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Namaste. 

I used to say it because everyone else did.

When I was taking a weekly class to add a little length and flexibility to my hours of daily intense conditioning, I went along with everyone else. At the end of class, I brought my palms together to touch at heart’s center or my forehead, bowed to the instructor, and repeated the word in synchronous sound with the other students. 

I figured that was normal. I never gave any thought to its meaning – its culture, its language, its history, or its people.

Years went by as I followed the crowd, repeating “Namaste” at the end of each class.

As I took more classes over the years, I began to doubt this imitation. I stopped repeating this word, but remained uncertain of what to say instead. 

After years of putting my hands together at my heart, keeping my lips silent, I spent some time volunteering in India. I was living in a village about a 20-minute walk from McLeod Ganj – the Tibetan capital in exile and the residence of the Dalai Lama.

Those weeks, I was overtaken by the perpetual greetings of Namaste. The stream of monks in golden mustard or crimson robes. Native Indians. Tibetans living in exile. Everyone greeted everyone with Namaste.

There was a Tibetan teahouse I went to nearly every day with my fellow volunteers. The owner of the tea house, Lobsang, was a Tibetan refugee. I enjoyed talking with him, learning Tibetan, and drinking his lemon ginger honey tea with immense passion. 

What strikes me from that time is how often I heard and said Namaste. Everyone I passed. Everyone I smiled at. Everyone who saw me. It was the greeting they gave to everyone and everything. 

I recalled my feelings of not wanting to just follow the herd and repeat Namaste with everyone. Yet here I was, saying Namaste a hundred or more times every day. I wanted to know more. I needed to rectify my conflicting sentiments. 

So, I started to ask. I talked with my favorite teahouse owner. I queried the Indian man who ran the health program I volunteered for. I asked the owners of the many shops and cafes I frequented in town.

I came to learn that Namaste was multi-faceted. It was a word that not only meant hello and good blessings, but also a wishing of good health and prosperity. A gratitude for everyone in your life – those you know and those you have not yet met. It was a word of love and welcome. 

I started saying Namaste aloud in my yoga classes again. It carried memory. It had meaning. It held weight. 

When Covid hit, I went from practicing about once a week to a daily yoga practice. Without family or roommates, it was my social world in a time of isolation. And it brought me closer to the practice and philosophy of yoga. 

Yoga became my emotional stability as I spent 24 hours a day in a 300-square-foot one-room apartment during Covid. I would “brag” in work meetings that I could touch my couch, bed, and refrigerator at the same time.

Yoga was also my escape from the world. I joined a studio in London and took online classes every day with them. The accents took me away on an exotic one-hour excursion, while locked in my apartment. Through my computer screen, I peered outside the windows of the yoga studio in London, imagining I was walking down the street with the locals as I moved between warrior poses.

After a while, I started thinking more about the practice of yoga. While the dozens of instructors I learned from varied, there were some that were more focused on introspection and contemplation. Some brought in yoga philosophy. Many posed questions – questions that weren’t easily answered nor solved in a single class. That was the intention. 

While I had found my Namaste meaning, I wondered if others had. I often whispered or just thought the word to myself. With more practice over these months, I began to realize that yoga was not about movement.

I had an instructor who said yoga was only about breath. It was solely a practice of breath. I liked that thought, but it still felt like there was more.

I had an instructor who talked for a whole hour before we ever moved from a seated position on our mat. It was solely a focus of guided meditation and long periods of silence. I liked thinking about those hard questions. The questions that could really make your head hurt. The questions that you think about for days…weeks…months…years. But I still felt there was more than this.

Another instructor brought a balance of philosophy, practical movement, and internal contemplation. I liked the balance she brought, even with the new movement patterns that deviated from traditional yoga asanas.

I kept these thoughts and uncertainties in the back of my mind – teetering between silence or just mouthing the word Namaste, without voice. I still desired clarity.

I eventually completed a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training over 6 months. The first 100 hours were online, with the final 100 hours in-person in Bali. Another place where I’d lived and volunteered, but for months this time. I was practicing yoga typically twice a day. I felt more connected – to Bali, my instructor, and to the practice itself. Less than a year after I moved back to the US, I signed up for the training to become a yoga instructor.

I remember one of her lessons focused on the cultural misappropriation of yoga. Sayings like “Namas-Stay in Bed” or “Sweating My Asana Off.” It was about respecting the culture, the words, the people, the history, the practice. That truly resonated with me. But I was also more lost about whether to say Namaste at the end of my practice.

Namaste had become an important word for me. It was connected to a time of my life that brought much meaning and important connections. I didn’t want other people to just say it because they should. But I also didn’t want to deny my synergy with the word.

I removed Namaste again – this time from teachings. I felt empty without the impactful feeling that word brought me. But I eventually found a way to honor the word, the culture, my understanding, and the practice.

I now end every class I teach the same way:

“I close with a word that became meaningful to me during my time volunteering in India and the Tibetan capital in exile. The people of that community taught me that this word means, ‘My day is better having spent this time with you and I hope your day is better having practiced together.’ Namaste.”