A Comprehensive Guide to Sun Salutations

With the growing influence of TikTok, many people have adopted morning routines involving tongue scraping, eye-brightening patches, green powders, and skin serums. However, yoga practitioners suggest incorporating sun salutations into your routine to help reduce stress levels, enhance your mobility and improve strength subtly.

Sun salutations, or Surya Namaskar, are a predefined sequence of yoga positions combined with breath control, forming a yoga flow, according to Rachel Hirsch, a yoga instructor and the joint owner of Empowered Yoga, a Los Angeles-based yoga studio.

The exact components of a sun salutation will be discussed here along with the insights of certified yoga instructors on how best to incorporate the practice into your routine.

Sun salutations were initially considered a moving prayer, a form of gratitude towards the sun, according to Ashley Galvin of Alo Moves. Traditionally, the practice was held during sunrise, prior to breakfast. Over time, as yoga got popularized in the west, sun salutations lost their religious connotation. Currently, sun salutations are often initiated at the start of yoga classes to warm up the body or sometimes forms the main part of the lesson, explains Galvin.

The specific yoga poses in a sun salutation vary, as there exist three distinct sequences, marked as A, B, and C, each progressing from the other. The easiest and most suitable for beginners is the Sun Salutation A, while Sun Salutation C is more advanced.

Chelsea Williams Hofer, a registered yoga teacher with Hyperice, offers a detailed guide on how to perform Sun Salutation A. Each pose although explained separately here, is meant to flow from one to the next.

Adopting sun salutations into your routine offers various physical and mental health benefits, regardless of whether you're an avid yogi or not.

Sun salutations have been known traditionally to kick-start the day, Hirsch explains. They get the heart pumping and blood flowing, warming up the body and preparing it for deeper postures and the day's events.

Modern practices such as 'morning movement' operate on similar principles. Experts believe that by boosting the heart rate immediately upon awakening, hormone levels are balanced, stiffness is relieved, and the day commences positively.

Just by moving from lying to standing can increase heart rate, and sun salutations can achieve this once or twice depending on the sequence. The heart rate achieved through a sun salutation is affected by factors including present fitness level, room temperature, hydration levels, transition speed between poses and relaxation time spent. Regardless, sun salutations heighten heart rate enough to contribute towards the recommended 150 minutes cardiovascular exercise per week. 

Sun salutations also help develop strength, says Hirsch. Each pose in the sequence strengthens a different area of the body. For instance, cobra strengthens your chest and shoulders, while downward dog builds your back. Practicing sun salutations not only develops muscular strength but also boosts muscular endurance. However, pose duration varies based on the yoga type and instructor. Some flows might need just one or two breaths while others might need more than 10.

The nutrient-rich blood infused into the muscles by the sun salutation exercises makes them more flexible, according to Hofer. It aids in relieving stiffness, boosting flexibility, and enhancing the mobility and range of motion.

Holding power within your flexibility defines mobility. It helps you move your muscles actively through their range - as opposed to passive movement assisted by another hand or your own, which is flexibility. Hofer notes that as sun salutation develops strength and flexibility simultaneously, mobility improvement naturally ensues.

After you roll out your yoga mat, you have no choice but to turn your brain off to the outside world and instead tune into your body and your current flow, says Hirsch. “When postures are challenging, physically and mentally as they are during sun salutation, it instantly provides mental clarity and alleviates stress.' 

You have to focus to push through something, so your mind is naturally taken off the externally stressful factors and forced to focus on the task at hand, she says. When pushing through an intense sun salutation sequence, you have no option but to focus on that. “The stressors of the outside world seem to fall away and your energy is focused on how to move through the sequence in the present.'

Each pose in the salutation is linked together with breath, says Galvin. “When you intentionally sync your movements with your breath the way that sun salutation prescribes, you increase your mind-body connection.' Beyond the yoga mat, this strengthened connection can reduce your risk of injury, reduce stress, improve self-confidence, and more.

Sun salutations aren’t like 300-level university classes. Meaning there are no prerequisites for giving them a whirl.

“The best part of sun salutations — and more broadly yoga in general — is that there is no prerequisite experience, body type, or physical mental status that you have to occupy,” says Hirsch. No matter your current physical abilities or health, you are capable of moving through some variation of a sun salutation, she says. 

Each of the poses in sun salutation can be modified to meet a person where they are on that particular day. For instance, during downward dog, you might scale the movement to a bent-knee variation if your hamstrings are tight or your backside is otherwise out of commission. Meanwhile, if your wrists are the limiting factor, you might scale it to dolphin pose. 

During the chaturanga yoga push-up, you might reduce the intensity of the movement by dropping to your knees. Or, you might increase the muscular demand of the movement by doing two consecutive yoga push-ups.

While the specific shapes that your body makes during sun salutation matter, so does your breath, especially as you progress through the movement sequence. When you are first getting started with yoga and sun salutations, there is no wrong way to breathe, says Hirsch.

“There is so much to learn that your number one focus should be on moving pain-free,” she says. “As you progress through the sequence, however, you can add layers of detail (like your breathing) that you can and should focus on.” 

Typically, sun salutation is meant to be done breath-to-movement, says Hofer. “The start of an inhale initiates your transition from one pose to the next, followed by a lull in both the breath and body as you come into the pose. Then, the beginning of an exhale acts as a cue for your next transition.”

In practice, this means that the fullness of your lungs sets the pace as you flow. Once you do focus on your breath, you’ll start to reap a whole new set of benefits of sun salutation — including feeling the stress leave your body, Hofer says.

“Intentional, deep breathing is linked to the parasympathetic nervous system and, when turned on, decreases stress hormones and leads to feelings of relaxation,” she says.

The biggest mistake people make during yoga of any kind is going deeper into the poses than their body can currently handle. Again, this can be avoided by leaving your ego at the door and embracing a beginner mindset. Remember that longevity (not perfection!) is your goal.

During your first few months, Hirsch says that your intention is simply to build a foundation of strength and mobility that allows you to continue layering new elements of intensity and focus on top of it. 

It’s exactly as Maren Morris puts it in The Bones: When the bones are good, the rest don't matter. Well, baby yogis, it’s time to build some good bones that you can build on for years and years to come.