Practicing sun salutations can be an act of reverence - a beautiful offering of gratitude and thanksgiving for the gift of life itself - especially when the cycle of physical movement is combined with 12 mantras honoring the light-giving force of the sun.

Practicing sun salutations can also be an act of tapas - a kind of challenge that asks us to meet it with enough inspired passion, fortitude, and patience to willingly (and even enthusiastically) endure intense experience. The Sanskrit word "tapas" can be translated to English to mean "heat causing change." Practicing tapas involves purposely staying in the crucible of intense experience until the flames die to embers - embers that carry the potential to spark real transfiguration. Tapas recognizes the reality of suffering and asks us to willingly bear adversity to open up to greater insight. It knows that sometimes we are unaware of our own capacity unless we're challenged and discover within ourselves a force that matches the adversity we face. Consecutively practicing A LOT of sun salutations (like 108!) is a way of welcoming intense experience as part of the whole of our human experience. It holds the potential to connect us with a fierce kind of grace - a grace that reflects back to us our own inner essence.

The number 108 has many auspicious and symbolic meanings across diverse disciplines.  The ancient rishis regarded the number 108 as a representative of consciousness itself.  Consciousness exists a one thing (1), nothing (0), and everything (8). 1 represents consciousness manifested, 0 represents latent consciousness as nothing - emptiness - the void, and 8 represents conscious as all - infinitely interconnected.  In this way, the number 108 represents the basis of all creation.

The practice of 108 sun salutes is challenging and usually lasts about an hour. Completing 108 consecutive sun salutation IS NEVER A REQUIREMENT and there is no trophy waiting for you if you do! It's just an idea and it may not be a good idea for a variety of reasons. The essence of yoga is knowing ourselves - not some sort of physical achievement. Yoga is an invitation to connect with our body, mind, and heart. It welcomes us as we are and our practice as is it. So, if we're feeling like we want to try a lot of sun salutes - great - if we're feeling like we want to try a few sun salutes - great - if we're feeling like other poses or a single resting pose is best - great. Yoga welcomes it all.

This chart can help guide us through the practice of sun salutations - however we decide to practice.

108 SURYA NAMASKARA VINYASAS WITH MANTRA

Yoga does not ask us to blindly believe ourselves to be a dynamic continuum of consciousness. Rather, it asks us to take up an experimental practice of sustained self-discovery so we learn from the repeatability of our vivid and visceral experience. Yoga invites us to be our own scientist and continually observe ourselves as phenomena in a perpetual self-experiment process - witnessing the expected and unexpected results and learning from ourselves about our own becoming.

“The practice of becoming” is one English interpretation of the Sankrist term “sadhana” (साधन).  It’s less a prescriptive routine, and more a continual subjectivation - a process of experimentation where we experience ourselves in relation to life itself. Sadhana is not restricted to what happens while engaged in the perennial practices. It includes what happens when working, resting, and enjoying.  In this way, every aspect of living becomes the practice of yoga and part of our sadhana. 

The challenge to witnessing ourselves is objectivity. Even though we try, like a scientist, to observe ourselves as phenomena without prejudice, we are influenced by the whole of our life experience - our samskaras. To various degrees, we maintain built-in subjectivity based on every experience we’ve ever had in the past and anything we want to experience in the future. We tend to witness ourselves through a filter of all past influences and future aspirations. Because our sense of self is so mixed with the content of our lived experience, we tend perceive ourselves through a muddied lens. Our perception is tainted by our unavoidable biases.

The self-experimentation process that yoga is helps us recognize our blind spots, clarify our perception, and feel into the infinite interconnectedness of all. As William Blake describes in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - Infinite.” The perennial yoga practices invite us to participate in an ongoing process of (i) self-inquiry, (ii) awareness of self-imposed limits, and (iii) opening beyond those limitations so we may experience our being and becoming as part of consciousness itself - with as much objectivity as possible.  Each practice inclines us toward an ever-growing sensitivity to the interconnected whole of life and away from a feeling separateness from everyone and everything.  They are meant to be engaged with, consistently and repetitively as sadhana, so we learn for ourselves what is true.

There is no single recipe for sadhana - no set prescription of practices that’s suitable for all.  Our sadhana is meant to be as unique as we are because it involves our particular process of becoming. Copying someone else’s sadhana repeats their process of becoming, and is not necessarily appropriate for our process. There are as many sadhana variations as there are individuals. So, the balance of practices is going to be different for each of us - and will vary over the course of time according to what intellectually and intuitively resonates with us.

Understanding the synergistic connection between collective ethics and personal integrity, Scott Miller introduced the practice of observing the yamas and niyamas in pairs. He emphasized how linking each yama with a corresponding niyama creates a dynamic and diagnostic relationship between the coupling. In a paired yama and niyama practice, our collective ethics practice informs our personal integrity practice, and vice versa. An understanding of how we are doing yama-wise is an indicator of how we are doing niyama-wise. In a paired practice, the yamas and niyamas are not dogmatic rules or fixed prescriptions of dos and don’ts that dualistically classify good and bad behaviors. Instead, they become touchpoints that invite us to look deeply into the nature of our collective and personal existence, and explore the energetic interplay between the two.

The greatest yama and niyama are ahimsa and ishvara pranidhana, making these two the natural first pairing, followed by satya and svadhyaya, asteya and tapas, brahmacharya and samtosha, and aparigraha and saucha.

Ahimsa is non-violence, non-harm, care, and compassion. Ahimsa recognizes the suffering caused by our intolerant ideas, hurtful communications, and destructive deeds. Ahimsa broadly contains the other four yamas: truthfulness (satya), not stealing (asteya), not sexually exploiting (brahmacharya), and not being greedy (aparigraha). For this reason, ahimsa is revered as the greatest yama. Ahimsa understands how pain, fear, and desire underly harm and violence. It asks us to feel into the source and effect of harm we cause and harm we support - not only through our thoughts, words, and actions, but also through our silence and inaction.  Ahimsa cultivates the insight of interconnectedness by inviting us to perceive the entire universe as alive, dynamic, and meaningful - a radiant mystery in which everything and everyone possesses inherent value.  Ahimsa refuses to objectify and instead encourages communion through holding all of experience with care and compassion - a response that naturally arises with the insight of interconnectedness.

Ishvara pranidhana is surrender to the divine mystery and a trust in “what is.” It is the greatest niyama because of the raw courage and vulnerability it takes to practice unbridled surrender to the unknown. It requires unshakable trust in “what is” when “what is” can feel terrifying and tragic. It requires ultimate open-heartedness amidst total heart-break and a kind of continual willingness to fall into bottomless uncertainty. Ishvara pranidhana recognizes the suffering caused by our desire to control and impose limiting expectations and rigid demands on the life’s spontaneous unfolding. It asks us to understand the impact of insisting life must be a certain way instead of resting in its mystery. Ishvara pranidhana cultivates the insight of interconnectedness by inviting us to fall in love with the whole of life (including the pain and suffering) and embrace the unknown as our beloved. 

How we are doing with surrender (ishvara pranidhana) energetically relates to how we are doing with non-harming (ahimsa). The more we impose our self-oriented expectations and demands on life’s mysterious and miraculous unfolding, the more prone we are to engage in limiting beliefs and actions that cause harm to the interconnected whole of Life.

The practice of yoga can really be summed up in a two-word phrase: “know thyself.” This may be the most concise and accurate explanation of what practicing yoga really means - the beginning and ending of any yogic insight. The simple truth.

It’s funny how something so simple can sometimes be such a struggle.

Why is it a challenge to really know ourselves - to remember who and how we actually are?

Is it because we are all tied up in believing what we've been told we should be? Is it because there's some sort of fear or shame around what we believe we are?

Yoga invites us to a real and raw intimacy with all parts of our “self” - with all parts of Life itself - the pleasant and unpleasant, the blessings and sorrows, the joys and sufferings. It invites us into a process of self-inquiry - a kind of sustained and continuous investigation into the nature of our “self” to understand how we essentially are - communally, physically, mentally, emotionally, soulfully, and spiritually. Yoga helps us avoid being strangers to ourselves and prisoners to our own ignorance about ourselves.

Plato points to this in his Allegory of the Cave where people live their entire lives mistaking dimly lit shadows for reality. Through the self-inquiry that all of yoga actually is, we can help ourselves break our chains of ignorance to free ourselves from shadowy illusions.

The starting point to discover how we are is observing how various aspects of ourselves manifest. Our body is generally known through our physical sensations, sensory perceptions, and biological processes.  Our mind is experienced through our thoughts, words, and images.  Our heart is understood through our emotions.  We are essentially bundles of our total physical, mental, and emotional experience - from our initial experiences (whenever they started!) until this very moment.  By observing these aspects of ourselves, we begin to understand how we are shaped by the whole of our life experience.

Bringing a kind of radical awareness, honesty, and love to our experiencing of life can really help us know ourselves with limitless intimacy - and that is the essence of what practicing yoga is all about.

Central to yogic philosophy is the idea that consciousness is the fundamental thing of existence – the ever-present reality inherent in all.  Consciousness is not only the witnessing power of awareness, but also the creating power of energy. When consciousness forgets itself, it’s unconscious - unaware of its own existence and its dynamic energy that constantly moves and organizes itself in a perpetual process of becoming – as the process of life. 

The great yogis taught that we experience the world according to interconnected layers of consciousness.  The layers are differentiated in terms of density with the outer layers expressed as the most gross, solid, and manifest aspects of consciousness and the inner layers as the most subtle, ethereal, and unmanifest aspects of consciousness. The inner layers cause and influence the development of the outer layers. The outer layers respond and develop according to inner layer influences.  Anything created is supported by subtler forms of itself which cause it come into existence. What arises in a more gross layer has before it pre-existent movement and forms in a subtler layer.

According to yoga philosophy the most subtle and inner aspect of individual consciousness is our essence nature - our soul consciousness. Unlike the finite and limited mind-body, this soul consciousness is unchanging and eternal. It connects us to all of existence as a manifestation of the divine mystery. 

Yoga invites us to understand this essence nature and live less from external superficial consciousness and the limits of the mind-body and to live more from awakened internal consciousness.  It helps us feel into our over-identifications with our ego and orients us to a causal power – a cause that is in a perpetual process of becoming and that is also what we are essentially.  Expanded awareness of consciousness begets change and can give rise to fundamental shifts out of unconscious states of being associated with suffering.

Yoga has meant different things to different people throughout its history. It’s evolved and involved to meet the unique and changing needs of its times.  Yoga continues to transform and adapt through the perspectives of its practitioners. Despite yoga’s ongoing evolution, certain key threads of have been woven into its complex harmony, distinguishing it from other traditions.

Numerous ancient texts refer to the Sanskrit term “yoga” (योग) as a state of being – a state of unity consciousness and no-self. Central to this state is a sense of abiding in essence nature and merging with the cosmos. In this context, yoga is not a practice or process, but rather a way of existing – a super conscious state of connectedness. It is the experience of full aliveness that happens when we are intimate with reality itself.  It results in freedom from the illusory notion of who we are as a small, separate self and the suffering caused by that belief. 

In addition to being a superconscious state of connectedness, yoga is also defined a collection of multi-faceted practices that support the arising of that unitive experience. Yoga as a method cultivates favorable conditions for yoga as a state of being to occur. Although yoga practices vary in technique, they share the same purpose of helping us transcend the illusory notion of separateness and the confusion inherent in that limited perspective.  The texts of non-dual Shaivism and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali share rich traditions designed to help us inhabit a super conscious state of connectedness.  These perennial yoga practices are commonly referred to as angas (अङ्ग), a term that may be translated from Sanskrit to English to mean supports or limbs. The eight historical supports that collectively distinguish yoga from other traditions are:

yamas-niyamas (collective ethics and personal integrity),

asana (experiencing and influencing gross energy),

pranayama (experiencing and influencing subtle energy),

pratyahara (withdrawing the senses inward),

dharana (concentrating on fundamental realities),

dhyana (meditating on everythingness and nothingness), and

samadhi (spontaneous merging of the finite with the infinite).  

These supports invite us to move out of our conditioned, habitual body-mind cycles and protection-seeking ego patterns and move into a clear and loving recognition of “what is.” A “what is” that not only includes increasing sensitivity to our physical, mental, and emotional experience, but also to the indivisible interconnectedness of everyone and everything.

Practiced in sequence, these supports serve as a progressive path, each naturally flowing from the previous practice and incrementally emphasizing more subtle awareness of what is. Observing collective and personal ethics through the yamas and niyamas sensitizes us to the whole of life and its fundamental mutuality, without which the fruits of the other yoga practices fade away. Asana practice attunes us to gross sensations of our physical body and prepares us for morenuanced energetic awareness of pranayama practice. Pranayama hones our ability to experience and influence subtle energy which prepares us to more refined awareness of even subtler energy experiencing as we withdrawal our senses inward in pratyahara practice. Multi-form practice of the yamas, niyamas, asana, pranayama, and pratyahara grow our receptiveness to the sublimity of concentration in dharana and etherealness of meditation in dhyana. Our increased ability to repose in the subtlest states of concentration and meditation opens us to the most subtle and immersive experience of samadhi.

While these practices naturally unfold from each other, they also develop simultaneously and overlap with each other. Practicing one support of yoga nurtures the other supports. As an interconnected web of influence they are each an integral composite part of the whole of yoga. Engagement with multiple aspects simultaneously increases the potential for development in all the practices and a radical loosening of our identification with our body-mind selves.

Yoga is samadhi-centric. The seven other supports of yoga revolve around samadhi and hold the potential to move us toward the samadhi center where we experience ourselves and all of life as a dynamic continuum of consciousness beyond the distinction of subject and object.  The samadhi core is where consciousness spontaneously experiencesitself in an ever-changing field of possibility uncaged by the body-mind.

The supports surrounding samadhi can be grouped in a couple of ways. One configuration is as outer and inner supports – with the yamas-niyamas, asana, and pranayama emphasizing the most gross forms of experience - and pratyahara, dharana, and dhyana emphasizing the subtlest forms of experience. Another way the supports organize around samadhi is as bhukti-centered supports emphasizing pleasure and mukti-centered supports emphasizing liberation. Asana, pranayama, and pratyahara all are particularly conducive for experiencing bhukti, and the yamas-niyamas, dharana, and dhyana are all particularly conducive for experiencing mukti.

An asana-centered concept of yoga is a modern and misinformed idea about what yoga really is and does. Alienating asana from the other supports cuts into yoga’s totality and potential so severely that it can actually reinforce egoic conditioning and a sense of separateness. Yet too often, asana fundamentalism dominates mainstream yoga practice - with emphasis on idolized alignment, perfect sequencing, and all variations and manifestations of body-based pretentiousness. This kind of asana zealotry - and all the ego-driven power play that goes along with it - can really blind us to the bigness that yoga really is.  

Yoga invites us to experience a reverence for the whole of life through the practice of the yamas and niyamas. Observing collective ethics (yamas) and personal integrities (niyamas) is a conscious way of living that harmonizes our relationship to our environment by recognizing the sacred multiplicity in oneness and the interconnectedness of all. It sensitizes us to the fundamental mutuality of life. Through the yamas and niyamas, yoga offers us connection to everyone and everything in the environment and the ultimate experience of communal harmony.

The yamas and niyamas are like intuitive guides that ask us to continually self-reflect on our relationship to life and relational causes and effects. The yamas are collective ethics practiced externally, in relation to others. The niyamas are personal integrities practiced internally, in relation to oneself. Together they serve as the foundation of yoga’s perennial practices because, in every moment, they naturally and spontaneously invite us to feel into how our existence is interconnected to everyone and everything. Sincere observation of the yamas and niyamas can ignite the flames of both wisdom and compassion, catalyzing greater self-realization and the expansive experiencing that happens when we live in intimate communion with all.

We live simultaneously as individuals and part of an interconnected whole. We exist as a differentiated many and a united one. We experience real, material boundaries and infinite edgelessness. The yamas and the niyamas recognize the suffering caused by our over identification with the image of a finite self that is bounded by body-mind imposed limits. They ask us to look deeply into ourselves and others and consistently recognize the interconnected nature of consciousness and our existence as part of consciousness. They ask us to recognize the causes and conditions that contribute to suffering, including our own habit energies propelled by pain, fear, and desire.

Understanding the synergistic connection between collective ethics and personal integrity, Scott Miller introduced the practice of observing the yamas and niyamas in pairs. This unique approach of linking each yama with a corresponding niyama creates a dynamic and diagnostic relationship between the coupling. In a paired yama and niyama practice, our collective ethics practice informs our personal integrity practice, and vice versa. An understanding of how we are doing yama-wise is an indicator of how we are doing niyama-wise. In a paired practice, the yamas and niyamas are not dogmatic rules or fixed prescriptions of dos and don’ts that dualistically classify good and bad behaviors. Instead, they become touchpoints that invite us to look deeply into the nature of our collective and personal existence, and explore the energetic interplay between the two.

The greatest yama and niyama are ahimsa and ishvara pranidhana, making these two the natural first pairing, followed by satya with svadhyaya, asteya with tapas, brahmacharya with samtosha, and aparigraha with saucha.

Like Justice Stewart, we know phoga when we see it, right? It’s a wannabe kind of yoga - it desperately wants to be yoga - but it’s a fake yoga - a phony yoga.

So it hashtags itself yoga, it dresses up in outfits it thinks yoga wears, it hangs out in spaces it imagines yoga lives, and it dances around like it believes yoga moves. Phoga talks a yoga-like talk and walks a yoga-like walk - but with a shallowness that makes it feel really small - painted and plastic - like a doll.

Phoga never really gets what yoga really is and does - because of its superficial self-promotion that’s so blind it can’t even recognize its own insecurity.

Now i can be as phony as anyone - i can get all tangled up and tricked out in my tiny little self - shamelessly believing my self-important bullshit. I’m human - we’re all human - it’s seems par for this course we’re all on together.

But this playing small points to the purpose of yoga’s existence - to cut through our delusion of self-separateness into the unbounded interconnectedness that we all are. Phoga will never cut it. Only yoga will.

So let’s help ourselves and each other relax and rest in greater space - keeping an honest and loving eye on how we are relating - feeling into how any sense of separateness drives our actions - our words - our judgments. Let’s consider often whether we are living as phogis or yogis.