Key Takeaway

Discover inner peace and motivation through 81 yoga quotes, guiding your practice and transforming your inner dialogue. Elevate your yoga journey with wisdom that connects mind, body, and spirit.

From ancient times or modern days, these yoga quotes are sure to inspire and center your mind, body, and spirit. 

The Power of Yoga Quotes

Have you ever heard an inspirational quote that made the hair stand up on your skin? Yoga quotes are a grounding and motivational force that drive us forward on our path. When I hear a rich, full quote, I repeat it often like a mantra. Zen yoga quotes have guided me through dark and difficult days. 

You can read them out loud. Roll the words around on your tongue. Soak in the message through your heart. The power of words is not to be underestimated, and this is especially the case when you read yoga motivation quotes and yoga quotes about life. 

Teachers both ancient and modern have encapsulated mystical meanings and profound, yet simple truths in yoga quotes. These quotes are best shared with friends, teachers, and students to relish together in the power of words old and new.

How to Use Yoga Quotes for Yoga Teachers

Yoga is more than just balancing poses, cute yoga outfits, and burning incense. It’s a way of life that seeks to unify or “yolk” (as in the Sanskrit meaning of yoga) body and spirit. Whether to reflect, meditate, use as a mantra, display on the wall, or simply say aloud, yoga quotes are a reminder to slow down and remember the core purpose of our lives. 

Quotes In Classes

Yoga teachers also have a profound opportunity to share these special words with their students. You can design a class or flow around a particular quote, or simply read some inspiring yoga quotes before savasana at the end of a practice. 

Some yoga teachers prefer to let the quote hang in the air and marinate, while others can add their own snippets of reflection and interpretation to make a quote more tangible to the students. It is also powerful to read a quote in the middle of holding a very difficult asana. 

Quotes as a Brand Mission

Many yoga studios use a particular yoga quote as their guiding mission. Others display them on the walls for inspiration and grounding. Yoga quotes also make great additions to branded merchandise, online content, and meditation rituals.

Regardless of how you use them, remember that words can be powerfully infused with magic. The way you talk internally will reflect how you speak externally. Yoga quotes about life, growth, positivity, and meditation are simple accessible mantras to transform the inner conversation. 

Yoga Motivation Quotes

1. ”Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”- The Bhagavad Gita
2. ”Yoga is a light, which once lit will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter your flame.” -B.K.S. Iyengar
3. ”True yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life. Yoga is not to be performed; yoga is to be lived. Yoga doesn’t care about what you have been; yoga cares about the person you are becoming. Yoga is designed for a vast and profound purpose, and for it to be truly called yoga, its essence must be embodied.” -Aadil Palkhivala
4. “Each morning, we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” -Buddha
5. “All that we are, is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.” -Buddha
6. “Yoga is the art work of awareness on the canvas of body, mind, and soul.” -Amit Ray
7. “Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements.” -Amit Ray
8. “When we learn to overcome the internal resistance which we experience during holding Yoga poses while deep breathing, that resistance ultimately becomes our internal strength.” -Purvi Raniga
9. ”The very heart of yoga practice is ‘abyhasa’ – steady effort in the direction you want to go.”–Sally Kempton
10. ”Yoga exists in the world because everything is linked.” –Desikashar
11. ”Yoga begins right where I am – not where I was yesterday or where I long to be.” – Linda Sparrowe
12. “Yoga is not about touching your toes. It is what you learn on the way down.” – Jigar Gor
13. “Yoga has never been about the stretch; it’s always been about the reach.” – Seane Corn
14. “The pose begins when you want to get out of it.” – Baron Baptiste
15. “Yoga is the ultimate practice. It simultaneously stimulates our inner light and quiets our overactive minds. It is both energy and rest. Yin and Yang. We feel the burn and find our bliss.” -Elise Joan
16. “Yoga is a light, which once lit will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter your flame.” -B.K.S. Iyengar
17. “Yoga is not a work-out; it is a work-in. And this is the point of spiritual practice, to make us teachable, to open up our hearts, and focus our awareness so that we can know what we already know and be who we already are.” — Rolf Gates

Yoga Quotes about Life

1. “It’s never too late. It’s never too bad. And you’re never too old or too sick to start from scratch once again.” -Bikram Choudhury
2. ”The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. -Socrates 
3. ”Yoga begins with listening. When we listen, we are giving space to what is.” — Richard Freeman
4. “Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” -Dalai Lama
5. “I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.” – Rumi
6. “If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” -Lao Tzu
7. “Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life.” -Unknown
8. “If you are going somewhere take all of you there.” -Amit Kalantri
9. “If you seek peace, be still. If you seek wisdom, be silent. If you seek love, be yourself.”– Becca Lee
10. ”Yoga does not transform the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.” — B.K.S. Iyengar
11. “The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.” –B.K.S Iyengar
12.  “Inhale the future. Exhale the past.” – Unknown

Zen Yoga Quotes

1. “Travel light, live light, be the light.” -Yogi Bhajan
2. “You are the sky, everything else is just the weather.” -Pema Chodron 
3. “When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” -Lao Tzu
4. “Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.” -Shunryu Suzuki
5. “Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”– Eckhart Tolle
6. “Let go, or be dragged.” Zen Proverb
7. ”Be where you are, not where you think you should be.”- Anonymous
8. “Change only happens in the present moment. The past is already done. The future is just energy and intention.” — Kino MacGregor

Yoga Meditation Quotes

1. “The real meditation is how you live your life.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
2. “One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.”– Dogen
3. “Regular meditation makes you more aware of the uniqueness of each moment, enabling you to live more fully in the presenting, without needless longing for the past or worrying about the future.” -Swami Saradananda
4. “Spiritual awakening is like unfollowing who you think you are.” – Frode Gåsland
5. “Let go of something to gain everything; let go of fraction to gain the whole.” – Shunya
6. “Yoga begins with listening. When we listen, we are giving space to what is.” — Richard Freeman

Positive Yoga Quotes

1. “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” — Aldous Huxley
2. “When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.” -Peace Pilgrim
3. “When you catch yourself slipping into a pool of negativity, notice how it derives from nothing other than resistance to the current situation.” -Donna Quesada
4. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss
5. “First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.” — Aristotle
6. “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” — Chinese Proverb
7. “Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?” — Bob Marley
8. “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus
9. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” — Henry David Thoreau
10. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” — Wayne Gretzky
11. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
12. “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” — Jimmy Johnson
13. “The power of imagination makes us infinite.” — John Muir
14. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
15. “It’s never too late to be who you were always meant to be…” – Unknown
16. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” — Camus
17. “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.” – Albert Einstein
18. “Fall seven times and stand up eight.” — Japanese Proverb
19. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” – Helen Keller
20. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha
21. “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” — Maya Angelou
22. “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

Yoga Wisdom Quotes

1. “If you seek peace, be still. If you seek wisdom, be silent. If you seek love, be yourself.” -Becca Lee
2. “I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.” -Rumi 
3. “Wisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.” – Jack Kornfield
4. “Your soul is your best friend. Treat it with care, nurture it with growth, feed it with love.” – Ashourina Yalda
5. “The nature of yoga is to shine the light of awareness into the darkest corners of the body.”–Jason Crandell
6. “What you think, you become.” – Buddha
7. “Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?” -Charles Bukowski
8. “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” -Muhammad Ali
9. “If you’re not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for ordinary.” -Jim Rohn
10. “If your compassion doesn’t include yourself, it is incomplete.” -Jack Kornfield
11. “I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet.” -Mahatma Gandhi
12. “Yoga is a dance between control and surrender – between pushing and letting go – and when to push and when to let go becomes part of the creative process, part of the open-ended exploration of your being.” -Joel Kramer
13. “The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind and the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life.” -B.K.S. Iyengar
14. “As you breathe in, cherish yourself. As you breathe out, cherish all beings.” -Dalai Lama
15. “Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible.” -Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
16. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” -Rumi

What is your favorite yoga quote? We’d love for you to share!

Namaste!