38 Yoga Quotes to Inspire Change and Transformation

As yogis, we are always striving to evolve and improve our bodies, hearts, and minds. As humans, we often get discouraged or find ourselves stuck in a rut. Even if we cannot see a way towards change, there are always opportunities to create new paths toward our goals, desires, and dreams. If you find yourself yearning for a big change, a fresh start, or a new direction you can find support, inspiration, and encouragement through reading quotes on the yogic approach to change and transformation. We’ve collected 38 powerful yoga quotes to inspire success in starting a new year, exploring a new practice, attempting a new yoga pose, setting new vows, or choosing a new direction of study.

38 Yoga Quotes About Change

We hope the following quotes help to inspire change, encourage determination, provide optimism, and cultivate confidence towards achieving a new you. You may find it helpful to print out one or more of these quotes to post near your yoga practice space to serve as reminders of your intentions, affirmations or goals.

• Adhere to: faith, unity and sacrifice. Avoid: back-biting, falsehood and crookedness. Admire: frankness, honesty and large-heartedness. Control: tongue, temper, and tossing of the mind. Cultivate: cosmic love, forgiveness and patience. Hate: lust, anger, and pride. Swami Sivananda

• Anyone who practices can obtain success in yoga but not one who is lazy. Constant practice alone is the secret of success. Svatmarama

• As all the towering trees do not bear fruits until their due season, one’s tireless efforts won’t be successful until the time of fortune arrives. Saint Avvaiyar

• Be the change you wish to see in the world. GhandiChange is not only inevitable, but always happening. When you truly embrace this concept of change being constant, the only thing left to do is grow, detach, venture inwards, touch the spirit and find your source — the one responsible for keeping you grounded through the ever—changing seasons of life. Julie Weiland

• Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are. Let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it. C. Assaad

• Do everything with a mind that lets go. Don’t accept praise or gain or anything else. If you let go a little you a will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace. Ajahn Chan

• Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use. Sri Aurobindo

• 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

• For many years I mistook discipline as ambition. Now I believe it to be more about consistency. Do get on the mat. Practice and life are not that different. Judith Hanson Lasater

• However many holy words you speak, however many you read, what good will they do you if you do not act on them? The Dhammapada

• If you choose to see everything as a miracle, then where you are right now is perfect. There is nowhere to run to; there is nothing else to do except be in this moment and allow what is to be. From that place of radical acceptance, major change can happen. The first step in any transformational experience is acceptance and surrender to the present moment, the way that it is. From that place we have the awareness, humility and power to change what is. Mastin Kipp

• In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility. Victoria Moran

• Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction. Germany Kent

• One of the fundamental principles of yoga: a small action done repeatedly can make an enormous difference. Dr. Timothy McCall

• Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success. Swami Sivananda

• Remember, it doesn’t matter how deep into a posture you go. What does matter is who you are when you get there. Max Storm

• Reshape yourself through the power of your will; never let yourself be degraded by self—will. The will is the only friend of the Self; and the will is the only enemy of the Self. The Bhagavad Gita

• The goal of yoga is liberation from all limitations. So how do we overcome limitations? Look what happens when you do Hatha Yoga: a stiff and inflexible body will stretch, release and relax. In the same way, if you use the other tools of yoga you will stretch your mind and bring your essential self into the Light. Swami Radhananda

• The moment is now. The present moment is not just a progression of past moments, but is alive in its own way, complete and perfect. And it is this new moment that demands our attention. Only in the moment can we be fully awake and respond to the real needs of ourselves and others. Only in the present moment can we be fully attentive. Llewellen Vaughn Lee

• The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. Ralph Waldo Emerson

• There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow; so today is the right day to love, believe, do and mostly live. Dalai Lama

• There is always room for change but you have to be open to that change. Kathryn Budig

• There will always be people who can do it better than you, but that’s a good thing! Start to see competition as inspiration — without envy. Kathryn Budig

• The study of asana is not about mastering posture. It’s about using posture to understand and transform yourself. B.K.S Iyengar

• 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. T.K.V. Desikachar

• The very heart of yoga practice is ‘abyhasa’ — steady effort in the direction you want to go. Sally Kempton

• Train your senses to be obedient. Regulate your activities to lead you to the goal. Hold the reins of your mind as you hold the reins of restive horses. The Upanishads

• We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future. Sri Aurobindo

• When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations; your consciousness expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be. Patanjali

• Yoga does not transform the way we see things; it transforms the person who sees. B.K.S. Iyengar

• Yoga is about clearing away whatever is in us that prevents our living in the most full and whole way. With yoga, we become aware of how and where we are restricted — in body, mind, and heart — and how gradually to open and release these blockages. As these blockages are cleared, our energy is freed. We start to feel more harmonious, more at one with ourselves. Our lives begin to flow — or we begin to flow more in our lives. Cybele Tomlinson

• 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

• You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. C.S. Lewis

• You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you. Eckhart Tolle

• You either get bitter or get better. It’s that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you. Josh Shipp

• Your life is a sacred journey. It is about change, growth, discovery, movement, transformation, continuously expanding your vision of what is possible, stretching your soul, learning to see clearly and deeply, listening to your intuition, taking courageous challenges at every step along the way. You are on the path… exactly where you are meant to be right now… And from here, you can only go forward, shaping your life story into a magnificent tale of triumph, of healing, of courage, of beauty, of wisdom, of power, of dignity, and of love. Caroline Adams

• Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go. They merely determine where you start. Nido Qubein