the thing about sun a is that for nearly a decade, i mostly ignored it.
mid-lockdown 2020 when everything was unbearably uncertain—on both the microscale of my personal life and the macroscale of the whole world—i was grasping. i needed something to grab or ground or center. i’d been practicing yoga for over a decade so that seemed like a logical choice. i knew the peace it could bring my mind and body. but all my yoga till that point had been facilitated in studios, and i quickly discovered i severely lacked the discipline required to practice self-guided at-home yoga.
so i got into online yoga videos.
and then i got into “belly burner” workouts. and ab challenges. and this weightless arm routine i did obsessively. as i descended down the rabbit hole of online workout videos, the internal and external chaos of my life raged on. i’m not making a claim on the value of online workouts. but these videos were not aligning my body and mind. to me, they were not yoga. my head was full of noise as i watched them. i had an end goal and these videos were a tool to achieve that. to force and control my body.
about a year later, after many more things(inside and outside) shifted, something broke inside me. i was single and living by myself for the first time in a long time.
i was searching for something like acceptance. hell bent on achieving balance and learning to be “on straight” as i learned to call it via this video many years ago.
during this era, one morning as warm spring light stretched across my condo floors i started flowing sun a. i didn’t open my computer to double check the sequence. i didn’t know before i began that i knew it by heart, but i did. i flowed it and then flowed it again. and again. i started doing it everyday. most days, i did it three times through. some days i added on, throwing in a variation of sun b, or a balancing series. it felt good. manageable.
i started paying closer attention. i slowed down. i noticed how my hands looked raised above my head. noticed how i could use my breath to carry my body into the shapes. i heard the cues of dozens of yoga teachers in my head guiding me.
practicing sun a from memory was an unexpected doorway. it taught me how to listen to my body, to be my own teacher, to forge my own practice.
sun a became what i reached for. what i held. it became a ritual to mark a moment, or bless a place, or simply remind myself to pay attention.
i honestly couldn’t believe how powerful, how transformative this simple set of linked poses was. how deeply it imprinted into my body.
i also couldn’t believe how long it had taken me to discover this.
i think it took so long, in part, because of how the suns (especially a) are typically thrown into vinyasa classes right after gentle stretching. i always thought of them as a little warm up to get ready for the more exciting poses. something to rush through to get to the next part. its placement in class made it easy for me to ignore. easy to view as some sort of unimportant stepping stone to cooler stuff (more on breaking down ego in yoga later).
but i couldn’t have been more wrong. because when i needed it most, it was this simple series of shapes—sun a—that came to me and brought me back to myself.
sun a continues to be a touchstone of my physical and spiritual practice.
last year, when i was on a solo road trip through the southwest, driving long hours on flat roads between mountains—stopping for coffee and hikes along the way—i challenged myself to do sun a in a different spot each day.
it was a beautiful way to organize time. it gave me something to look forward to. i'd spend the day on the lookout for a place to complete my daily duty. wait for the perfect moment to turn my face toward the sun. i watched the sky. the angle of the light, the way it fell onto the ground.
i listened, and when i felt it, i stopped and began again.
make it yours
to me, sun a is a perfect doorway into building a self-guided practice and learning to listen to your body because it is a manageable number of approachable (and adaptable) shapes. and, when done together, they create a satisfying flowy little loop.
the goal of the series is, in many ways, to wake up the body. to stretch the spinal column, engage large muscles groups, invite gentle motion throughout the body. because of this, it can be easily molded into a form that works for you. it can be completed seated, lying down, standing, etc, etc.
it is simple enough to remember by heart and challenging enough to provide opportunity to work on alignment and adjustments.
anyway, i really love sun a. and i think you could too.
as i mentioned, there are a lot of different variations of sun a, but the most commonly taught variation of sun a is a series of ten (ish) poses linked together. the poses typically taught are:
Mountain
Forward Fold
Halfway Lift
Plank
Up Dog
Down Dog
Halfway Lift
Forward Fold
Mountain
Equal Standing
i could write a detailed script of how i teach and practice these poses—but to be honest, video is a far superior to written words when it comes to explaining physical movement. i’m planning to have my life together enough soon to make my own demo videos for you (and maybe even some live classes too, so look out for that!) but for now i combed the internet for good demo videos so you don’t have to.
great intro video with breath cues and variety of options offered
super in-depth intro into ashtanga style sun a
you’ll notice each instructor gives slightly different cues
“feet together” “feet hips width distance”
“step one foot back” “step two feet back” “hop or step back”
that’s because each style of yoga and teacher has their own language around the specific alignment or shapes they are teaching. there is no uniform textbook of sun a, or yoga in general for that matter.
give yourself permission to explore how each shape and each alignment cue feels in your body. try out different combinations, different styles until you find something that feels true.
then practice. begin again (and again). and maybe someday you’ll notice the sun low and burning with glory you’ll be compelled to stop. maybe someday when you need something to pull you back into yourself you’ll breathe deeply, and your body will know what to do.
This is so inviting ... so inviting. Thank you, Billie
ps. when I read "something broke in me," I thought about my own experiences of something breaking in me. Sometimes breaking like a levee. Sometimes breaking like a siege Sometimes like a fast. Like a wave. Like my mother's mother's tea set when I accidentally knocked it to the ground, the one my mother who never cried, cried over, the only thing she had left from her mother who died when my mother was 14.
Sometimes breaking like the stained glass I had constructed of my past, the one I looked through to live in the present and imagine the future.
Sometimes breaking like my heart.
Well, Billie, somehow you opened this in me. Thanks again.
Wow. I cannot (yet) put into words how this is resonating within me. I want to jump out of my dentist chair, while I wait for x-ray results, and follow your words. Words. But oh... here he is...