Sun Salutations are a part of my yoga practice. Sun salutations at the beginning, meditation at the end, every time. This is what happens during sun salutations.

I plant my feet together, let my hands drop to my sides. This never feels right at first, and I shift my hips a little, shift my weight sort of restlessly. I bring my hands into prayer pose at heart level. I gaze out of the window to the round green shrub in the distance that is my focal point, and I gaze away to the trees, the parking lot, the person walking across my vision, and back to the shrub. My body wants to be distracted, and it takes a few seconds, perhaps like a diver before a dive, to pull everything together, limbs, balance, focus. I don’t worry too much about my mind, active or empty, disturbed or at ease, because I know the physical process of the salutation will eventually rein my brain in any way.

I breathe in as my hands come down and then circle up, join together again over my head and then up like a steeple, and I am gazing upward. I stretch my hands upward as far as I can because after sitting in front of a computer all morning, this feels very very good. I often hear little pop! pop! pops! this first time as my spine gratefully decompresses. I stretch a little higher, knowing my body resisted a tad at first and sure enough, another cm or two.

Now I square my hands above my shoulders while the arms are still stretched up and breathe out, drop forward. The first time, my fingers barely brush the floor where later my palms will sit flat. With my hands near my toes, I breathe in straighten my spine again, pulling my head up. This is a small movement that is almost always awkward for me. Oh, well. Everyone has their little hitches in the system.

I plant my hands on the floor breathe in and walk my feet behind me until I am in the upward part of a push-up. (Later, I will be able to jump my feet back, by focusing on my core.) Breathe out slowly lowering the push up to the floor, my elbows close to my sides. I like this because it was so hard for me to do for so long, and the feeling of slow control feels good. As my extended body touches the mat I breathe in, flowing into upward dog, hands not moving, just the body weight shifting forward, feet flattening soles up, and the head coming up and back, curving the spine in an upward arc. The first time my short-waisted body barely touches the floor, but eventually during the subsequent salutations the pelvis will plant where it belongs and I’ll have more arch and flexibility of the spine.

I breathe out into down-ward facing dog, hands still planted in the same position, but now butt in the air as high as it goes and head dangling down. Five breaths, sometimes short and fierce, sometimes slow and focused, sometimes all messed up all over the place, and I enjoy it all, happy to be breathing. It is harder to relax my neck, but the weight of my head eventually straightens that out.

Fifth breath, I breathe in, look up and walk my feet to my still planted hands (later jumping). I breathe out, let my knees collapse into a slight bend and lay my hands flat on their backs on the mat in front of my feet and enjoy gazing at the inside of my glowing palms against the greeness of the mat. I breathe in and like a bird with long wings swoop my arms upward in a circle to the steeple shape, and hold that stretched up, and focus, gazing at the folded hands against the backdrop of ceiling tiles. Once I am focused, I breathe out and the hands, still in prayer pose, lightly float down to the heart area.

As the hands float down there is sometimes the optical and spiritual sense of light being pulled from sky to earth by the arms and folded hands.

I repeat againand again and again. Each sun salutation is different, some casual and loose-limbed, some tightly choreographed. Some I take little pauses in the middle to focus on one position. Sometimes I breathe and move lightly, sometimes with vigor and weight. Sometimes one repetition flows into the other with no sense of beginning nor end.

This repetition of the sun salutation is the core part of this workday practice, feels like wine or sea air which is sort of funny. I did not enjoy them in class, they felt like work. There seems to be something about the natural light in this space that makes it feel like an act of beauty, or perhaps the pleasureable contrast between cramped post-morning back and stretched out spine, or perhaps that my body instead of the class controls the pace of each one.

I let myself know when I do the last two, which sometimes brings a focused clarity to the process. I am appreciative of my body for being able to do them, and grateful to my spirit. I then flow into other yoga exercises before meditation, but it feels as though sun salutation is integral. Because of how sun salutations have cleared my mind, I fall into seated meditation with little effort, just the same shifting of the limbs and spine until they are focused. Because sun salutations have brought light before I even sit down.