FROM THE DESK OF SRI RAGHURAMJI:

"NOTES ON SURYA NAMASKARA":

Exercise is very important aspect of our life. Exercise involves bending the joints twisting and
stretching. So in all the postures make sure that you fully stretch and where ever it provides an
opportunity twist fully like in the case of third posture or tenth where we stretch one of the legs
forward there is a chance to twist too. Use this opportunity. Regarding stretching in the second
posture consciously and slowly stretch in back bending systematically from neck muscles to chest and
further on to stomach muscles to waist. So that your posture helps you to fully stretch the front
portion of the body. Same way use the third posture to be used for stretching the back fully. Every
posture involves some body part being stretched. In every posture also recognize that you should be
stable.If we study the postures closely we can see that starting from the top of the body come to the
waist then to the lower portion of the body and come to total prostration in namaskarasana. After
that the sequence is to retrace the steps back to standing position which is like unwinding. There is a
nice symmetry involved, which is also further enhanced by the breathing pattern adapted in the
postures. The stretch is from the upper body muscles to the lower limbs thereby e The stretch is from
the upper body muscles to the lower limbs thereby exercising the whole body. That is the reason in
several schools they consider Suryanamaskara is a wholesome exercise for our body. When we can
not do other practices of asanas due to some external reasons we should be able to do at least six
sun-Prostrations. Yoga postures are different from the physical exercises in several aspects. In case
of the physical exercises awareness is not mandatory where as in case of yoga practices or
suryanamaskara we must have the awareness. Another aspect in physical exercises we have to do
more and more and achieve more and more which is measure for progress. On the other hand in
yogic practices such as Suryanamaskara it should be like a flow of physical postures smoothly and
effortlessly and not the doing of more is important! We have to relax in the practice which means
actually the muscles have as little participation as possible. Therefore the physical exercises are for
building muscles where as Suryanamaskara will help us in glandular system and the nervous system.
For nervous and glandular problems Suryanamaskara is a good solution. Though they are essentially
not focusing on muscles, since there is some participation of muscles the practice of Suryanamaskara
will help in loosening the muscle tone. Early morning if we do six rounds of Suryanamaskara followed
by brief Shavasana for five minutes we have observed that the days activities of the work place flow
very smoothly and harmoniously. In hospital Stift Rottal clinic at Griesbach in Germany, all my doctor
friends do the practice of five to six suryanamaskara before starting their day's work.The great
benefit of Suryanamaskara is, it helps in improving the circulation of blood and makes the body
flexible and helps to spend the energies of Vasana in a neutral way so that it helps to contribute
towards inner peace! Simple muscular pains and discomfort because of our sedentary habits will be
removed very effectively and makes our activities normally blissful.According to the energy model
explanations when we are not engaged in any activity we can experience the accumulation of some
sort of uneasiness, and the desire of wanting to do some thing or the other comes up for all of us
sooner or later! This is what we call as boredom. We actually engage in either drinking cups of
coffee or munch some fried stuff or in gossiping. These physical activities help us to spend the
restless energy for some period of time. This restless-form-of-energy-disturbance is called as moola
Vasana or anaadi avidya. Suryanamaskara offers a very non-injurious form of exercise to get rid of
this moola Vasana. Therefore Suryanamaskara practice is spiritual in nature taking us to inner peace
and harmony!

So let me summarize the points for suryanamaskara :

Suryanamaskara is good for circulation and helps to start the day's work much more harmoniously.It
is useful in case of glandular and nervous dysfunctions.It helps to loosen the joints and tones up
muscles.Spends the general boredom forces and makes the life enjoyable and the over burden of life
can be diffused.Heart patients should exercise caution in doing this practice. A proper
Suryanamaskara should help one to go deeper into various aspects transcending the physical
identification.

Let us now try to understand from the pranamaya stand point.According to yogic language of
physiology, we have chakras which are located in the subtle body, parallel to the spinal chord in the
gross body and the chakras are supposed to be in dormant way so that the serpent power or our vital
force is lying coiled in the foundation chakra called mooladhara. Though lot of these things appear to
be rather vague we can experience one thing that is we can feel the laziness in the position which
correlates to chakras which will make us lazy and we will be unwilling to take up activity. Once we
practice this it will make us active. For the first practice of back bending we have to pull our body
from the lower abdominal region which will start working at the mooladhara chakra. The next posture
will work on the next higher chakra swadhistana, in this sequence these postures are so designed to
activate from lower to higher chakras. The posture immediately after the sa-astanga-namaskarasana
[where the participant is lying on face on earth, with forehead on the ground, with chin on the floor
which is the symbol of surrender to the divine] the posture which follows is bhujangasana, the cobra
pose which is indicating the awakening of kundalini or the coiled serpent power. When the force acts
without awakened mind it will lead us astray where as when the activity comes up as activity with
awakened mind, the same force will be constructive and all activities become spiritual activities.

Therefore the Suryanamaskara has a very deep perspective from yogic physiology point of view.