Uttanasana in Sanskrit

Namaste friends. Welcome back again. Today we are going to see another asana and I have with me my beautiful friend Julia. The asana that we will do today is what is commonly referred to as uttanasana. The way it would sound correctly is uttanasana. I will write it out for you and then we can understand what the sounds are composed of or the word is made up of. uttanasana. This word is composed of three different parts. So we have the prefix ut plus the verb tana. The verb is tan which means to stretch. So tana is stretched plus asana. Ut as a prefix means towards the top. Tana stretched, asana posture. So uttanasana. Now the English term for this is the standing forward fold. The Sanskrit of this is ut plus tana plus asana. If you have to pronounce it all together, it becomes the uttanasana. You have to pay attention to two things here. One is that there is a double t. So it is an uttanasana and also that the t is not like the English t. It is the dental soft t. So uttanasana. To exaggerate it initially, you can maybe try sticking your tongue out a little bit saying uttanasana. Got it? Try saying it. I'll keep writing, keep practicing. So it is the uttanasana. And in the Devanagari script, that would look as uttanasana. There we go. The double t is written like that. So uttanasana. Got that? The English equivalent is the standing forward fold. There we go. So we've heard what it sounds like. We've seen what the letters look like that represent that asana. Now we'll request Julia to demonstrate this for us. And as she does it, keep saying the sound because the more you say it, the more you align the energies using sound within your body. So uttanasana.

So it's upward, ut, nicely stretched, tanasana. Uttanasana. You want to say that once? I'm sure you got it perfectly right. Great. Thank you, Julia. You can come up now. Thank you.