and therefore never act in a way that will make us regret our actions later.

The guru is not one who says, “I am the guru.” There are great stories in the Upaniṣads of the guru who rejected the very idea of teaching. One of the qualities of a person who is clear, who is wise, is not to need to say “I am clear, I am wise.” There is no need to say this.

In education the first requirement is the teacher, the second is the student. What should happen between them is learning. How it should happen is through the constant teaching of that which will be relevant to the student. That is education.

You can never step into the same river twice”:

prāṇāyāma is first and foremost to give us many different possibilities for following the breath. When we follow the breath, the mind will be drawn into the activities of the breath. In this way prāṇāyāma prepares us for the stillness of meditation.

It is when obstacles do not seem to be present that it is most important to be on our guard. Nothing is more fraught with danger than to mistake a temporary state for a permanent one. We must expect cycles of clarity and confusion, recognizing that falls from clarity may be more disturbing than a state of no clarity at all. When obstacles appear, it is necessary to advance toward a state of reflection to reduce their impact and prevent them from taking over.

La recomendación de una práctica regular de yoga sigue el principio de que, a través de la práctica, podemos aprender a estar presentes en todo momento y de esta forma, lograr mucho de lo que antes éramos incapaces de hacer.

as Francis Bacon put it more than four centuries ago, is that “the mind can be enlarged, according to its capacity, to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind.” — R.

However beautifully we carry out an asana, however flexible our body may be, if we do not achieve the integration of body, breath, and mind we cannot claim that what we are doing is yoga.