E92: When and How to Use Sanskrit in Your Yoga Class

A few weeks ago, I posted a simple carousel on Instagram in my “Here’s the Tea” series for yoga teachers: not every pose needs you to call out a Sanskrit name. The comments rolled in—some grateful, some furious, most somewhere in the thoughtful middle. This episode is the longer answer that didn’t fit on eight slides.

I walk through what I was actually trying to say in the post, where the conversation sharpened my thinking, and why this was never really an English-versus-Sanskrit question. To a brand-new student, “Triangle” is no clearer than “Trikonasana,” so the real skill is describing the shape so well that the name—in any language—has something to land on.

Along the way, I steelman the smartest pushbacks from teachers who love this language—the lineage argument, the repetition argument, and the case for using both—and offer three rules for using Sanskrit well: learn to pronounce it (with teachers from inside the tradition like Dr. Anuradha Choudry and Dr. M. A. Jayashree), pair it with English so the meaning travels, and tell the stories the names came from (with a nod to Dr. Raj Balkaran’s lovely book The Stories Behind the Poses).

I close with a simple way to decide what to say in any given room. The question was never “Sanskrit or English.” It’s who am I serving, and what helps them feel at home in their body and their breath while also respecting the tradition of yoga.

This isn’t a hot take. It’s a call to center. If you’ve ever felt squeezed between honoring the tradition and meeting your students where they actually are, this one’s for you.

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Transcript

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Can I tell you something? Watch a brand new yoga student the next time you call out a pose by name. Their eyes drift up and to the side for a second, searching, translating, glancing around the room to see what everyone else is doing. For that one beat, they have left their body and gone into their head. That little moment is what I want to talk about today. A few weeks ago, I posted something about it that started a much bigger conversation than I expected, and that conversation taught me something I'd like to talk about today. I'm Sage Rountree, and this is Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher. Here's the short version of what happened. I posted an Instagram carousel for yoga teachers with a simple idea, not every pose needs you to call out its Sanskrit name. It struck a nerve. A lot of teachers commented, and some of the most thoughtful responses came from people who clearly love this practice and its language as much as you and I do. A few of those comments genuinely sharpened how I think about this and changed how I'd say it now. So today, I have a longer, fuller take on this. Let's cover three things, what I was actually trying to say, where I've sharpened my thinking since, and a practical way you can decide how and when to use Sanskrit with the real students in front of you. We all know that nuance is flattened on social media. And when I said not every pose needs a Sanskrit name, my argument was never English instead of Sanskrit.

It was this: 1:32

Your job in any given moment is to help the person in front of you find the shape, follow the breath, and settle the mind. The language serves that work. It doesn't replace it. And here's the part I didn't say clearly enough the first time, the part the conversation around the post helped me sharpen. Thanks to all the commenters who pointed this out. To a true beginner, triangle is not actually more accessible than Trikonasana. Both are just words they haven't connected to a shape in their body yet. If a new student doesn't know what triangle is, swapping in the English name hasn't taught them anything. So this was never really about choosing the easier language. It's about describing the action, the shape, and the sensation so clearly that the name in any language isn't the thing carrying the class. Once the body knows the pose, then the name has something to land on. That shift matters because it moves the whole question off English or Sanskrit. The real skill is the teaching, especially the cueing. Name the action, name the sensation or the target area, then the name Warrior II, Virabhadrasana II or both becomes an anchor for an experience the student is already having instead of a clue they have to decipher and decode. When the post went around, the responses I learned the most from didn't come from people trying to score a point. They came from teachers thinking out loud about their own craft. I want to build up and engage with the strongest versions of what they said. Here's a quick definition first because it's a fun and a useful word. To steelman an argument is the opposite of strawmanning it. When you strawman, you argue against the weakest version of what someone said. I saw a lot of that when I was teaching college composition and rhetoric. When you steelman, you build the strongest, most generous version of their point and take that on. It's harder, and it's also how you actually learn something. The lineage argument. Pose names are doorways. Virabhadrasana isn't called warrior just because warriors look impressive. Virabhadra was a fierce warrior born from Shiva's grief, and the three warrior poses each carry a piece of his story. Teach the name and you can teach the story, and the story opens onto the philosophy that makes yoga into something more than stretching. Steelmanned, that is gorgeous teaching. The one thing I would add is practical. How much of the story you tell depends on how much room the moment gives you. A drop-in class leaves less space than a regular group where you have a series of regulars coming week after week or a teacher training or a workshop. So match the depth to the time you have. The repetition argument. As one teacher put it beautifully, students don't know the name until they know the name. If you teach a regular group and you gently, consistently layer Sanskrit in, maybe saying Warrior 2 the first time, Virabhadrasana 2, Warrior 2 the next, and then just the Sanskrit once it's familiar, then your students will come to know it. That's a beautiful long arc, and it's artful pedagogy. All it asks is a relationship over time, so match your approach to the room you actually have. And the use both argument. A lot of teachers ask the obvious question, why is this either/or? Say both. Offer the Sanskrit and the English together and let students hold both at once. I agree completely. Saying both is simply good craft, and it works from the very first class, not only once students are ready. A brand-new student can hear Trikonasana, Triangle Pose, on day one. And the argument I most want to receive fully, the respect argument. Yoga is a living tradition carried forward today by Indian teachers and practitioners. Sanskrit isn't a decoration laid over the top of it. It runs all the way through it, and for many people, the sound itself is part of the practice. That's what makes chanting so powerful. To treat the language as an obstacle to be cleared away is to miss something essential. I take that seriously. I have no interest in stripping anything away. I want all of us to teach with more care, not with less, and to always keep our students front and center Now Sanskrit belongs in your class, some of it sometimes or a lot of it often. Here's how to use it well, so you're honoring the language rather than guessing at it. One, learn to pronounce it. The tradition holds that the sounds themselves carry meaning. How you say a word is part of what the word does. You don't have to become a scholar, but you do have to care. Start small. Pick three pose names you say every week, and then learn to say them well. Here's a quick example, asana. The first vowel is the long A you'd hear in father, asana, with the weight up front, not Asana like the productivity software. Or shavasana, where shava means corpse, not shivasana, which would maybe name the pose for Shiva. For learning, I want to point you first to teachers who work with this language from inside the tradition. Dr. Aniruddha Chaudhuri is a Sanskrit scholar who teaches the language and its sounds as a living practice. She has accessible classes online, including the pronunciation of asana names, and her work on the power of Sanskrit sound is a beautiful place to start. Dr. M.A. Jayashree, a Sanskrit teacher from Mysore, teaches chanting and the yoga sutras in the traditional method passed down through listening and repetition. That's always a good way to pick up the sounds. And for a practical starting point, Nicolai Bachman's flashcards and his book The Language of Yoga walk you clearly through your first asana names. Number two, pair Sanskrit with English when your students need the meaning. Sanskrit on its own is a sound. Sanskrit with English is a teaching to English speakers. Say bhujangasana cobra pose, and you've handed students both the original word and its meaning in one breath. Week by week, the English becomes the bridge, and the Sanskrit becomes familiar to the students. Number three, tell the stories. Most pose names come from somewhere. Hanumanasana, the splits, comes from Hanuman's great leap across the ocean. Bhujangasana, that cobra pose, points to the serpents threaded all through the tradition. These carry the philosophy hiding inside names you already say. If you want a wonderful doorway in, Dr. Raj Balkaran, a scholar of Indian mythology and Sanskrit texts, wrote a great book. It's called The Stories Behind the Poses. It's beautiful, and it walks you through key poses and the myth behind each one. Now, you don't have to tell every story all the time, but knowing the story changes how you say the name, and your students might feel that. Now, how do you actually decide on a Tuesday night with a real room full of students in front of you? Here's a simple version. Start with the shape and the sensation. Cue the body so well that a student can find the pose even if you never named it. Offer the name as an anchor, not a hurdle. Often that means both names. Sometimes with the right group, it's just the Sanskrit, and sometimes if naming it would break the flow more than it would serve, you let the cue stand on its own because not every pose needs its name called out at all in any language. Layer over time with the students you see week after week. That's how the Sanskrit takes root. And keep studying the language and the tradition you're teaching so that when you reach for it, you reach with care. Underneath all of this is the same question I keep coming back to: Who is in this room, and what helps them feel at home in their body and their breath? You are the guide as the yoga teacher, and the students are the heroes of the classroom. The practice is the point, and the language is in service of both the students and the practice. I'll leave you with this. A lot of thoughtful teachers took the time to push my thinking. Some of the most useful pushback came from teachers who carried this tradition from the inside, and I'm grateful they spent their time on me. That's the practice too, staying open, staying a student, letting other people's care sharpen your own. If conversations like this are your thing, come find me. My newsletter lives at sagerountree.com/newsletter, and I'm on Instagram at @sagerountree with no letter D. And if this was useful, please share it with one teacher who's wrestling with the same question. That's the kindest thing you can do for the show. Thank you for being here. This is Yoga Teacher Confidential. I'm Sage Rountree, and I'll see you next time