Sun Salutations are necessary to the practice of yoga because they establish a steady and focused mind, bring strength, flexibility, and alignment to the body, as well as infuse intention into the whole practice. In Sanskrit, “surya” means “sun” and refers to our overall health, both physically and mentally.
We're going to focus on a sun salutation, meditation practice. It's basically the most fundamental poses that you get in yoga. Once you get this kind of structure down, this flow down will permeate into the rest of your movement practices.
The flow, the sun salutation, a, yoga. Once you master this, it can be a great foundation for you to become an expert. This is quite an easy kind of practice. You can practice at home. If it's hard to follow along, you can always replay.
See? Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. Perfect. There's our notification. Hello, everybody. Good morning. Good afternoon. Wherever you are. We're going to be focusing on a sun salutation, meditation practice. So what a sun salutation is, is it's basically the most fundamental poses that you get in yoga. So once you get this kind of structure down, this flow down, this will kind of permeate into the rest of your movement practices. So with that, we'll go ahead and start with just a little bit of stillness, a little bit of silence.
So we're going to just get into a comfortable seated position here, and. And we're just gonna focus on our breath. Close your eyes. You can do cross legged like this, or whatever you see as the most comfortable for you. So I usually sit like this, half lotus. So I have my foot here like this. Or you can go full lotus. That can get uncomfortable over a long period of time. Or you can sit in this position. And I find this is most comfortable if you have lower back issues. So I often sit like this as well.
But for today, we're gonna go with half lotus, foot up and hands either down like this for grounding up, for receiving. So I'm going to choose receiving today. You're welcome to choose whatever you like to fit your practice, your energy, your space, whatever it may be. So let's go ahead and start by breathing in through the nose, fully in. We're going to hold slightly at the top and let go out of our mouth with a sigh. Again. Belly, chest, head. Hold. Release with the side. Belly, chest, head. Hold at the top.
Release with the side. Belly, head, chest. Sorry. Belly, chest, head. Hold at the top. Release with a sigh. Hold. Release. One more. Let it all out. Slowly wiggle your toes, your fingers. Blink your eyes open. Give yourself any kind of movement that you find necessary to begin movement practice. For this, you can either just sit and take notes or you can follow along. This will be quite easy. Like I said, this is kind of the fundamentals, the easy flow of yoga that will lead you into more advanced movement and practice.
So with that, we'll go ahead and start by standing. So we'll kind of stand up here. And we're going to begin here with our legs and feet together on the mat. And we're going to breathe in, raise our hands, breathe out, going to bend over. So let's just try that movement over a couple times. So we bend all the way over. Now let's try and just come back. So let's come halfway up. Sorry, halfway, and then bend down. Breathe in halfway and we come down, breathe in halfway, we let go. So now that we're here, we usually have our legs straight so we can feel the tension here as we bend down.
Try and not bend your knees, but keep a micro bend in them to keep them safe. Now, you might see me go all the way down. That's what we're working to get to. So once we're here, we can bend our knees and we're just gonna, just for the sake of understanding the movement itself, we're going to take 1ft and step it all the way back. Now we're going to be hard on our hands here. We're going to be planted and pushing against the ground. We're going to lift up our other foot and bring it back to where our other foot is.
Now we're in a push up position. So now we need to make sure that we are in the correct push up position. So we need to make sure we push against the ground. We're going to lift onto our tippy toes, pushing us forward. And we're gonna slowly hover down into our kind of push up hold here. And we're gonna flip over our toes like this, flipped over now. And we're gonna lift up and we're not gonna be touching anything here to the ground except for the top of our feet. And we're gonna give ourself a nice little back bend here, nice back bend.
And we're gonna flip it over into what's called down dog. So we're gonna come up with our b*** on top of our toes. We're gonna flip them and we're gonna sit right here like this, trying to push our heels to the ground. And imagine our armpits going to our knees. And here for each breath, we're gonna on the inhale, expand on the Exhale, stretch further. So we inhale, we release, we exhale, we stretch. Now, very, very minor micro movements here. We just want to stay very consistent with our movement.
So see how we can kind of go back and forth through these motions. This is from our up dog to our down dog. So once we're in down dog, we're gonna come back to our original position. So we're gonna step up 1ft and with control, our next foot as well. And then we'll be right back to here. So you can see how this flow is going to connect back to the beginning. We're going to come halfway up, breathe in, breathe out, bend your knees. And let's slowly come all the way back up with control. All the way, bringing our hands all the way up and letting go.
Now just shake it all out. Okay, we're going to do one more, and this time encourage you just to watch the flow of how this kind of goes. And just take note. This is quite an easy kind of practice. You can practice at home. If it's hard to follow along during the live, you can always replay. But I'm going to go through the practice one more time a little bit faster so you can just watch, and that'll help you to kind of solidify this movement. Practice for yourself. So we're going to go ahead again, standing.
We're going to breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. And here we sit for about five breaths. Breathe in. We step forward. Breathe out. Bend your knees. Breathe in. All the way up. And let it all out. We're right back to standing. So that's basically the flow, the sun salutation, a, that you can get into with yoga. And like I said, once you master this, this is gonna be a great foundation for you to start to become an expert of different postures, different poses.
And this is going to significantly make a difference in your life. Just when you wanna even bend over and pick something up, trust me, it makes a huge difference when you can stretch like two or three inches further than you could before. And that's also going to help our brain body connection, and that's just overall makes your life a little bit more fluid. So with that, that's the end of our practice today. Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions, and I can clarify some things for you.
So thanks, guys, and I'll see you next week.
