Michael Stone > Quotes

“In other words, eventually through this practice we can begin to experience feelings as feelings—impersonal phenomena as opposed to feelings in the form of explosive dramas of “I, me, and mine.” Feeling is the key to the present moment. It anchors us in experience.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“When our attention is on the relationship between opposing energies, they lose their oppositional tension, because we focus on their relations, not their substantiality.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Yoga practice, both on and off the mat, opens up the heart by revealing our patterns of grasping and inflexibility. This practice leaves no stone unturned. Through a disciplined and appropriately designed yoga practice, we not only see clearly our conditioned ways of living but we learn how to let go of those patterns so that our questions radically outnumber our answers. When we are open, and our habitual psychological and physical ways of being are suspended, we arrive in the present moments of life free to respond with an open and creative heart.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“When we accept what is in this very moment, without pushing or pulling, when there is no running after or running away, we find in our practice a level of deep acceptance and peace.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“When we let go of the continual construction of a self or even the need to be a “somebody,” then we are free to be who we are. When we are completely ourselves, we forget about needing to be the center of our perceptual world and thus we can take in others and our environment with greater sensitivity, compassion, and openness.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Although many symptoms do not at first seem to have a purpose, they are almost always attempts at balance, no matter how perverted.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Nonattachment does not mean dissociation; it actually connotes connection and engagement with what is. Nonattachment does not prevent compassion; it sets up the conditions for it.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“yoga practice matures, not by adding more and more spectacular postures but by simply paying attention to the movements of the breath in the space of the heart and the role of the mind with the body, not apart from it.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“We are always dancing between form and impermanence.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“yoga occurs when we let opposites move right through our pores, only to see that opposition is a conceptual designation that falls away when we are with the energy of the moment rather than with our storytelling.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Mistaken conception leads to mistaken perception. If we are confined to a representational reality, we are always bound to our theories of reality rather than direct perception through the senses and mind.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“If our practice is creating flexibility of the body without a corresponding flexibility of the heart, we need to redress the way we conceive of and engage in practice.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Yoga is far nicer than anything we could have wanted or bargained for. We simply have not been able to wrap our minds around it, and so before investigating it on its own terms, we are selling it unopened and untasted in the spiritual marketplace.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Does our yoga practice superficially cover up our miseries and distract us from the deeper work of the heart? Are we in love with the truth of life or are we in love with the image we see in the mirror? What is really important to us? Our backbends, arm balances, and the opinions that others have of us? When we come close to the end of this life, will our yoga practice have served us well? Will we pass into the unknown completely calm and joyous, full of love for all beings? Or will we have regrets?”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“The teachings of yoga orient us toward this very moment, rendering the future invisible and the past no longer in reach.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“The body is not perfectly still; it is always in dynamic motion. The mind is a changing process as well. But the motion has a sense of stability to it when the sheaths are in balance.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Yoga psychology is a series of techniques that interrupt all forms of attachment, especially our attachment to self.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“The key in the model of the five kleṣas is that though the mind-body is contracted in states of addiction and delusion, this self-centered and inflexible posture is not permanent.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Our relationships are our yoga practice; our practice exists not in some other place at some other time but in this very interconnected existence—you, I, water, trees, cars, winds, and breath.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Watching the breath can be like watching the birth-and-death cycle of the universe. It’s all right here in this immediate moment of perception, organization, and experience.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“YOGA AS A PATH is the way out of our present conditioning and the way toward freedom from habitually ensnaring conditions—a practice and philosophy”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Industrialism is such an all-consuming impulse that it’s hard to think outside the box. In fact we have interiorized the aspects of industrial materialism to the extent that we treat our own bodies as resources that should keep up with the impossible pace of increased productivity.”
― Michael Stone, Yoga for a World Out of Balance: Teachings on Ethics and Social Action

“A broad understanding of yoga theory integrated with specific practices takes the formal techniques of yoga to deeper levels but also brings yoga off the mat, out of the meditation hall and into the tangled world of our interpersonal relationships, our habitual psychological holding patterns, and the complexity of ethical action.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner

“Yoga is not about conforming to other people’s definitions of practice but simply an authentic response to the questions presented by our life, our path.”
― Michael Stone, The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner