The Sun Bow

If you’ve read previous my blog posts, you already know I’m that annoyingly chipper morning person (yes I am still the girl who happily wakes up an alarm bellowing Mandisa’s Good Morning), Even though I’m hard wired to be a morning person, my morning routine has a lot to do with my initial alertness. I especially love starting my day with a series of 3 Sun Salutations. I’ve been doing yoga on and off for a number of years and after a difficult winter and spring recovering from multiple injuries, I am happy to say I am finally getting back into the swing of my yoga practice.  If you’ve ever attended a yoga class you’re probably familiar with the sequence of a Sun Salutation but you may not be as familiar with why we do the series.

For thousands of years, the sun has been revered as both the physical and spiritual heart of the world; Sun Salutations (Surya Namaskar; meaning salute to the sun) honors the importance of the sun, both the world’s source of light as well as our internal source of light. You may notice that many yoga poses and series begin and end with your hands at heart center – this is because in yoga, it is believed the one’s heart is the source of inner light.

While each of the 12 or 20 poses that complete Sun Salutations A and B has a different meaning, the overall series is a honor the sun as the world’s physical and spiritual light source. If that sounds a bit too gimmicky for you, choose to instead focus on the benefits of allowing your body to be awaken (without caffeine).

There are so many great benefits from completing Sun Salutations. With this series placing a high importance on the sun, it was designed to be practiced at sunrise and/or sunset while facing the sun. (The benefits can be achieved anytime you practice so don’t feel pressured to practice at a certain time of day). Your Ujjayi breath guides you through each pose (read here for more information on this yoga breath), the natural flow of this breath makes this series fluid; one which naturally generates heat throughout your body to cleanse both your body and mind. The Sun Salutation can be a quick yet gentle way to get your heart pumping, increase your circulation, and generate a range of motion positively impacting every muscle and organ throughout your body.  As with all yoga, Sun Salutations increase your stability, flexibility and emotional connectedness and centeredness, but what you may not realize is that the specific Sun Salutation series decrease the nerve responses involved in your body’s stress response. The poses alternate between tension and relaxation to further help align the muscle and skeletal structure that is often sabotaged in our everyday activities.

Until Next Time ~ Be Well

Before you've practiced, the theory is useless. After you've practiced, the theory is obvious.