--- title: "Yoga in Panchang: The Sum of Sun and Moon" slug: "yoga-in-panchang" canonical_url: "https://mahadasha.com/yoga-in-panchang" description: "Yoga in panchang is the only limb that adds the two longitudes instead of subtracting. All 27 named, why it is the shortest, and the four to avoid." published_date: "2026-08-05 09:00:00" modified_date: "2026-08-05 09:00:00" author: "Pawan Acharya" keywords: "yoga in panchang, 27 yogas list, nitya yoga, vyatipata yoga, vaidhriti yoga, today yoga panchang, how to calculate yoga" locale: "en" --- # Yoga in Panchang: The Sum of Sun and Moon > The panchang yoga is not a planetary combination and not the practice. It is Sun plus Moon, and it is the fastest-moving limb of the five. # Yoga in Panchang: The Sum of Sun and Moon Yoga in panchang is the fourth limb, and before anything else it needs separating from two other things that share its name. This yoga is not the physical practice. It is also not a planetary combination such as Gaja Kesari or Raj Yoga, which is what the word means everywhere else in a birth chart reading. Gaja Kesari, for instance, is about where Guru sits relative to the Moon, and belongs with [Jupiter in different houses](https://mahadasha.com/jupiter-in-different-houses) rather than with anything on this page. The panchang yoga is a single number: add the Sun's sidereal longitude to the Moon's, divide by 13°20', and the answer names one of 27. Sanskrit uses one word for all three because the root means joining, and each sense joins something different. Keeping them apart matters, because a search for "yoga" in astrology returns the combinations almost every time, and they have nothing to do with this. ## The only limb that adds Look at what the other limbs do with the same two numbers. Nakshatra uses the Moon on its own. Tithi and karana both subtract, taking the gap between Moon and Sun. Yoga is the only one that adds them together. That single difference gives it a property none of the others have: it does not describe a relationship between the two bodies at all. Two very different configurations can produce the same yoga. A Moon just ahead of the Sun and a Moon far behind it can sum to the same total, so unlike a tithi, the yoga tells you nothing about the lunar phase. It is a joint position rather than a separation. ## Why yoga is the shortest limb Adding also makes it the fastest. The Moon gains about 13.18° a day and the Sun about 0.99°, so their sum climbs at roughly 14.17° a day. Compare that with the tithi, whose 12° step opens at only about 12.19° a day because the Sun's motion works against it. Same 13°20' step as a nakshatra, faster rate, shorter period. Measured across 2026 the yoga averaged 22 hours 34 minutes, ranging from 19 hours 36 minutes to 24 hours 59 minutes. It is the only one of the four angular limbs whose maximum barely reaches 25 hours, and it turns over sooner than anything except the karana, which is a half-step by definition. Practically this means the yoga is the limb most likely to change during your working day. Quoting a day's yoga without its end time is the least useful thing you can do with a panchang. ## The twenty-seven, in order Vishkambha, Priti, Ayushman, Saubhagya, Shobhana, Atiganda, Sukarma, Dhriti, Shula, Ganda, Vriddhi, Dhruva, Vyaghata, Harshana, Vajra, Siddhi, Vyatipata, Variyan, Parigha, Shiva, Siddha, Sadhya, Shubha, Shukla, Brahma, Indra, Vaidhriti. Twenty-seven of them, the same count as the nakshatras and on the same 13°20' step, which trips people up constantly. A few names even overlap in feel. But nakshatra number 9 and yoga number 9 have no relationship whatsoever. One is the Moon's position, the other is a sum, and they change at different rates. The full name for these is Nitya Yoga, meaning daily, and the qualifier exists precisely to keep them apart from the chart combinations. It also points at something the list obscures: the cycle of 27 completes in about 25.4 days, since 27 arcs at an average of 22h 34m comes to just over 609 hours. A lunar month is 29.5 days. So the yoga cycle runs noticeably faster than the month and slips against it, which is why the yoga on a given tithi is different from month to month rather than repeating. Roughly 14.4 complete yoga cycles fit into a year against 12.4 lunar months. ## The four with a bad reputation Most of the 27 are neutral to favourable and the names say so plainly: Priti is affection, Ayushman is longevity, Saubhagya is good fortune, Siddhi is accomplishment. Four are traditionally singled out as unfavourable, and they are easy to remember because the names are as blunt as the good ones. - **Vyatipata**, the 17th, is the most serious of them and the one classical texts treat as genuinely obstructive. - **Vaidhriti**, the 27th and last, is its counterpart at the end of the cycle. - **Vishkambha**, the 1st, means an obstruction or a prop placed in the way, and only its opening portion is usually held to matter. - **Ganda**, the 10th, and **Atiganda**, the 6th, share a root meaning a knot or a danger point. Notice where they sit. Vyatipata and Vaidhriti are the two yogas that occur when the Sun and Moon have equal declination on opposite sides of the celestial equator, which is a real astronomical event rather than an arbitrary slot in a list. That is the reason those two get treated more seriously than the rest, and it is why they also appear in almanacs as separately calculated moments. ## Working one out by hand The calculation is short enough to do yourself once, and doing it once makes the limb concrete. Take the two sidereal longitudes. Suppose the Sun is at 109°14' and the Moon at 6°52', both measured from 0° Aries. Add them: 116°06'. If the total had gone past 360° you would subtract 360 and carry on, since only the position within one full circle matters. Now divide by 13°20', which is 13.333°. That gives 8.71, so the integer part is 8 and you are in the ninth arc, counting from zero. The ninth yoga is Shula. The fractional part tells you how far through you are. At 0.71 of the way, 29 per cent of the arc remains, which at a combined rate of about 14.17° a day works out at roughly seven hours to run. That is the whole method. A calculator solves the end time properly rather than assuming a constant rate, because both bodies change speed, but the estimate lands close. ## How much weight yoga in panchang deserves Honestly, less than the tithi or the nakshatra, and traditional practice reflects that. When a muhurat is being selected, the tithi and the star-and-weekday pairing carry the decision, and the yoga is a check rather than a driver: you avoid Vyatipata and Vaidhriti if you can, and otherwise you note the yoga and move on. Where it earns its place is in ruling things out. A day that looks excellent on every other limb and lands on Vyatipata is a day most practitioners will decline for anything irreversible, and because the yoga runs under 23 hours on average, waiting it out is usually a matter of hours rather than rescheduling entirely. Read it together with the windows described in [auspicious and inauspicious days](https://mahadasha.com/auspicious-and-inauspicious-days) . ## A worked example On 5 August 2026 at Delhi, sunrise 05:45:50, the yoga at sunrise was Shula, the 9th, and it ended at 17:29:02. Shula means a spear or a sharp pain and sits in the middling group rather than the four above. Eleven hours and forty-three minutes of the day were Shula. The rest belonged to Ganda, the 10th, which is one of the four. So a reading that reported "Shula" and stopped would have missed that the second half of the evening moved into a yoga worth avoiding. Same day, two yogas, and only the end time reveals the second. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is yoga in panchang, in plain terms? The sum of the Sun's and Moon's sidereal longitudes, divided into 27 arcs of 13°20'. It is a joint position of the two bodies rather than a relationship between them, and it is the shortest-running of the four angular limbs. ### Is this the same as Raj Yoga or Gaja Kesari? No. Those are planetary combinations in a birth chart and have their own rules. The panchang yoga is one of 27 daily values computed from two longitudes, sometimes called Nitya Yoga precisely to keep the two apart. ### Why 27 yogas and 27 nakshatras? Because both divide 360° by 13°20'. The shared count is arithmetic, not meaning. Yoga 9 and nakshatra 9 refer to different things and change at different rates. ### How bad is Vyatipata really? It is the one most consistently avoided for beginnings, and unlike most entries in the list it corresponds to a real configuration, the Sun and Moon at equal declination on opposite sides of the equator. It averages under 23 hours, so waiting it out is usually practical. The [panchang calculator](https://mahadasha.com/panchang-calculator) returns the yoga with its end time for any date and place. For the limb it is most often confused with, see [nakshatra in panchang](https://mahadasha.com/nakshatra-in-panchang) , and for the full set, [what is panchang](https://mahadasha.com/what-is-panchang) .