“Namaste,” a not unusual greeting in India and South Asia, has turn out to be an international cultural phenomenon – the phrase seems far and wide, from wellness retreats to political occasions to popular culture.
In lots of yoga categories in North The usa and Europe, this is a ritual to finish observe via pronouncing “namaste,” because of this, in world yoga tradition, one thing like “the divine in me bows to the divine in you.”
This custom isn’t with out controversy. Some critics accuse Western yogis of cultural appropriation each time they are saying it.
Their argument is that during India, namaste mainly approach “hello” or “goodbye.” Within the West, alternatively, yogis have reworked this phrase right into a catchphrase weighted down with “overblown interpretations” and a “faux gravity” to raised promote yoga, writes journalist Kumari Devarajan in an NPR article.
Others disagree with this view. Swami Tattwamayananda, the pinnacle of the Vedanta Society of Northern California in San Francisco and a number one authority on Indian ritual and scripture, advised me: “It is perfectly appropriate for everyone, including Westerners like yourself, to say namaste at the end of your yoga classes.”
As a pupil of verbal exchange and ethics and an established yoga trainer, I discover this controversy in my 2026 e book “Living Namaste: A Practical Guide to Mindfulness, Yoga, and Building Community.” My conclusion for individuals who are questioning: Sure, it’s OK to mention namaste. I will be able to give an explanation for why.
A temporary historical past of namaste
Namaste is what linguists name a “loan word” that comes into English from Sanskrit. It’s composed of 2 phrases: “namas” approach bow, bend, or honor; and “te” approach to you. Namaste actually approach “I bow to you.”
As highest as students can inform, namaste entered the English language within the overdue Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies as one of the phrases related to the countercultural religious revolution. Because it did, its that means modified to “the divine in me bows to the divine in you.”
One one that popularized namaste’s new that means used to be Ram Dass. A charismatic religious trainer and bestselling writer with a background in psychology, Dass toured faculty campuses within the Nineteen Seventies and popularized yoga, meditation and psychedelics as way of life alternatives for a discontented era. In his lectures, he inspired folks to mention namaste and taught them that namaste is a bow from one particular person’s divinity to every other’s.
As yoga’s recognition exploded within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, the usage of namaste become extra common.
Shiva Rea used to be one of the outstanding yoga lecturers of this era, and she or he popularized pronouncing namaste on the finish of yoga categories. In her phrases, namaste approach “I bow to the divinity within you from the divinity within me.” In an editorial within the January-February 2000 factor of Yoga Magazine, she wrote, “This salutation is considered to be the essence of the yogic practice of seeing the divine within all of creation.”
The query of cultural appropriation
Cultural appropriation is usually outlined as when folks from a dominant tradition undertake or exploit a cultural observe this is valuable via every other tradition, with out correctly working out the historical past or context of that observe. That is particularly problematic when folks accomplish that in some way that disrespects, stereotypes or materially harms the unique tradition.
To me, in accordance with this definition, pronouncing namaste on the finish of a yoga observe does now not warrant the purple flag of cultural appropriation.
‘Namaste’ has turn out to be a well-liked greeting on the finish of a yoga elegance.
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Namaste isn’t the title of a deity in any Indian faith. Additionally, as James Mallinson of Oxford College issues out in a 2017 podcast, namaste does now not play a central position in Hindu non secular rituals. If namaste have been a sacred non secular phrase being spoken via individuals who don’t observe that faith, it may well be an example of cultural appropriation. However it isn’t.
In the similar podcast interview, yoga research pupil Andrea Jain has the same opinion with Mallinson’s view that pronouncing namaste isn’t cultural appropriation. She contends that says of cultural appropriation suppose that there’s one true, Indian model of yoga that Westerners have stolen. However yoga’s historical past is extra complicated.
Yoga has taken a profound variety of paperwork in India and the sector over the last two millennia. There hasn’t ever been only one original lineage of Indian yoga. There are handiest yogas within the plural – many varieties of yoga observe related to other traditions, philosophical faculties and religions.
Nobody custom owns yoga or the phrases that experience turn out to be related to it, similar to namaste. Given this reality, the query shifts from appropriation to observe: What will we imply once we say namaste?
Namaste is a phrase of connection
Previously 50 years, namaste has developed from a easy greeting and parting to a phrase that may be a mini meditation at the interconnectedness and shared divinity of all beings.
Tracing the evolving that means of namaste, it’s comprehensible how the phrase shifted from that means “I bow to you” to “the divine in me bows to the divine in you.”
Maximum Indian religions and religious traditions agree that there’s something divine in all folks: For Hindus and Jains it’s the soul, or the atman; for Buddhists it’s the “Buddha nature” – the dwelling power of mindfulness, peace and awakening.
Waking as much as this feeling of innate divinity is what makes namaste a convention of private transformation.
While you bow to someone else whilst pronouncing “namaste,” you’re honoring one thing treasured in them. You might be acknowledging that they’re sacred and worthy of appreciate. On the similar time, you’re honoring the similar qualities in your self.
It is a second of polarization and department. Many American citizens really feel remoted and by myself. Phrases that remind us of our shared humanity, or find out how to deal with every different with dignity slightly than put out of your mind and disregard, are badly wanted nowadays. Namaste is one such phrase.
