Once a teacher has sorted out how the pose names are pronounced, the next question arrives almost immediately: fine, but what am I actually saying?
This is about the words that are not pose names. The ones in your cues, in the opening and closing, and in the name of the style you teach. Several of them are routinely translated wrongly, and in a couple of cases the popular translation is not a translation at all.
ॐ, the one that does not mean anything
Om is not a word, and looking for its meaning is the wrong question. It is a syllable, treated in the older texts as the sound reality makes rather than a term with a definition.
What matters practically is that it is three sounds run together: a, u, m. That is why the written form has parts, and why it is held longer than one syllable seems to warrant. The a opens at the back of the throat, the u rolls it forward through the lips, the m closes it.
Chanted as a flat English "oh" with a hum on the end, the middle sound disappears. And the middle sound is most of it.
नमस्ते, not what the poster says
Two words joined. नमः (namaḥ), a bow or act of reverence, and ते (te), to you.
So: I bow to you. That is the whole of it.
The studio translation, "the light in me honours the light in you", is a modern devotional gloss. It is a lovely sentiment and it is not what the words say. Saying so takes nothing away from the greeting; it just puts the poetry in the right column.
On pronunciation: it is NA-mas-te, three short even syllables, with the final te like "tay" said quickly and the t against the teeth. Not nah-mah-STAY. The rising English lilt on the last syllable is the giveaway.
शान्तिः, and why three times
Shanti means peace. Everyone knows that. Almost nobody is told why it is said three times, and the usual studio explanation, repetition for emphasis or for rhythm, is not the reason.
The tradition names three sources of disturbance, and asks for peace from each in turn:
- What comes from yourself: body, mind, the things you bring into the room
- What comes from other beings and the world around you: noise, people, circumstance
- What comes from forces beyond anyone's control
Three utterances, three domains. Once you know that, it is said differently: each one is its own request rather than an echo of the one before.
The words inside your cues
| Word | What it actually means | Why it matters in a cue |
|---|---|---|
| प्राण prāṇa | Breath, and life, in one word | Not a mystical extra layered onto breathing. The language simply does not separate the two |
| दृष्टि dṛṣṭi | Gaze, sight, view | It is where you look, not a rule about where you must look |
| बन्ध bandha | A bond, a tie, a lock | Same root as the English bind. "Lock" is a good translation, not a metaphor |
| आसन āsana | A seat, or the act of sitting | The word for posture comes from sitting, which tells you what the practice was originally for |
| विन्यास vinyāsa | Placing, arranging, setting down in a particular way | The sense is deliberate arrangement, not flow. Flow is what we made of it |
| मन्त्र mantra | An instrument of thought | From the root for think plus a suffix meaning tool. A device for the mind, quite literally |
| चक्र cakra | Wheel | An ordinary word. Same ancient root as the English wheel |
🔴 Three translations that are repeated everywhere and are wrong
1. Hatha does not mean "sun and moon"
हठ (haṭha) means force, or obstinacy. The older texts use it plainly: yoga pursued by effort, as against yoga pursued by devotion or by knowledge.
The sun-and-moon reading takes ha and tha as separate syllables standing for two energies. That is a later esoteric interpretation layered on top, not what the word means.
Both are worth knowing. They are not the same kind of claim, and it is worth being clear which one you are passing on: one is what the word means, the other is what a tradition later made of it.
2. Pranayama is not "breath control"
The usual gloss splits it as prāṇa + yama, restraint. The word is actually प्राणायाम, prāṇa + āyāma, which means extension or lengthening.
So the sense is closer to extending the breath than controlling it. Which, if you have ever taught it, is a better description of what is happening in the room.
3. Guru does not mean "remover of darkness"
गुरु literally means heavy. Weighty, and by extension venerable, which is how it came to mean teacher.
The familiar etymology, gu darkness, ru remover, is devotional and late, not linguistic. It is a beautiful reading of a word rather than an account of where the word came from.
None of these corrections mean the popular readings are worthless. They carry real meaning for the people who use them. The distinction worth holding is between what a word means and what a tradition has made of it, and being able to say which is which is exactly what separates a teacher who knows the language from one repeating what they were told.
One more you probably say at the end
लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु, or lokāḥ samastāḥ sukhino bhavantu.
Word by word: lokāḥ, the worlds or all beings in them; samastāḥ, all together, without exception; sukhinaḥ, happy or at ease; bhavantu, may they be.
May all beings everywhere be happy. The force of it is in samastāḥ: all of them, no one left out, which is doing more work than the usual English rendering suggests.
It is closely related to sarve bhavantu sukhinaḥ, one of the first verses worth teaching a child, which appears in the order shlokas are worth learning in.
How much is actually worth learning
Less than people fear. Perhaps thirty words cover almost everything said in a normal class: the ones above, a dozen pose elements, and the numbers.
That is an afternoon, not a course. What takes longer, and cannot be self-taught, is the sound: the error you cannot hear is the one you will keep making, which is why pronunciation is the half of this that needs another person.
Where this is taught
Ms. Ishita Parikh holds an MA (Acharya) in Sanskrit from Central Sanskrit University and NPTEL Elite certification from IIT Kharagpur in spoken Sanskrit, where 77 candidates were certified nationwide. Pronunciation is the part she is formally certified in, which is not true of most people teaching yoga vocabulary.
Classes are live online and open to students anywhere in the world, with times arranged around your time zone and taught entirely through English. See the course for yoga teachers, which covers this vocabulary, chanting and the invocations, and includes a module option for yoga schools running their own teacher trainings. For the sounds themselves, the spoken Sanskrit course starts where this leaves off.
Questions people ask
What does Om actually mean?
It does not mean anything, in the way that a word means something, and that is the point rather than a gap. It is a syllable rather than a term, treated in the older texts as the sound the whole of reality makes. Written properly it is three sounds run together, a, u and m, which is why the written form has parts and why it is often held longer than a single syllable would suggest. Chanting it as a flat English O and a hummed M loses the middle sound entirely, and the middle sound is most of it.
What does namaste literally mean?
Two words joined: namah, meaning a bow or an act of reverence, and te, meaning to you. So it is closer to I bow to you than to hello. The popular studio translation, the light in me honours the light in you, is a modern devotional gloss rather than what the words say. It is a lovely sentiment and it is not a translation. Saying so does not diminish the greeting; it just puts the poetry in the right column.
Why is shanti said three times at the end of class?
Because the tradition names three sources of disturbance and asks for peace from each in turn: what comes from oneself, what comes from other beings and the world around, and what comes from forces beyond anyone's control. Three utterances, three domains. It is not repetition for emphasis or for rhythm, which is how it is usually explained in a studio, and knowing the reason changes how it is said: each one is its own request rather than an echo of the one before.
Does hatha yoga mean sun and moon?
Not literally, though you will hear it constantly. The word hatha means force, or obstinacy, and the older texts use it in that plain sense: yoga pursued by effort. The sun and moon reading, taking ha and tha as separate syllables for two energies, is a later esoteric interpretation layered on top. Both are worth knowing and they are not the same kind of claim. One is what the word means; the other is what a tradition later made of it.
Do yoga teachers need to understand the Sanskrit they use?
Not to teach a good class, and it changes the class anyway. A cue lands differently when you know that drishti means gaze rather than a rule about where to look, or that prana is breath and life in the same word rather than a mystical extra. Students can hear the difference between someone reciting a term and someone using one. The practical amount is small: perhaps thirty words cover almost everything said in a normal class, which is an afternoon rather than a course.