salutation of the sun (2)

[Guest guest]

ANNAMAYA KOSA AND SURYANAMASKARA

Let us now come to the physical body called ‘Annamaya Kosa’, which is

equivalent to physical body. Though we roughly equate, it is not strictly so

because Annamaya kosa is not water tight compartment but it is a continuum in

body-mind-consciousness complex, which is what we are. Because of this

difference there are few things which we need to consider. They are Annamaya

kosa; as the name indicates it needs food. Food is ‘Anna’ and Annamaya is like

ornament made out of gold is called as ‘hiranmaya’ where ‘hiran’ is gold. I will

no go into this aspect because I would like to go into the exercise aspect which

is directly connected with Suryanamaskara.

 

The other two aspects are exercise and relaxation. 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 one 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 exercising the whole body. That is the reason why 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-salutations.

 

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 suryanamaskaras 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 day’s 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 suryanamaskaras before starting their days work.

 

The great benefits 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 suryanamaskaras.

Suryanamaskaras are good for circulation and helps to start the days

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 and let us now try to understand from

the pranamaya stand point.

 

According to yogic language of physiology we have these chakras

which are located in the middle of the spinal chord 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.

 

 

 

Love,

 

NV Raghuram

International Coordinator / VYASA - Vivekananda Yoga University

vkyogas

www.nvraghuram.org

www.vyasa.org