Accessibility

    Sanskrit is inaccessible to beginner yogis…

          By sheer virtue of its foreign-ness, Sanskrit is not beginner-friendly. And indeed, it is foreign in every yoga setting, because no one is a native speaker of Sanskrit. Sure, some people in India learn Sanskrit from early childhood due to its significance as a religious/ literary language, and many people consider Sanskrit – the linguistic predecessor to Hindi –  their mother tongue, for more complex reasons that I explain further in part 5 of this series: Authority.  However, Sanskrit is not spoken casually in South Asian homes; it has never been a conversational medium but rather a lofty, exclusive language of worship.

          If a random person wandered into a yoga class off the street, they could feasibly hear “forward fold” and quickly figure out the shape. But if they hear “uttanāsana,” they won’t even know where to start. It takes so much time to cue the Sanskrit word, the English translation, the breath, the anatomical directions – and for what? Advanced students also understand “forward fold,” and plain language helps beginners feel more welcome in the yoga studio.

          Sanskrit terminology can also work against us in our efforts to accommodate learning disabilities, neurodivergence, and diverse mental-emotional experiences amongst our students. For many practitioners, yoga is plenty intense without the added stimuli of foreign words being barked after every pose name. Our use of Sanskrit may inadvertently be distracting, overwhelming, or intimidating, and it demands cerebral engagement from our students when what we really want is for them to be getting out of their heads.

    AND yoga teachers often ignore the exclusionary history of Sanskrit culture…

          Sanskrit culture has historically been very exclusionary and inaccessible to large swaths of South Asian society, including women, low-caste Hindus, Dalits, Muslims, and other non-Hindus. As I explain in part 2: Antiquity, the Sanskrit language emerges from and upholds a stark socio-linguistic hierarchy that benefits only a select few: high-caste Hindu men.

          Barring our critical engagement with these histories, our continual use of Sanskrit upholds the deeply misogynistic, classist, and ableist structures of power that have characterized the Sanskrit tradition for thousands of years. When we insist on using Sanskrit in modern yoga, we reinforce the age-old notion that only upper-caste Hindu men can create and transmit yogic ideas.

          Ideally, the yoga community would welcome and cherish the contributions of yogis who are female, disabled, queer, low-caste, Dalit, and socio-economically disadvantaged. However, for many of these yogis, Sanskrit connotes an oppressive world order. By limiting or eliminating Sanskrit in our yoga classes, we can work towards a more inclusive future for the yoga community at large.

    BUT by offering Sanskrit education to all yogis, we can democratize yogic wisdom!

          As a form of resistance to the historical exclusivity of Sanskrit culture, yogis from various marginalized groups may choose to learn Sanskrit as a way of reclaiming the language and asserting their agency in the face of oppressive tradition. These yogis may view access to Sanskrit as a symbol of collective liberation, for anyone literate in Sanskrit could, theoretically, read the classical yoga texts and obtain the yogic teachings directly from their sources. This level of accessibility is historically unprecedented; for millennia in South Asian history, divine wisdom was gatekept by high-caste male priests.

          Furthermore, within some South Asian yoga traditions, Sanskrit literacy imbues practitioners with a higher degree of spiritual purity and societal respect. Individuals who know Sanskrit are permitted to perform specialized rituals, conduct textual study, and transmit certain forms of generational wisdom – practices which demonstrate their knowledge of and dedication to their yogic sadhana. In recent history, it has become much more common for historically marginalized individuals to undertake these duties, thereby attaining some amount of socio-spiritual mobility. Therefore, learning Sanskrit can be an opportunity for self-empowerment and defiance of structural inequities.

          As I hope you have learned through the seven parts of this Sounding Off series, Sanskrit is not as integral to yoga as some might have you believe. Moreover, historical emphases on Sanskrit have contributed to harmful hierarchies, exclusions, and problematic assumptions about who can practice yoga and how. However, at its core, yoga is not a discriminatory practice, but rather a tool for collective liberation. By removing educational and socio-economic barriers to Sanskrit literacy, we can work towards a more democratized form of yoga, in which all individuals have equal access and representation within the yoga community.  

        Visit the Inspiration tab to read about my embodied experience of accessibility in modern yoga →

Citta Vṛtti Nirodhaḥ

          “What happened to your thumbnail?” my barista asks with a grimace.

          I curl my other thumb into my palm self-consciously.  It’s too much, too morose to admit that I’ve mutilated them myself. Too mortifying to let on that when my mind is most busy, I don’t even notice my own gnawing.

          “Caught it in a door,” I reply coolly. The barista frowns at me apologetically, then makes my latte.  

          When I return for next week’s coffee, my hands stay balled into fists so she won’t notice that they haven’t healed.

          “Hey, could you stop that?” my coworker suggests gently.

          Restless, relentless, my right foot taps the floor. It’s a natural motion, as easy as breathing or blinking; I hardly notice, but the entire room vibrates with the pulse of my neuroticism.

          “Oh, sorry,” I say instinctively.

          The tapping resumes within minutes. My leg begs for repose, but still my energy demands to be exorcised.

          “How did you get into yoga? I find it boring,” my friend confides.

          I ponder the battle that wages within me each time I try to roll out my mat; the sheer impossibility of quieting my mind at the instructor’s request; the dozens of distractions peppering me in each posture; the craving for consistency; the desire for discipline; the need to keep my limbs relaxed and my fingers away from my teeth; the way yoga is anything but boring – exhausting, exhilarating, exhorting.

          Exhaling.

          I remember how, at the end of every practice, my body and brain melt into softened silk. For a moment, however brief, my mind falls silent and my muscles still.

          Concealing my quandary, I nod.

          “It’s not for everyone,” I offer, “but it works for me.”

          Visit the Practice tab for actionable tips, self-reflection questions, and resources to learn more about accessibility in modern yoga →

Practical Tips for Yoga Teachers:

• Be mindful of neurodivergence and mental-emotional diversity amongst your students; yoga is already plenty cerebral without the added stimuli of decoding a foreign language.
• Remember that most of your students – women, to name the most obvious example – would not have been allowed to speak or even hear Sanskrit for most of yoga’s history.
• You can defy these exclusionary histories by working to democratize modern yoga! This might look like:
  • Sharing your resources and wisdom freely (no gatekeeping!).
  • Encouraging critical discussions of yoga history and philosophy amongst your students, fellow teachers, and studio owners.
  • Designing your yoga classes to be physically and intellectually accessible.

Questions for Reflection:

• How often do I use Sanskrit pose names (as opposed to their English counterparts)?
  • Why do I use them?
  • Am I certain that my students understand those Sanskrit words?
  • If not, why do I continue to use them?
• Am I “open source” with my yogic knowledge?
  • When/ why do I gatekeep my wisdom?
  • What are the barriers to entry for my yoga classes?
  • Thinking about everything I have learned from previous teachers and fellow students, how can I pass their generosity forward?
• To what degree are my yoga classes physically accessible?
  • Are they intellectually accessible?
  • How can I ensure that every yogi feels comfortable in my classes?

Resources for Further Learning:

Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. 1st ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. doi:10.4159/9780674425262.

Heyman, Jivana. The Teacher’s Guide to Accessible Yoga: Best Practices for Sharing Yoga with Every Body. Rainbow Mind Publications, 2023.

Houben, Jan. Ideology and Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language. 1st ed. Vol. 13. Boston: BRILL, 2023.

MacGregor, Kino. Accessible Ashtanga: An All-Levels Guide to the Primary and Intermediate Series. Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 2024.

Malhotra, Rajiv. The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred, Oppressive or Liberating, Dead or Alive? New Delhi, India: HarperCollins Publishers, 2016.

Pollock, Sheldon. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. 1st ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Sarbacker, Stuart Ray. Tracing the Path of Yoga: The History and Philosophy of Indian Mind-Body Discipline. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.

Stanley, Jessamyn. Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love your Body. New York, NY: Workman Publishing Company, 2017.

          Let me know what you think in the comments below!