Japanese Yoga Quotes

No art takes places without inspiration. Every artist also needs effective knowledge of his or her tools (e.g., does a certain brush function well with a particular kind of paint?). What's more, artists need effective techniques for using those tools.
Likewise, to express ourselves skillfully with maximum efficiency and minimum effort, we need to investigate the most effective ways of using the mind and body since, in the end, they are the only "tools" we truly possess in life. ~ H. E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way Of Dynamic Meditation

Nakamura Tempu Sensei viewed the mind as a segment of the body that could not be seen and the body as the element of the mind that was observable. He also likened the mind and body to a stream, with the mind as the source flowing down to the body. Whatever we drop in the stream will be carried down by the current. In like manner, our thoughts will influence the body and our well being. ~ H.E. Davey

Because all actions and expressions
stem from the mind, it is vital to know the
mind as well as decide in what way we'll use it. Everyone has heard of psychosomatic illness, and most of us acknowledge that psychosomatic sicknesses can and do occur. But what
about psychosomatic wellness? ~ H.E. Davey

Memorizing someone else's explanation of the truth isn't the same as seeing the truth for yourself. It is what it is - the memorization of second-hand knowledge. It is not your experience. It is not your knowledge. And no matter how much material is learned by rote, and no matter how eloquently we can speak about the memorized information, we're clinging to a description of something that's not ours. What's more, the description is never the item itself. By holding onto our impression of certain descriptions, we frequently are unable to see the real thing when it's right before our eyes. We are conditioned by memorizing and believing concepts - the truth of which we've never genuinely seen for ourselves. ~ H.E. Davey

Shin-shin-toitsu-do includes a wide variety of stretching exercises, breathing methods, forms of seated meditation and moving meditation, massage-like healing arts, techniques of auto-suggestion, and mind and body coordination drills, as well as principles for the unification of
mind and body.

These principles of mind and body coordination are regarded as universal laws that express the workings of nature on human life. As such, they can be applied directly to an endless number of everyday activities and tasks. It is not uncommon when studying Japanese yoga to encounter classes and seminars that deal with the direct application of these universal principles to office work, sales, management, sports, art, music, public speaking, and a host of other topics.

How to use these precepts of mind and body integration to realize our full potential in any action is the goal. All drills, exercises, and practices of Shin-shin-toitsu-do are based on the same principles, thus linking intelligently a diversity of arts. But more than this, they serve as vehicles for grasping and cultivating the principles of mind and body coordination. And it is these principles that can be put to use directly, unobtrusively, and immediately in our daily lives. ~ H.E. Davey

He grabbed the back of my parka,but I got the distinct impression he was not trying to be a gentleman by helping me out of it.He just wanted his parka back.
"When you feel cornered,you'll just fling whatever you've got at people, and you don't care who gets hurt with what."
"I am not scared." I slid down from the truck seat into Liz's stepdad's galoshes, then turned to face Nick one last time. "I am not scared of boarding or you,and I will prove it to you tomorrow.If you think I'm going easy on you in the comp just because you have a debilitating injury from yesterday-"
"That's what you think," he snarked. "I've been going yoga."
"-you have another think coming.You will buy me those Poser tickets. And I'm not even taking you.You will hand the tickets over to me,and I'll take someone else."
"Who? Your little brother's friends?"
"No,Everett Walsh." I closed the door softly behind me so as not to alarm sleeping adults,because I was that mature.
Even through the door and the rolled up window,I could clearly hear every filthy work Nick uttered, ending with, "Everett [cuss word] Walsh."
I opened the passenger door. "Ask not for whom the fire-crotch burns;it burns for thee!" I'd meant this to be an insult.Then I realized it sounded like I wanted Nick.Or like I had a feminine problem. ~ Jennifer Echols

Without quietude you cannot enjoy the cool vibrations of the Divine. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

I think we should do meditation and yoga at work. ~ Mark T Bertolini

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day. ~ Ray Bradbury

Yoga is effort. Only practice is important. The rest of knowledge is only theory. ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

Vittoria slipped off her robe. 'You've never been to bed with a yoga master, have you? ~ Dan Brown

The Japanese school year begins in spring ... so mothers can send off their children as cherry blossoms fall from the branches. ~ Cathy Davidson

I grew up as a fifth-generation Jew in the American South, at the confluence of two great storytelling traditions. After graduating from Yale in the 1980s, I moved to Japan. For young adventure seekers like myself, the white-hot Japanese miracle held a similar appeal as Russia in 1920s or Paris in the 1950s. ~ Bruce Feiler

It's strange, but when I have to speak in front of an audience, I find it more comfortable to use my far-from-perfect English than Japanese. I think this is because when I have to speak seriously about something in Japanese I'm overcome with the feeling of being swallowed up in a sea of words. ~ Haruki Murakami

The school year in the United States is, on average, 180 days long. The South Korean school year is 220 days long. The Japanese school year is 243 days long. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

We're so screwed up with our principles. We used to mock Japanese game shows where they ate bugs. Now we're doing the same, if not worse. It's terrifying ... It seems the better the quality (of what you're trying to do), the more you're penalised.. There are some very good people in television, but a lot of fools running it. They put fame ahead of talent and think someone from EastEnders will put bums on seats. ~ Philip Glenister

I try to work out more now. I have been really thinking about getting into yoga, though. I can use that, believe it. ~ Raheem Devaughn

I took Japanese in high school. I'm Chinese, though, and I just fell in love with the language and the culture. ~ Matthew Moy

What we refer to as yoga is just a technology to make your energies function by choice, not by compulsion. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

To a Boy

Boy,
you are a hidden watering place under the trees
where, as the day darkens, gentle beasts with calm eyes
appear one after another.

Even if the sun drops flaming at the end of the fields where grass stirs greenly
and a wind pregnant with coolness and night-dew agitates your leafy bush,
it is only a premonition.

The tree of solitude that soars with ferocity,
crowned with a swirling night,
still continues in your dark place.

-Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato ~ Mutsuo Takahashi

As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is. ~ Ram Dass

The one you confront in Yoga is yourself. All that is rigid and stiff in you, all that says 'No. ~ Frederick Leboyer

There was a reason I was so into yoga. I was high-strung(news flash!). ~ Jennifer Echols

I love yoga and hiking - I think that's the perfect combo. ~ Olivia Wilde

I am an admirer of haiku, and I'm a great admirer of Japanese literature in general. ~ Richard Flanagan

I do want to learn the way to do it over here. I'm not really looking to just go about my way and do it in the Japanese way that I've been doing. Basically, I'll try to get some advice, learn the way it's done here and go about it. ~ Masahiro Tanaka

There are many goals but one path - the path of compassion. ~ Amit Ray

There is a Japanese proverb that literally goes 'Raise the sail with your stronger hand', meaning you must go after the opportunities that arise in life that you are best equipped to do. ~ Soichiro Honda

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. ~ Sylvia Plath

Stop trying to distinguish the joy of meditation from the messiness of life. Begin to see the divine in everything. She is in the joy just as much as the misery. ~ Rod Stryker

Red lipstick has been my beauty staple for years. I show up to Pilates or yoga at 8 A.M. wearing my red lipstick. ~ Liz Goldwyn

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. ~ Joan Didion

You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist. You can make the work a chore, or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself. ~ Anne Lamott

Pine trees rise through cloud
soar up into the blue skies,
bush clover spangled with dewdrops
sways in the autumn breeze;
As I dip cold, pure water
at the edge of the stream,
a solitary white crane
comes lolloping my way. ~ Baisao

"I don't like it" or "I like it". This sentence must go away from your tongue. Likes and dislikes are only for people who have limited vision. You should learn to appreciate. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

Everyone is growing and developing. Everyone has to go through a trial and eror process of finding what is right. ~ Frederick Lenz

I'm not a big fan of the gym, I do lots of outdoor aerobics - yoga, swimming, running - but I kinda hate talking about it. We have a term in Australia, it makes you sound like a wanker. ~ Ryan Kwanten

As you can imagine, those who had fallen this far had been so worn down by their tortures in the seven other hells that they no longer had the strength to cry out. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

If you want to know the reality, you have to become the spirit. ~ Nirmala Srivastava