Growing up a Brown Girl in a White World — My Journey to Self Acceptance

I was sitting in my yoga class the other day in easy pose — basically the pose where you’re sitting cross-legged, hands resting on your knees.

My white yoga teacher placed her hands to her heart, looked around the classroom serenely, and uttered a word that physically made me cringe.

“Naaahmahhhstaaayyy.” Or, namaste, the customary Hindu greeting that is exchanged amongst Hindi-speakers as casually as English-speakers say “hello” to each other.

It drives me bananas when yoga teachers end class with this word. Not because they’re choosing to essentially use the Hindi word for “I bow to you,” which is what the word translates into based off its Sanskrit roots (but again, let me emphasize, this word is literally used as a “hello” in Hindi).

It irks me because they completely butcher it — and it’s not a difficult word to say correctly! Even if you’re not a native Hindi speaker! If you’re choosing to appropriate another person’s culture (which is, from my perspective, what is happening when people say “Namaste” at the end of a yoga class or blast hip hop music in class while wearing shirts with images of the Hindu god Ganesh on them), please at least try to learn how to say it properly.