It seems talk of mindfulness is everywhere these days. In the modern world, we enjoy so much freedom of choice and abundance but our minds are often filled with constant anxiety, judgment and comparison.
Mindfulness offers the antidote to always being lost in thoughts and overthinking by learning to shift from doing mode to being mode so we can fully tune into our senses.
The best way to learn mindfulness is from the words and instructions of some of the world’s best meditation and mindfulness teachers.
Here are some renowned spiritual teachers from across the ages who can help you learn the art of mindfulness practice.
1. Siddhartha Gautama
Also known as the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama lived nearly 2,500 years ago and laid the foundation for the Buddhist religion and the practice of mindfulness.
“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you.”
“‘All conditioned things are impermanent’ — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.”
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon…. If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.”
“Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance.”
“Someone once asked the Buddha skeptically, “What have you gained through meditation.”
The Buddha replied, “Nothing at all.”
“Then, Blessed One, what good is it.”
“Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana.””
“Having gone on his almsround, the sage should then go to the forest, standing or taking a seat at the foot of a tree. The enlightened one, intent on meditation, should find delight in the forest, should practice meditation at the foot of a tree, attaining his own satisfaction.”
2. Jon Kabat-Zinn:
Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program. He runs the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
“Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation, and healing.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn
“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn
“We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn
“You might be tempted to avoid the messiness of daily living for the tranquility of stillness and peacefulness. This of course would be an attachment to stillness, and like any strong attachment, it leads to delusion. It arrests development and short-circuits the cultivation of wisdom.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Without giving up hope—that there’s somewhere better to be, that there’s someone better to be, we will never relax with where we are or who we are.” – Pema Chodron
“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn
3. Thich Nhat Hanh:
peace activist, prolific author, poet, teacher and founded the Plum Village Tradition, a school of Buddhism named after the Plum Village Monastery in France.
“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”
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“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
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Mindfulness is the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment. It is the continuous practice of touching life deeply in every moment of daily life. To be mindful is to be truly alive and present with those around you and with what you are doing. We bring our body and mind into harmony while we wash the dishes, drive the car or take our morning cup of coffee.
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“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”
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“Meditation is to be aware of what is going on: in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world.”
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“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
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“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future; live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.”
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“Today, you can decide to walk in freedom. You can choose to walk differently. You can walk as a free person, enjoying every step.”
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“Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.” – Sharon Salzberg
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”
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“We do so much, we run so quickly, the situation is difficult, and many people say, “Don’t just sit there, do something.” But doing more things may make the situation worse. So you should say, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” Sit there, stop, be yourself first, and begin from there.”
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“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”
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“Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
“Without full awareness of breathing, there can be no development of meditative stability and understanding.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
“We need a real awakening, enlightenment, to change our way of thinking and seeing things. To breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it, realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is the only moment.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
“When we walk like (we are rushing), we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth… Be aware of the contact between your feet and the earth. Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
4. Eckhardt Tolle:
Eckhardt Tolle is a best-selling author of the books The Power of Now and A New Earth and one of the most influential meditation teachers in the world today. He was born in Austria but lives today on Saltspring Island in British Columbia.
“Emotion arises at the place where mind & body meet. It is the body’s reaction to mind.”
– Eckhart Tolle
“In today’s rush, we all think too much — seek too much — want too much — and forget about the joy of just being.”
– Eckhart Tolle
“Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You will come to life. And don’t be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
― Eckhart Tolle
“Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.”
― Eckhart Tolle
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”
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“The past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.”
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“The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.”
― Eckhart Tolle
“Humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. … If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.”
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“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”
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“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.”
― Eckhart Tolle
“Accept — then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.”
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“The human condition: lost in thought.”
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5. Shunryu Suzuki:
Shunryu Suzuki was a famous Japanese monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States through his popular book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and is renowned for founding the first Buddhist monastery outside Asia.
“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. ”
“Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see. You are one with everything. That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.”
“When you accept everything, everything is beyond dimensions. The earth is not great nor a grain of sand small. In the realm of Great Activity picking up a grain of sand is the same as taking up the whole universe. To save one sentient being is to save all sentient beings. Your efforts of this moment to save one person is the same as the eternal merit of Buddha.”
“While you are continuing this practice, week after week, year after year, your experience will become deeper and deeper, and your experience will cover everything you do in your everyday life. The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. Do not think about anything. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then eventually you will resume your own true nature. That is to say, your own true nature resumes itself.”
“Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself. We say, “It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness.”
“If you understand real practice, then archery or other activities can be zen. If you don’t understand how to practice archery in its true sense, then even though you practice very hard, what you acquire is just technique. It won’t help you through and through. Perhaps you can hit the mark without trying, but without a bow and arrow you cannot do anything. If you understand the point of practice, then even without a bow and arrow the archery will help you. How you get that kind of power or ability is only through right practice.”
“When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.”
“The best way is to understand yourself, and then you will understand everything. So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others, and you will be helped by others. Before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you.”
6. Tara Brach:
Tara Brach is an American psychologist, author and Buddhist meditation teacher. Her teaching blends Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices.
“We might begin by scanning our body . . . and then asking, “What is happening?” We might also ask, “What wants my attention right now?” or, “What is asking for acceptance?”
– Tara Brach
“We withdraw from our experience of the present moment. We pull away from the raw feelings of fear and shame by incessantly telling ourselves stories about what is happening in our life.”
– Tara Brach
“Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.”
– Tara Brach
“Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.”
– Tara Brach
“We might begin by scanning our body . . . and then asking, “What is happening?” We might also ask, “What wants my attention right now?” or, “What is asking for acceptance?”
– Tara Brach
“Stepping out of the busyness, stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else, is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.”
– Tara Brach
Pema Chödrön is an American Tibetan-Buddhist. She is an ordained nun, former acharya of Shambhala Buddhism and disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche based at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia.
“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
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“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts.”
― Pema Chödrön
We learn to stay with the uneasiness, the tightening, the itch of our cravings. We train in sitting still with our desire to scratch. This is how we learn to stop the chain reaction of habitual patterns that otherwise will rule our lives.
― Pema Chödrön
“In the end, just three things matter:
How well we have lived
How well we have loved
How well we have learned to let go”
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“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
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“Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes.”
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“Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, “I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.”
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“The entire teaching of Buddhism can be summed up in this way: Nothing is worth holding on to.”
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“We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.”
– Jack Kornfield
“When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice. Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory, and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world.”
– Jack Kornfield
“The knowledge of the past stays with us. To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit.”
– Jack Kornfield
“Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.”
– Jack Kornfield
9. Alan Watts:
Describing himself as a “spiritual entertainer” Alan Watts continues to inspire a new generation of meditators after his death through 1000 of YouTube videos that use clips of his talks.
“The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been “cleared up” and the future is bright with promise.”
“One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.”
“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.”
“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”
“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.
“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
“When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.”
10. Osho:
Osho, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was an Indian philosopher, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader during his life and is best known in popular culture from the Netflix series Wild Wild West.
“I’m simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I’m saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.
It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.
It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.
And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.
That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.”
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More Profound Quotes From Mindfulness Teachers:
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
– Carl Jung
“Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.”
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“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).”
– James Baraz
“Meditation is essentially training our attention so that we can be more aware— not only of our own inner workings but also of what’s happening around us in the here & now.”
– Sharon Salzberg
“Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.”
– Mingyur Rinpoche
“Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.”
– Sylvia Boorstein
“We cannot be present and run our story-line at the same time.” – Pema Chödrön
“To diminish the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain, and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain.”
– Howard Cutler
“Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.”
– Robin S. Sharma
“Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.”
– Sharon Salzberg
“What is it about our expectations, plans, or ideas that hold such sway over us? It is as if we’ve written a script for a play of our lives that runs about a month ahead of actual life; if reality varies from what we’ve created in our minds we disengage or pout.”
– Holly Sprink
“My experience is that many things are not as bad as I thought they would be.”
– Mary Doria Russell
“The standard way of reducing stress in our culture is to put as much energy as possible into trying to arrive at a moment that matches our preferences. This ensures that we feel some level of stress until we get there (assuming we ever will) and worse, it makes the present moment into an unacceptable place to be.”
– David Cain
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Now is the future that you promised yourself last year, last month, last week. Now is the only moment you’ll ever really have. Mindfulness is about waking up to this.”
– Mark Williams
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
– Henry Miller
“By learning to allow different types of discomfort to simply stay in the room with you, without your scrambling for a button to push (real or metaphorical), you make discomfort matter less. The pool of things you’re afraid of shrinks. It becomes a lot less important to control circumstances because you know you can handle moments of uncertainty or awkwardness or disappointment without an escape plan.”
– David Cain
“We spend a lot of time judging ourselves for feelings that we had no role in summoning. The only thing you can control is how you handle it.”
– Dan Harris
“When we stop dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, we’re open to rich sources of information that we’ve been missing out on – information that can keep us out of the downward spiral and poised for a richer life.”
– Mark Williams
“Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“A crowded mind leaves no space for a peaceful heart.”
– Christine Evangelou
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
– Carl Jung
Inhale the future, exhale the past.
“It is a common belief that we breathe with our lungs alone, but in point of fact, the work of breathing is done by the whole body. The lungs play a passive role in the respiratory process. Their expansion is produced by an enlargement, mostly downward, of the thoracic cavity and they collapse when that cavity is reduced. Proper breathing involves the muscles of the head, neck, thorax, and abdomen. It can be shown that chronic tension in any part of the body’s musculature interferes with the natural respiratory movements.
Breathing is a rhythmic activity. Normally a person at rest makes approximately 16 to 17 respiratory incursions a minute. The rate is higher in infants and in states of excitation. It is lower in sleep and in depressed persons. The depth of the respiratory wave is another factor which varies with emotional states. Breathing becomes shallow when we are frightened or anxious. It deepens with relaxation, pleasure and sleep. But above all, it is the quality of the respiratory movements that determines whether breathing is pleasurable or not. With each breath a wave can be seen to ascend and descend through the body. The inspiratory wave begins deep in the abdomen with a backward movement of the pelvis. This allows the belly to expand outward. The wave then moves upward as the rest of the body expands. The head moves very slightly forward to suck in the air while the nostrils dilate or the mouth opens. The expiratory wave begins in the upper part of the body and moves downward: the head drops back, the chest and abdomen collapse, and the pelvis rocks forward.
Breathing easily and fully is one of the basic pleasures of being alive. The pleasure is clearly experienced at the end of expiration when the descending wave fills the pelvis with a delicious sensation. In adults this sensation has a sexual quality, though it does not induce any genital feeling. The slight backward and forward movements of the pelvis, similar to the sexual movements, add to the pleasure. Though the rhythm of breathing is pronounced in the pelvic area, it is at the same time experienced by the total body as a feeling of fluidity, softness, lightness and excitement.
The importance of breathing need hardly be stressed. It provides the oxygen for the metabolic processes; literally it supports the fires of life. But breath as “pneuma” is also the spirit or soul. We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss. That is why breathing is the dominant factor in the practice of Yoga.”
― Alexander Lowen, The Voice of the Body
“Be conscious of this unconscious prayer (of your breath), For She is the most holy place of pilgrimage. She wishes for you to enter this temple, Where each breath is adoration Of the infinite for the incarnate form.”
― Lorin Roche, The Radiance Sutras: 112 Gateways to the Yoga of Wonder and Delight
“When the breath is unsteady, all is unsteady; when the breath is still; all is still. Control the breath carefully. Inhalation gives strength and a controlled body; retention gives steadiness of mind and longevity; exhalation purifies body and spirit.”
– Swami Kuvalayananda, The Goraksasathakam
For breath is life, so if you breathe well you will live long on earth. – Sanskrit Proverb
Breath is the link between mind and body. – Dan Brule
Life isn’t measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Deep breathing brings deep thinking and shallow breathing brings shallow thinking. – Elsie Lincoln Benedict
I wake up every day and think, “I’m breathing! It’s a good day.” – Eve Ensler
There is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted. Then there’s another way; a breath of love that takes you all the way to infinity. – Rumi
A healthy mind has an easy breath.
When you inhale, you are taking the strength from God. When you exhale, it represents the service you are giving to the world. – BKS Inyengar
Why do we close our eyes when we pray, cry, laugh, kiss or dream? Because the most beautiful things in life are not seen but felt by the heart.
Breathing affects your respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, muscular, and psychic systems, and also has a general effect on your sleep, memory, ability to concentrate, and your energy levels. – Donna Farhi
Breath is life. We should pay as much attention to it as any other aspect of beingness. – Swami Nostradamus Virato
The nose is for breathing, the mouth is for eating. – Proverb
Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours. – Swedish Proverb
When you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe, that’s when you will be successful.
Inhale happiness. Exhale bullshit.
All chronic pain, suffering, and diseases are caused by a lack of oxygen at the cell level. – Dr. Arthur C. Guyton
