Poems and quotes good for supporting Yoga class themes

Here’s a collection of some of some wonderful poems and quotes that help to illustrate themes and highlight traditional yogic concepts in my yoga classes, workshops and retreats.
I hope you find them useful to use in your classes too. Sarah x

Bless the fingers, for they are as darting as fire.
Bless the little hairs of the body, for they are softer than grass.
Bless the hips for they are cunning beyond all other machinery.
Bless the mouth for it is the describer.
Bless the tongue for it is the maker of words.
Bless the eyes, for they are the gifts of the angels, for they tell the truth.
Bless the shoulders for they are a strength and a shelter.
Bless the thumb for when working it has godly grip.
Bless the feet for their knuckles and their modesty.
Bless the spine for it is the whole story.

~Mary Oliver

“When a bird sings, it doesn't sing for the advancement of music” Alan Watts 

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
By Wendell Berry

The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is,”
Iris Murdoch

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”
 John Muir

"Sometimes we are called to dance on the wild edges of our lives and discover something new, or we have a sense that our lives have grown too small so we need to confront our fears of what is unknown, we need to welcome in strangeness to crack open unfamiliar parts of ourselves and of God." ~ Christine Valters Paintner

Behold the Beautiful Drunk Singing One
From the lunar vantage point of love.

He is conducting the affairs
Of the whole Universe

While throwing wild parties
In a treehouse – on a limb
In your heart.

Hafiz Ladinski

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

“When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits – anything that kept me small. My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving.”
– Kim McMillen

Sunset
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which is passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs —

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.”
– Brian Andreas

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

“You have been criticising yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
– Louise L. Hay

We Shall Not Cease (from Little Gidding)
by T.S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always —
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson


Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.







“Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.”
– Ram Dass

 “The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.”  Arnold Bennet

“A scorpion's venom, while poisonous to its predators, serves as its most precious and valuable resource. As yogins and yoginis we have the power to transform the poisons of difficulty, confusion and risk into resourceful catalysts for strength, clarity, and grace. Through the potency of focus and skillful practice, we become the alchemists of well being and joy in our own, ever expanding life experience”.
Noah Maze