I'm deeply grateful that yoga is part of my lineage.
I grew up hearing Sanskrit mantras,
Especially during many sacred ceremonies.
But if I'm honest,
For most of my life,
I didn't really understand them.
I heard them.
I just didn't know how to fully receive them.
It's only recently that something clicked.
Mantras were meant to be received on more than an intellectual level.
Here's the thing about Sanskrit.
It isn't only a language of meaning.
It's a language of vibration.
Every letter was built to carry a frequency.
A sound with a job to do.
That's part of why these words have lasted thousands of years without changing.
Namaste Aum Shanti Chakra.
They were never meant to just be understood.
They were meant to be felt in the body as sound.
And here's the part that really clicked the first time I heard it.
Sanskrit has around 50 letters.
And the six lower chakras in your body,
From the base of your spine to the space between your eyebrows,
Have 50 petals between them.
50 letters,
50 petals.
Lining up one for one.
Each pedal said to hold one of those sounds tuned like a tiny instrument to a specific channel of the energy inside you.
So when you say the word the way it was meant to be said,
The sound meets the exact place it was built for.
These are sacred sounds.
From a tradition that is ancient and precise.
But as yoga spread across the Western world,
That precision didn't always travel with it.
Slowly,
These words got worn smooth,
Reshaped to fit a different mouth.
And I'm not telling you this to shame anyone.
I've said these words wrong plenty of times myself.
Sometimes on purpose just to fit in.
But here's what I keep coming back to.
Now that we know better,
We get to do better.
Together.
And that's a gift,
Not a burden.
So start small.
Chakra with that soft cha,
Like the beginning of church,
Not chakra.
Mantra not mantra.
Karma.
Not karma.
Asana.
Not Asana.
Even of the art.
Which so many of us know as something on a screen,
Began as a Sanskrit word.
Of God.
A divine descent into form,
Not avatar.
You won't say them perfectly every time,
And that's OK.
What matters is that you're feeling the sound in your body in addition to listening to the sound with your mind.
Because every time you try,
You're offering something real.
To a tradition that has carried these sounds for thousands of years.
And to yourself.
