Not Your Average Yogi Quotes

“We do not always become somebody completely new. Sometimes we finally give the person we already are a better job.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“My hands weren't meant to hurt people. Now I'm learning to heal people with the same hands.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Anybody can make one grand gesture. Showing up on a boring Tuesday when nothing dramatic is happening tells you more.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Kids learn far more from how you show up than from anything you tell them directly.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“A person can hate a cage and still have to relearn what to do when the door stays open.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Real peace comes from self-mastery, but you don't have to go to prison to learn it.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Being punished and being accountable turned out to be two different things. The system gave me the first one automatically. The second one, I had to choose for myself, in a cell, with nobody asking me to.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Nobody tells you that change mostly looks like nothing happening.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“I could not change the past, but I could decide what I kept rehearsing in the present.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Real strength was never about who I could beat. It's what you do when nobody's watching and there was nothing to prove in the first place.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“You are the observer of your own thoughts and emotions, not the thoughts and emotions themselves.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Yoga and breath work taught me that the mind can file something away as handled while the body keeps holding onto it anyway. I'd cured it in my head. My body never got the memo.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“I know now that hurt people can also heal people.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“A reason doesn't make it right. It just gives you a way to not look at it too closely.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“The qualities were not criminal. The direction was.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“My nervous system had learned to mistake intensity for aliveness.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“You want to numb the negative emotions but end up numbing the positive ones too.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“Fear can still be inside you while the outside gets harder. In fact, sometimes the outside gets harder because the fear is still there.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“I had to protect myself against the streets, so I became the streets.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service

“You were born a peaceful human being, a pure human being, and then got tainted by the lifestyle, the environment, the friends, the connections you made.”
― James Lesly, Not Your Average Yogi: From Violence to Service