The meaning of yoga pose names, and the myths behind them

Every pose name is a small poem. Say bhujaṅgāsana and you see a hooded serpent; vīrabhadrāsana, a warrior born from Śiva's anger; hanumānāsana, a monkey hero flying across the ocean. Knowing what the names mean changes the way you practise: the posture stops being a shape and becomes an image to inhabit. This page explains how the names are built, then walks through the families of names, with a link to each card.

How a pose name is built

Sanskrit builds long words by joining shorter ones. Almost every pose name ends in āsana (आसन), "seat, posture", from the root ās, to sit. When the word before it ends in a, the two vowels merge: vṛkṣa + āsana = vṛkṣāsana, the tree; padma + āsana = padmāsana, the lotus. Before the main word, a few descriptive words recur constantly:

A good name tells you what to do: adho mukha śvānāsana, "face-down dog pose", is a full instruction in four words.

Where the names come from

The best-known classical manual of hatha yoga, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (a few earlier texts already describe some postures), states its sources in one verse:

वशिष्ठाद्यैश्च मुनिभिर्मत्स्येन्द्राद्यैश्च योगिभिः । अङ्गीकृतान्यासनानि कथ्यन्ते कानिचिन्मया ॥

vaśiṣṭhādyaiś ca munibhir matsyendrādyaiś ca yogibhiḥ | aṅgīkṛtāny āsanāni kathyante kānicin mayā ||

Some of the postures adopted by sages such as Vasiṣṭha and by yogis such as Matsyendra are now described by me.

Two worlds meet here: the Vedic seers (muni) and the yogis of the Nātha lineage. The Gheranda Samhita goes further and ties the postures to all of creation: "there are as many postures as there are kinds of living beings; eighty-four hundred thousand were taught by Śiva" (2.1). That is why so many postures are named after creatures.

Animals

Of the thirty-two postures of the Gheranda Samhita, more than a third bear the name of an animal. The text does not explain why; the shapes speak for themselves.

Two details are worth knowing. The makara is not simply a crocodile: the Monier-Williams dictionary describes "a kind of sea-monster", the emblem of the god of love and an ornament on temple gates. And Garuḍa is no ordinary eagle but the king of birds, enemy of serpents and mount of Viṣṇu.

Sages and yogis

Several postures honour the masters of the tradition.

• Matsyendra, "lord of fishes", the first human teacher of the Nātha lineage, named by the Hatha Yoga Pradipika among the masters of hatha (1.4). His twist is classical: ardha matsyendrāsana, with the legend of the fish who overheard Śiva.
• Gorakṣa, his disciple, whose seat appears in the Gheranda Samhita (gorakṣāsana, 2.24-25 in the GRETIL text).
• Vasiṣṭha, one of the most celebrated Vedic seers, named in the verse above; his name is given to the side plank (vasiṣṭhāsana), a modern posture.
• Marīci, a ray of light and the name of a Prajāpati, a lord of creatures; marīcyāsana is a modern family of seated twists and bends. The same word is one of the twelve names of the sun.
• Bharadvāja, the seer to whom tradition attributes a large part of the sixth book of the Rig Veda; bharadvājāsana is a modern seated twist.
• Aṣṭāvakra, "bent in eight places", the Brahmin of a story in the Mahābhārata; aṣṭāvakrāsana is a modern arm balance.

Heroes and gods

• Vīrabhadra, the warrior Śiva created from a lock of his hair to avenge Satī, in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (4.5): Vīrabhadrāsana, the warrior poses.
• Hanumān, son of the Wind, whose name means "with the (broken) jaw" and who leaps across the ocean in the Rāmāyaṇa (5.1): Hanumānāsana, the splits.
• Naṭarāja, Śiva as king of the dance: naṭarājāsana, the dancer pose.
• Ananta, the endless serpent on which Viṣṇu rests: anantāsana, a reclining side posture.

All of these postures are modern; the stories are ancient. Naming a posture after a hero is a way of giving the practitioner an image to embody, not a claim that the hero practised it.

Objects and nature

• Dhanus, the bow: dhanurāsana, and ūrdhva dhanurāsana, the wheel.
• Cakra, the wheel: cakrāsana.
• Setu, the bridge, an echo of Rāma's bridge to Laṅkā: setu bandhāsana.
• Vajra, Indra's thunderbolt, the diamond: vajrāsana.
• Daṇḍa, the staff: daṇḍāsana and caturaṅga daṇḍāsana.
• Hala, the plough: halāsana. Nāva, the boat: nāvāsana.
• Padma, the lotus: padmāsana. Vṛkṣa, the tree: vṛkṣāsana.
• Tāḍa, explained as the mountain: tāḍāsana.
• Trikoṇa, the triangle: trikoṇāsana.

The body and states of being

Some names describe the body itself: śīrṣa, the head (śīrṣāsana); sarvāṅga, all the limbs (sarvāṅgāsana); paścima, the west, the back of the body (paścimottānāsana). Others describe a state: sukha, ease (sukhāsana); siddha, accomplished (siddhāsana); śava, the corpse (śavāsana), which the Gheranda Samhita also calls mṛta, the dead.

Old names, new postures

A last surprise for anyone who reads the texts: the same name can designate different postures. The bow of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika is an archer drawing his toes to his ear, not the bow lying on the belly; the vajrāsana of the same text is another name for siddhāsana; the uṣṭrāsana of the Gheranda Samhita is done lying on the belly, not kneeling. On every Yogide card, we say whether a posture is classical or modern, and which version the name designates. All the cards: the asanas chapter.

Questions people ask

Sources

1. Svātmārāma, Haṭhayogapradīpikā, Sanskrit text (GRETIL, University of Göttingen) checked October 16, 2026
2. Gheraṇḍasaṃhitā, Sanskrit text, chapter 2 (GRETIL, University of Göttingen) checked October 16, 2026
3. Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), Cologne Digital Sanskrit Dictionaries checked October 16, 2026
4. Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa, Sanskrit text of the critical edition (GRETIL, University of Göttingen) checked October 16, 2026
5. Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Sanskrit text (GRETIL, University of Göttingen) checked October 16, 2026

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