Summer Solstice Sun Salutations with Kristin
Sunday morning June 21st we’ll be honoring the Summer Solstice with sun salutations at Community Yoga Center (2900 Adams Street, Suite A-20, Riverside, CA 92504) and we hope you’ll consider practicing with us. The practice will begin around 8am.
Practicing cycles of sun salutes with mantra is a beautiful yogic practice of offering gratitude for the light-giving force of the sun and recognizing the gift of life itself. It’s a practice of reverence and commitment, and a special opportunity to connect in community.
It can also be a practice of tapas. 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 in order 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.
Practicing sun salutations can 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. If you’re interested in welcoming intense experience in this way - as part of the whole of our human experience, please consider practicing sun salutes with us on the Summer Solstice. It holds the potential to connect us all with a fierce kind of grace. -Kristin
Everyone is Welcome Here
All bodies, backgrounds, and experience levels are welcome. No prior experience is necessary. There is never a cost.
What to Bring
Please consider wearing comfortable, layered clothing and bringing any practice supports you enjoy - mat, blocks, straps, bolsters, or blankets. Community practice supports are available, and you’re encouraged to use them freely. Bringing water to hydrate after practice is also a good idea.
The Evolution of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga emerged in the early 20th century through Tirumalai Krishnamacharya’s practice and sharing of yoga, building on what he learned from Rama Mohan Brahmachari. One of Krishnamacharya’s students, Krishna Pattabhi Jois, began sharing a set sequence of postures taught in led, breath-synchronized group classes. He used the term Ashtanga Yoga to describe this method of postural practice.
As the practice spread globally through the work of Jois’ early students - including David Swenson and Richard Freeman - it became a foundation for many modern movement traditions. Vinyasa flow, power yoga, and countless contemporary yoga styles trace their roots back to this evolving system.
Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga has never been static. Like all living practices, it has changed through culture, people, and time. What is often presented as fixed or ancient is, in reality, a modern lineage shaped by interpretation, adaptation, and experimentation. Today’s Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga exists not as a singular authority, but as a spectrum of practices - each reflecting the values, creativity, and love of the folks practicing and sharing it.
This Practice is Not Sold
This practice is not sold. It’s shared. Our offerings exist through voluntary giving - as a living expression of the community we are. What we receive is made possible by the many who have given before us, and what we offer allows the practice to remain unowned and open.
Giving is part of yoga practice - not as a duty, but as a remembering. When we give, the grip of “me and mine” loosens. The patterns of separation and self-importance are disrupted. We step out of self-absorption - the root of suffering - and feel into the truth of interconnectedness. Every act of giving dissolves a boundary. The giver and the receiver are not two. This is how the practice continues - through open hands and open hearts.