[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Unless you’re in the business of taking on challenges — new hobbies, new life circumstances, new jobs — at a regular clip, it’s hard to appreciate how foreign something is until it’s not foreign anymore. That means you initially fumble around and aren’t sure where to turn for guidance. You get bad advice, muck things up, feel discouraged.
With that in mind, here are some lesser known but often said terms and phrases in the
yoga world. To be sure, this is a primer, so it doesn’t include deeper yoga-related language nor is it a list of poses/postures. Instead, it’ll help you decipher the cues and references you're bound to hear in your next
yoga class.
A Glossary of Yoga Terms to Know
Abdominal breath
What results from inhaling and exhaling in a way that intentionally engages your diaphragm. In practical terms, you inhale by pressing your belly out (and your diaphragm lowers allowing more space in your lungs), and you exhale by drawing your belly toward your lower spine (and your diaphragm moves up helping your lungs release air).
Allow your (fill in any body part hear) to soften
Ease the gripping action or muscular engagement you have in (fill in any body part here).
Arch your back
Move your front side torso forward, from belly to chest, so that the back side of your torso becomes concave.
Belly breath
Same as abdominal breath.
Chakra
Energy center. Your body is thought to have seven chakras from your seat to your crown and each does something different.
Close your front ribs inward
Engage your core muscles, particularly your abdominals. This action helps reverse an arch in your back.
Diaphragmatic breathing
Same action you take for an abdominal breath.
Draw energy up
Press whatever part of your body is touching a surface beneath you into that surface, as if you want to lift off of it instead of sinking into it. Also can mean visualizing energy moving from a lower part of the body to an upper part of the body so as to be more in tune with the energy that’s always in your body.
Draw your senses inward
Pay attention to what is happening to and/or within you and only you — physical sensations, emotional variations, mental chatter — not what is happening around you.
Engage / Draw up your pelvic floor
There are nuances within this action, but you can generally think of it as the action you create when you stop urine midstream.
Extend your spine / Spinal extension
“Extend” might be used in a general way in yoga class. But “extension” is what happens when you open the front side of your spine, as you would when you press your chest forward and drop your head back — your spine is up in your neck too — or arch your back (defined above).
Firm your belly toward your spine
Engage your entire core: back, front, sides. It might feel similar to the action you create for a bowel movement.
Flex your spine / Spinal flexion
When you round your back like a Halloween cat you’re flexing your spine. More on that below under “round your back.”
Final rest
The nonnegotiable minutes at the end of a yoga session wherein you lie as still as possible and just breathe. The typical posture for final rest is savasana, but final rest can be in any shape that allows you to actually rest and just breathe.
Four corners of your feet
A reference to these imaginary areas — your feet obviously don’t have corners — is meant to encourage placing weight evenly throughout each foot, which engages muscles throughout your legs.
Goal-post arms
When you have “goal-post arms” your arms reach out laterally at shoulder height and have a 90-degree angle at the elbows, with your fingers pointing the same direction as the crown of your head.
Heart center
Roughly where your sternum is, the spot at the center of your chest. This can also be a metaphoric reference, a way to draw compassion and awareness inward, and outward.
Hinge from your hips
Bend forward, as if a hinge is in your hips, which means you try to maintain the natural curves of your spine. In other words: not rounding your back to move into a forward fold.
Lengthen your spine
Use the muscles in your neck to and back to lift the crown of your head as far you can from your hips.
Modify
Change what you’re doing, with or without props, to make it less or more difficult.
Namaste
The light, or good, in me recognizes the light, or good, in you.
Om
Represents the beginning and end of everything and is the best-known yoga mantra. In yoga lore, “Om” is said to contain all the sounds of the universe, and the universe is thought to have started with the sound “Om.”
Props
Blocks, straps, chairs, a wall, bolsters — anything, aside from your mat and the surface beneath it, that aids and/or adds an extra element to your yoga practice.
Pull your navel to your spine
Engage your core. Pulling your navel toward your spine helps initiate that engagement.
Root to rise / Root down to rise up
Much like “drawing energy up,” the action of rooting — or pressing — down creates a rebound action upward. This expression is also metaphoric, an example of the yin-yang balance key to yoga (and life).
Round your back
This is something you generally don’t want to do, in yoga or life, unless you’re keen on curving forward in your senior years. A rounded back means your outer shoulders slump forward, your chest caves inward and the back side of your spine presses out. Think of a cashew or candy cane. If you hear “round your back” during yoga class, it’s often preceded by “don’t.” There are some exceptions, such as in cat pose, or during a gentle forward fold. Spinal flexion (see above) allows you to round your back.
Sacrum
To be sure, many anatomical parts are mentioned during yoga class, from “lungs” to “sternum.” I’m confident you know what most of them are. “Sacrum” is less commonly known but often mentioned. It’s the bony plate at the base of your spine and the top of your bum.
Sit/Sitting bones
Bottom of your hip bones.
Take a vinyasa
This can mean a full or abridged version of lifting your torso halfway while in a standing forward fold; stepping back into plank position, and then lowering your body to your mat (or doing both those actions in one fell swoop); lifting into a backbend such as cobra; and then ending in downward dog.
Ujjayi
A type of nasal breath that creates internal heat and wherein you tighten the back of your throat as you inhale and exhale. You’ll know you’re doing it if your breath creates a whooshing sound that reminds you of Darth Vader.
Mitra Malek has practiced yoga since 2003 and instructed yoga since 2006. She’s a former Yoga Journal senior editor and contributing editor. She loves words, yoga-related and otherwise.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_text_separator title="Yoga Essentials" border_width="2"][vc_row_inner equal_height="yes" content_placement="middle" gap="35"][vc_column_inner width="1/3"][vc_single_image image="161311" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" css=".vc_custom_1658597968371{padding-right: 7% !important;padding-left: 7% !important;}" link="https://www.vitacost.com/himalaya-hello-peace"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/3"][vc_single_image image="161310" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" css=".vc_custom_1658597987204{padding-right: 7% !important;padding-left: 7% !important;}" link="https://www.vitacost.com/gaiam-yoga-mat-turquoise"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/3"][vc_single_image image="161309" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" css=".vc_custom_1658598007297{padding-right: 7% !important;padding-left: 7% !important;}" link="https://www.vitacost.com/gaiam-loops-bands-kit"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
