Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Mood reflects the biology of the brain. How you feel is affected by the chemicals in the brain, and these are the same chemicals that form the basis of mood-altering drugs. You may use yoga, meditation, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or exercise to alter your mood, or revert to healthy eating, regular exercise and getting enough sleep.
Here lies the secret. Says Patanjali, the father of Yoga, "When a man rejects all the superhuman powers, then he attains to the cloud of virtue." He sees God. He becomes God and helps others to become the same. This is all I have to preach. Doctrines have been expounded enough. There are books by the million. Oh, for an ounce of practice!
As a longtime practitioner of yoga and a person who's been involved in physical fitness my whole life, I can tell you, yoga helps you achieve altered states of consciousness. It is not just stretching. The only way you can say that it's stretching is if you haven't done it, or that you haven't done it rigorously for a long period of time.
The practice of yoga certainly is a fantastic practice. I only wish I would do it more. I find I can do it alone but it is much better if I have some guidance. Although I can do it alone it is a little bit sloppy. Ultimately, all of those techniques try to bring more oxygen to the brain. We can think and love better if we have more oxygen.
Yoga has been something that's always there to take with me and practice throughout any journey. There's no place I've ever been where yoga hasn't fit itself in. I currently work on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska and I am still able to find time to lay my mat on the deck and practice what makes me the best me I can be, thanks to yoga.
I was in yoga the other day. I was in full lotus position. My chakras were all aligned. My mind is cleared of all clatter and I'm looking out of my third eye and everything that I'm supposed to be doing. It's amazing what comes up, when you sit in that silence. "Mama keeps whites bright like the sunlight, Mama's got the magic of Clorox 2."
The attitude of gratitude is yoga. Ingratitude is "unyoga," like "uncola." Where gratitude is, there is yoga. Where there is ingratitude, yoga is gone. That mind which does not live in gratitude is just like a junkyard. There are great cars there, but they don't work; they are useless, because they are junk. What are you without gratitude?
In the year that I take off, I don't have any goals. I just surrender to experiences like traveling or learning yoga and meditation or just living in a completely random place like Mongolia or Portugal or Bhutan. Then when I come back, I am much more intuitive, creative, right-brained. That kind of system has been working very well for me.
How to do meditation, many people ask. Don't do anything, just go into thoughtless awareness. Try to go to the thoughtless awareness. If you can get into that condition of thoughtless awareness, you've done your job because that's the point where you are with the truth, with the reality, with the joy, with everything that is so fundamental.
You must forgive everyone. Now many would say that "We cannot forgive, it's very difficult." But it's a myth whether you forgive or don't forgive. What do you do? You don't do anything. But when you don't forgive, then you are playing into wrong hands. That means you are torturing yourself, while those who have troubled you are quite happy.
Mike and I were really interested in other epic 'Legends & Lore' properties, like 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings,' but we knew that we wanted to take a different approach to that type of genre. Our love for Japanese Anime, Hong Kong action & Kung Fu cinema, yoga, and Eastern philosophies led us to the initial inspiration for 'Avatar.'
The mind of one meditating on a single object becomes one-pointed. And one-pointedness of mind leads to abidance in the self. Real attainment is to be fully conscious, to be aware of surroundings and the people around, to move among them all, but not to merge consciousness in the environment. One should remain in inner independent awareness.
The author isn't altogether certain that there is any such thing as exaggeration. Our brains permit us to use such a wee fraction of their resources that, in a sense, everything we experience is a reduction. We employ drugs, yoga techniques and poetics - and a thousand more clumsy methods - in an effort just to bring things back up to normal.
It is impossible for you to judge a person about his divinity unless and until the Kundalini reaches at least this part, which is the limbic area. You cannot make out whether a person is real or not, whether a guru is real or not. Because divinity cannot be perceived through your brain, unless and until this light of your Spirit shines into it.
You have to learn humility. First of all you have to be humble people. Unless and until you have a large heart you can never humble down. You have to be an extremely humble person. Humility doesn't mean that you bow to a person who is dominating, it never means that. But it means a strength within you. The person who is weak can never be humble.
Everyone who has ever overcome hardship or adversity has done so in large part because he or she has chosen, consciously or unconsciously, to "let go" of their past hardship and pain by embracing, what I call, a Miracle Angle - a way of seeing their circumstances that allowed them to transform their circumstances into a spark for positive change.
I thought yoga was easy - I went out and I bought a yoga video tape. I bought the beginners' yoga tape. I couldn't do anything on the whole hour - nothing - just fast forwarding: can't do that, can't do that - I know I can't do that. This woman in a soothing voice: 'Simply take the bottom of your right foot and place it on the small of your back.
A lot of people's lives are built around a healthy lifestyle. I take really good care with what I eat, and exercise obviously has become part of your lifestyle, going to the gym, meeting with your trainer, going to yoga and all those things. As an actor, that's part of your job; it's part of our responsibility to take care of ourselves, in a way.
If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths. Our limitations and joys begin in our hearts. We can always replace negative with positive.
Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti!
Yoga is a way of moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you are. The practice of yoga is the practice of meditation-or inner listening-in the poses and meditations, as well as all day long. It's a matter of listening inwardly for guidance all the time, and then daring enough and trusting enough to do as you are prompted to do.
I started doing yoga in my 20s. I did teacher training, that was what I was going to do if acting didn't work out. I started teaching other actors right at the beginning of the yoga craze - people still thought it was a little weird, but a lot of actors I knew were getting into it and didn't want to look foolish in class. So I started teaching them!
I practice yoga every day and when my schedule allows me to have time, I go get a massage. And I'm fond of acupuncture. I like having a clean skin and taking care of my hair. My secret is to avoid drying my hair with the hairdryer and also avoiding blow-dries when it's not necessary. In order to feel myself, I need to look the most natural as I can.
I'm fortunate that I was introduced to the world of yoga and pranayama at an early age. That has been very useful to me. I always advise everyone to make this a part of their lives. Sometimes, we notice our mind works on one thing, the body on another, and time brings us in conflict. Yoga synchronizes the heart, the mind, and the body. That is Yoga.
Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed - only courage to experience. And that's what's lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation.
Asana is a very important part of life. It keeps you healthy, strong, and energetic. And it enables you to discover and reclaim the innate wisdom of your body. But it is only after you rediscover the self-luminous nature of your own mind that you will begin to experience the true power of asana. That discovery comes from the meditative aspect of yoga.
Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah - (Yoga is to check the mind from changing) - which is acceptable to all. That is also the goal of all. The method is chosen according to one's own fitness. The goal for all is the same. Yet different names are given to the goal only to suit the process preliminary to reaching the goal. Bhakti, Yoga, Jnana are all the same.
Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.
Right there is the usefulness of migraine, there in that imposed yoga, the concentration on the pain. For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria.
I think anything that you can use to connect is fine. For some people it's meditation. For some people it's yoga. For some people, it's running. For some people, it's affirmations. For me, it's photographs and drawings, and affirmations, and statues, and crystals. I fill my writing space and I fill my home with symbols of what I think of as higher energy.
Being able to recognize which of your desires are vital to pursue and which ones are not is often less than easy. This is precisely why the ancient sages counseled that we practice yoga. Their point was a very practical one: You are best able to discern which of your many desires should (and should not) be responded to when your mind is calm and tranquil.
I am the antithesis of what Charlotte from Sex and the City would wear, I am often wearing baggy, drab clothes for yoga and everyday, for working out. That is what I feel comfortable wearing, because I do not want to be recognized everywhere I go. It is very sweet when I am recognized but it can also slow you down when you are trying to accomplish things.
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.
All I'm saying is that to liberate the potential of your mind, body and soul, you must first expand your imagination. You see, things are always created twice: first in the workshop of the mind and then, and only then, in reality. I call this process 'blueprinting' because anything you create in your outer world began as a simple blueprint in your inner world.
I have been practising yoga for over a decade now, and it is a very important part of my life. It doesn't matter where I am or what I am doing, yoga gives me the opportunity to switch off and focus entirely on my body and my breath. Yoga allows me to meditate and reflect on what's important in my life. It is also great for core strength and maintaining agility.
There are certain yoga laws and principles that are, shall we say, less tangible than others. For example, the law of karma. Science has proven what goes up must come down, but that's about as far as it's gone. To believe that for every action, word, and thought, there is an equal consequence takes something more intuitive, more personal; it's more metaphysical.
Yoga’s supreme objective is to awaken an exalted state of spiritual realization, yet the tradition also teaches you how to live and how to shape your life with a commanding sense of purpose, capacity, and meaning. In the end, yoga has less to do with what you can do with your body and more to do with the happiness that unfolds from realizing your full potential.
I could go on for days about why I love yoga. One of my favorite parts is I can't think about anything else other than doing what the teacher tells me to do. For me, someone who has a million things going on at any given moment, that kind of surrender is liberating. I also learn so much about myself - my limitations, my potential, how to be mindful of an injury.
I had one actress who trained with me and took six Spin classes a week. And all she ate was lettuce and Swedish Fish. When the press asked her how she'd transformed' her body, she said, Oh, I do yoga and hike with my puppy.' That made me laugh. Don't lie about how much you work out, because other women are going to think, I walk my dog, why don't I look like that?
Yoga is as old and traditional as civilization, yet it persists in modern society as a means to achieving essential vitality. But yoga demands that we develop not only strength in body but attention and awareness in mind.The yogi knows that the physical body is not only the temple for our soul but the means by which we embark on the inward journey toward the core.
By means of personal experimentation and observation, we can discover certain simple and universal truths. The mind moves the body, and the body follows the mind. Logically then, negative thought patterns harm not only the mind but also the body. What we actually do builds up to affect the subconscious mind and in turn affects the conscious mind and all reactions.
The Spirit which is within you is a collective being and once you are awakened into the light of Spirit, you become a collective being. That means, on your finger tips you can feel the centers of others also as you can feel yourself. By knowing yourself you know the self knowledge, the inner self knowledge and by knowing others you are in collective consciousness.
I actually don't prepare for onscreen nudity. I really believe that you have to be comfortable with your own body and unless the role is directed to a certain physicality and you're playing a sports person, then obviously you've got to train for it, but I just try and do things that make me happy and comfortable in my own skin, so I've gotten into yoga quite a lot.
Detachment is not indifference. it is the prerequisite for effective involvement. Often what we think is best for others is distorted by our attachments to our opinions. We want others to be happy in the way we think they should be happy. It is only when we want nothing for ourselves that we are able to see clearly into others needs and understand how to serve them.
My wife and I took a sabbatical and we went from Europe to India, where we lived in an ashram for six months and did meditation and yoga vigorously, like from 5:00 in the morning until 10:00 in the night in very austere circumstances. I think then my practice became less superficial, more like the traditional definition of what meditation was: to truly find oneness.
What I get on a yoga mat, and from a yoga teacher, has been more beneficial onstage than any other workshop I've ever done. And it starts with that breath; it starts with getting out of my head and really just slowing the system down and being in a true present moment with each and every breath. That then allows me to be a more balanced and focused individual onstage.
People on a spiritual path - personal growth, spiritual practice, recovery, yoga and so forth - are the last people who should be sitting out the social and political issues of our day. And there’s an important reason for this: People on such journeys are adepts at change. They know that the mechanics of the heart and mind are the fundamental drivers of transformation.
Your body's ability to function as a clean and efficient channel is limited by stiffness, lack of strength, and lack of endurance. Your mind's ability is limited by the way it thinks about itself, by the way you think about you. The process of yoga is one of undoing the obstructions and limitations in your body and mind that inhibit the free flow of creative life force.
The most profound benefit of yoga and meditation for me has been a natural relaxing into my life. Obstacles are not so scary. I am more fluid, more curious, and at the same time more patient. I have more options for happiness because I don't require specific conditions. It is a relief to discover that I can be happy even if the world doesn't revolve around me or my agenda.
When you start witnessing something without thought, there is no obstruction for absorbing the knowledge about that thing because there is no thought. It's complete absorption which takes place. And then it manifests. This is how the Divine Power works within us. So with our gravity, what we do is to touch that depth within us, which can carry the Divine Power and manifest.