Have you ever been in a yoga class where the teacher has encouraged you to ‘set an intention’ at the beginning of the class? The first few times I heard this, I honestly didn’t know an ‘intention’ meant. Then, once a teacher gave some examples one class, I started to slowly grasp the concept but my intentions weren’t exactly the most inspiring. ‘Just get through it’ and ‘Stop worrying about how much you suck’ were pretty common in my early days, whereas these days they tend to be less literal and a little more abstract (and oftentimes completely unrelated to anything related to yoga).

I was recently in a yoga class where the teacher told me to ‘sparkle through my toes’ (which I assume meant to spread them, though I could be wrong…) and it got me thinking about some of the common cues that yoga teachers use that sometimes don’t make a lot of sense. If you’re like me and at times could use a translator in a yoga class, then hopefully this list might be a useful read! Here are some of my personal favourites (and I may be guilty of using a couple of them myself):