Most yoga teachers lead a chant they have never had explained to them.
This is not a failure of character. It is how the chants travel: you learn them by ear during your training, from a teacher who learned them by ear during theirs, along with a one-line English gloss that may or may not correspond to the Sanskrit. Nobody along the chain was hiding anything. The explanation just never happened. These verses sit within the wider practice of Nada Yoga, but you do not need that context to use this guide.
The result is that a large number of teachers are chanting a mantra addressed to two people to a room of thirty, translating a verse in the singular as a plural, and reciting an invocation that says something quite specific about who Patanjali was — without knowing any of it.
This article covers the chants most commonly used at the start and end of class: where each one comes from, what the words actually say, and how to lead them without pretending to a fluency you do not have.
First, the Pronunciation That Matters
You do not need to become a Sanskrit scholar to chant well. But a handful of distinctions do real work, and getting them wrong changes words rather than merely accenting them oddly.
Long and short vowels are different sounds, not emphasis. Short a is the vowel in “but.” Long ā is the vowel in “father.” They are as distinct as pin and pen, and swapping them can change a word’s meaning entirely.
Aspirated consonants are not separate letters. Bh, dh, gh, kh, th, ph are single sounds made with a puff of breath. Critically, ph is not f — it is a p with breath after it. “Phala” rhymes with nothing in “fallow.”
Ś and ṣ are two different sh sounds. Ś is made with the tongue near the palate, close to the English “sh” in “ship.” Ṣ is retroflex, with the tongue curled back. English speakers can usually approximate both with “sh” and be understood, but knowing there are two prevents the flattening of everything into one.
The visarga is not silent. That ḥ at the end of śāntiḥ is a soft breath that echoes the preceding vowel — roughly “shaantihi,” with the final syllable barely voiced. Most Western chanting drops it entirely. It is a small thing and it is genuinely part of the word.
V sits between English v and w. Neither is quite right; the sound is made with the lower lip near the upper teeth but softer than an English v.
That is enough to chant respectably. Everything beyond it is refinement.
1. Om Saha Nāvavatu
oṁ saha nāvavatu, saha nau bhunaktu, saha vīryaṁ karavāvahai, tejasvi nāvadhītam astu, mā vidviṣāvahai. oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ.
Source: The peace invocation of several Upanishads of the Krishna Yajurveda, appearing at the head of the Taittiriya and Katha Upanishads.
Meaning: May we both be protected. May we both be nourished. May we work together with vigour. May our study be illuminating. May we not fall into dispute.
Now the part that changes how you use it.
Nau is the dual. Sanskrit has three numbers — singular, dual and plural — and nau means “us two,” not “all of us.” Vidviṣāvahai is likewise a dual verb form: may we two not hate one another.
This is not a general prayer for the wellbeing of everyone in the room. It is a mantra chanted between a teacher and a student, at the start of study, asking that the relationship between those two people stay clean.
That makes it an excellent opening for a yoga class — arguably the most appropriate of all of them — but it means something more specific than “may we all get along.” It is an acknowledgement that teaching creates a relationship with the capacity to go wrong, and that the practice includes tending to it.
Teachers who understand this tend to chant it differently.
2. The Patanjali Invocation
yogena cittasya padena vācāṁ malaṁ śarīrasya ca vaidyakena yo’pākarot taṁ pravaraṁ munīnāṁ patañjaliṁ prāñjalir ānato’smi
ābāhu puruṣākāraṁ śaṅkhacakrāsi dhāriṇam sahasraśirasaṁ śvetaṁ praṇamāmi patañjalim
Source: Later commentarial and devotional literature, not the Yoga Sutras themselves. The verse is medieval, several centuries after Patanjali.
Meaning of the first verse: To him who removed the impurity of the mind through yoga, of speech through grammar, and of the body through medicine — to that most excellent of sages, Patanjali, I bow with joined palms.
That verse makes a specific claim: that one man wrote the Yoga Sutras, the great commentary on Sanskrit grammar, and a treatise on medicine. Three domains, three purifications — mind, speech, body.
It is a beautiful structure and most scholars do not think it is historically true. The attribution of all three works to a single Patanjali is traditional rather than established, and the texts are separated by a considerable stretch of time.
This is worth knowing rather than concealing. The verse is a devotional composition, and it works as one. It is not a biographical record, and teaching it as though it were creates an unnecessary hostage to fortune.
The second verse describes Patanjali iconographically: human in form down to the arms, holding a conch, a discus and a sword, thousand-headed and white — the serpent Adisesha in human shape. If your students have ever wondered why the statue at the front of the room has a snake’s tail, this verse is the answer.
3. Asato Mā Sadgamaya
oṁ asato mā sadgamaya, tamaso mā jyotirgamaya, mṛtyormā’mṛtaṁ gamaya. oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ.
Source: Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28.
Meaning: Lead me from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to immortality.
The common translation renders this “lead us.” The Sanskrit mā here is the accusative singular — me, not us. It is a personal request, made by one person.
You can chant it in a group without contradiction; a room of people can each ask individually. But if you are giving your students a translation, give them the one the text actually supports. “Lead me” is both more accurate and, in a room full of people, more interesting.
A note on the first line. Asat is often translated “untruth,” which narrows it. It means the unreal or the non-existent — that which does not have being. The request is not primarily about honesty. It is about moving from what merely seems to be, toward what is.
4. Guru Brahmā
guru brahmā guru viṣṇuḥ guru devo maheśvaraḥ guruḥ sākṣāt paraṁ brahma tasmai śrī gurave namaḥ
Source: The Guru Stotram, associated with the Guru Gita.
Meaning: The guru is Brahma, the guru is Vishnu, the guru is Lord Maheshvara. The guru is truly the supreme absolute. To that guru, salutations.
This is the most explicitly devotional and most explicitly Hindu of the common chants, and that has practical consequences worth thinking through rather than ignoring.
The verse identifies the teacher with the divine. In its own context — a formal guru-disciple relationship within a lineage — that has a defined meaning about the transmission of knowledge. Chanted by a studio teacher to a drop-in class, it can land quite differently, and some students will reasonably hear it as a claim being made about the person at the front of the room.
If you use it, know what it says. If you would rather not make that claim in your setting, Saha Nāvavatu covers similar ground without it.
5. Lokāḥ Samastāḥ Sukhino Bhavantu
oṁ lokāḥ samastāḥ sukhino bhavantu. oṁ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ.
Meaning: May all beings in all worlds be happy.
This is the most-used closing chant in modern yoga, and its history is more interesting than its usual presentation.
On its source. It does not appear verbatim in the Vedas or the principal Upanishads, despite being confidently attributed to both. The line is generally the final quarter of a longer svasti verse — a benedictory formula beginning svasti prajābhyaḥ paripālayantāṁ, which asks for the welfare of the people, for rulers to govern justly, and then for all beings everywhere to be happy. The earliest identified written attestation appears to be in inscriptions from the Sangama dynasty, roughly the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries.
Its worldwide use in yoga comes largely through the Jivamukti lineage, where Sharon Gannon and David Life adopted it as a closing prayer, and from there it spread everywhere.
On its translation. The version most teachers recite is: “May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all.”
The Sanskrit says the first part. It does not say the second. The clause about one’s own thoughts, words and actions is a modern addition — a good one, in the spirit of the verse, and entirely absent from the four words being chanted.
None of this makes it a lesser mantra. A benediction that is medieval rather than Vedic is still five hundred years old, and its sentiment is unimpeachable. But if you tell a class it is an ancient Vedic mantra and translate it with a clause that is not there, you have told them two things that are not true about a chant that did not need the help.
6. Om Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ
The threefold repetition is not emphasis.
The three utterances traditionally address three classes of obstacle:
Ādhyātmika — those arising from oneself: illness, agitation, one’s own mind.
Ādhibhautika — those arising from other beings and the immediate environment.
Ādhidaivika — those arising from forces beyond human control: weather, circumstance, fate.
Peace is invoked three times because there are three directions from which disturbance comes. You will find these three scrambled in a great many yoga sources, with ādhyātmika glossed as “universal” and ādhidaivika as “personal,” which reverses their plain meaning: ātman is the self, and daiva is the divine or fated.
Many traditions chant the three at descending volume — the first fullest, the last nearly a whisper — moving from the cosmic toward the intimate.
How to Actually Lead One
Pick a pitch you can hold comfortably and stay there. A chant that drifts upward as it goes is uncomfortable for everyone and impossible to join.
Set the pitch before you begin — hum quietly, or sound a single note — rather than launching and hoping.
Go slower than feels natural. Group chanting always lags the leader slightly, and a tempo that feels correct alone will feel rushed to a room.
Say what you are about to do and give people an exit. Something brief: we’ll open with a short Sanskrit chant — join in or just listen, both are fine. This takes four seconds and removes the anxiety of a student who does not want to chant and does not know whether they are allowed not to.
Say what it means, once, in one sentence. Not a lecture. Students chant more willingly when the words are not opaque.
If you are teaching in a context where Sanskrit devotional chanting is genuinely unwelcome, do not force it. A moment of silence at the start of class does much of the same work, and a chant delivered apologetically does none of it.
Common Mistakes
1. Translating the dual as a plural. Saha nāvavatu is between two people. Chanting it in a group is fine; describing it as a prayer for everyone is inaccurate.
2. Attributing everything to the Vedas. Of the chants above, one is Upanishadic, one is a Yajurveda peace invocation, one is medieval commentarial, one is Puranic, and one has no secure textual source at all. “Ancient Vedic mantra” is doing a lot of unearned work in yoga teaching.
3. Adding content to the translation. If the English you give has clauses the Sanskrit does not, say so. Students who later look it up will notice.
4. Chanting too fast. This is the single most common technical fault, and it is the easiest to fix.
5. Dropping the visarga. Śāntiḥ, not shanti. It is a small correction that immediately makes a chant sound like it has been learned rather than absorbed.
Closing Thought
There is nothing wrong with chanting something you do not fully understand — that is how most people begin, and the sound does its work regardless.
What is worth avoiding is teaching a translation you have not checked, or an origin you have not verified, to people who trust you. Sanskrit is not a decorative element of a yoga class. It is a language, and the verses mean specific things.
Knowing what you are saying does not make the chanting more solemn. In practice it usually makes it warmer, because you stop performing a ritual and start saying something you mean.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common opening chant in yoga class?
Om Saha Nāvavatu and the Patanjali invocation are the two most widely used. Saha Nāvavatu is a peace invocation between teacher and student; the Patanjali verses are a salutation to the sage credited with the Yoga Sutras.
What does Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu mean?
It means “may all beings in all worlds be happy.” The longer English version common in yoga classes, which adds a clause about one’s own thoughts and actions, is a modern expansion rather than a translation.
Is Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu from the Vedas?
It does not appear verbatim in the Vedas or the principal Upanishads. It is usually the final line of a longer benedictory verse, with the earliest identified attestation in inscriptions from the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries.
Do I have to chant in Sanskrit to teach yoga?
No. Chanting is a genuine part of the tradition, but it is not a requirement for teaching asana, and a chant offered without conviction or explanation adds little. Understanding the chants is valuable whether or not you use them.
Why is Om Shanti said three times?
The three repetitions address three sources of disturbance — those arising from oneself, from other beings and the environment, and from forces beyond human control.
How do I get my pronunciation right?
Learn the long and short vowel distinction first, then the aspirated consonants, then the visarga. Beyond that, the most effective method is repeated listening and correction from someone who speaks the language.