Saluting the Sun

variations on surya namaskar

Photo by Dave Contreras on Unsplash

The Longest Day

I’ve written on this topic before, but it warrants repeating (just like sun salutations do!) because it’s so easy to default to what’s in our muscle memory. How often do we just do what we already know, instead of experimenting with variations on our routines? Over the years, I’ve had so many students comment that they just don’t know what to do on their yoga mats outside of a structured class, and lately I’ve come to the conclusion that more often than not, your body knows what to do if you let your mind get out of the way. You have to sometimes feel through it rather than (over)think it.

Today is the Summer Solstice (first day of summer!) and the eve of the full moon. This is a high energy time here in the Northern Hemisphere, where we are enjoying the longest day of the year. Here’s an OG post on Summer Solstice and yoga that I put out there the year I started my Substack newsletter. It’s a brief piece on how motherhood transformed my yoga practice and what really inspired me to start writing Urban Yoga Mama.

Speaking of inspiration, earlier this week I wrote a bit about devoting our yoga practice to someone or something and how I’m participating in The Longest Day fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association. I’ll be offering a yoga class this Sunday, June 23 from 1:00-2:00pm Central Time at West Town Unwind in Chicago as a gesture of devotion to my mom, who lived the last few years of her life with dementia, and her older sister who still lives with it. For me, it’s also a moment of pause to empathize with the millions of people who are living with Alzheimer’s Disease and with their caregivers who devote themselves to improving their patient’s lives. 

It’s common to feel helpless when someone you know develops dementia or Alzheimer’s. You might also wonder how you could decrease your own risk of developing cognitive decline. Well, one of the reasons I feel passionate about offering this yoga class to support Alzheimer’s Association is that exercise and yoga can be so good for our brain health!

And this longest day of the year is a great time to (re)commit ourselves to healthy movement, exercise, and yoga practices. Connection to nature and the seasons is another great way to feel more grounded and support our mental health. How do yoga practices link to nature and the seasons? Think fire and heat, but not necessarily hot yoga. Think, staying grounded and hydrated (the water element). Let’s look at how this might play out in a yoga practice.

Summertime yoga

Lately I’ve been reflecting on what it means to live in flow with the seasons and how that affects my yoga practice. Is summertime yoga all about practicing in the park, sweating in the humidity, and swatting the mosquitoes away? Is it about immersing ourselves in the fire element all around us, or bringing in some air and water elements to cool down and manage the effect of heat and light on our systems?

It can be both! It really depends on your preferences, tendencies, what you want/need in the moment, and your constitution. Some people thrive in the heat while others are exhausted by it. During the yoga class I’m offering for The Longest Day, I plan to celebrate the fire element of yoga through a non-traditional approach to Surya Namaskar (a.k.a. Sun Salutations) and then a flowing, cool down towards the end as we move closer to the ground. It will be a lovely way to bring in the Yin and the Yang, so to speak, or the masculine and the feminine energies that a yoga practice can encompass. If this is all gibberish to you, think: active and receptive, or warming and cooling, or strengthen and stretch. 

So how do Sun Salutations apply here, aside from the word ‘sun’ implying summertime and heat? Maybe you’re a yoga nerd like me and you’ve tapped into this great conversation so many teachers and practitioners are having about alternatives to chaturanga and sun salutations in general. Here are a couple of past posts I shared on the topic, which include why it’s good to change it up a bit with our Surya Namaskar:

https://urbanyogamama.substack.com/p/yoga-pose-focus-chaturanga-dandasana 

https://urbanyogamama.substack.com/p/to-chaturanga-or-not-to-chaturanga 

Our yoga practices can be much more accessible and relevant to our needs when we vary our approach now and then, especially when it comes to Surya Namaskar, an often-repeated sequence in many yoga classes these days. Yoga teacher and chiropractor Garrett Neill also shares some great alternatives to chaturanga in this article. Yoga teacher Brea Johnson of Heart and Bones Yoga also offers some challenging yet accessible variations on the theme here and also a fun twist on plank pose here that might be incorporated into a sort of Sun Salutation. In yoga, we can approach things with a playful and experimental mindset so we don’t get stuck going through the motions. Not to mention, movement and trying new things are great for your brain health, another way we can salute the efforts of all those trying to minimize the devastation of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Aside from the details of how we sequence our Sun Salutations, in the summer we can regularly ask ourselves: how much do we want to embody the heat? And how much do we need to relieve ourselves from it? If this is a question you already ask yourself, I’d love to hear how you modify your yoga practice according to the season:)

Women, movement, and brain health

The other day I re-listened to a podcast episode by Dr. Aviva Romm about women, dementia, and research on women’s brains conducted by neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi. Together they explain why women might be more prone to cognitive decline and what we can do about it. I was interested since there is dementia in my family, and women’s health is a topic I have long been exploring. 

As a yoga teacher and practitioner, I am always touching upon that crossroads between mind and body and I keep coming across the advice to bring healthy movement into my lifestyle as a support to my mental and physical health. Not that I needed anyone to tell me because I know how I feel after walking, biking, dancing, or doing yoga, but it’s nice to get scientific validations for things, isn’t it?

So I really recommend listening to the podcast episode above and checking out these resources:

https://wmnhealth.org/blog/exercise-and-brain-health-why-women-should-prioritize-movement/ 

https://www.lisamosconi.com/xxbrain 

https://longevity.stanford.edu/lifestyle/2023/10/03/how-yoga-affects-the-brain-and-body-to-reduce-stress/ 

I hope you enjoy the resources listed and linked throughout this post! And if you’d like to donate and/or register for my yoga class this Sunday, June 23, 2024 from 1:00-2:00pm Central Time, click here for information and registration. Thanks so much for reading, and please share this post with anyone you think might benefit from it. Jai!