What Are Yoga Sun Salutations?

Series Summary

Yoga poses have become increasingly popular as a form of exercise and meditation. The focus of yoga is a holistic one, employing a broad range of practices which focus on a new way of living, thinking and being in the world. Aimed to unite the mind, the body, and the spirit, the health benefits of yoga are also great and varied. From relieving stress to strengthening and toning muscle, integrating yoga positions and exercises into your daily routine can be beneficial on many levels. Yoga sun salutations are often used to warm up for a yoga routine or as a simple set of flowing yoga poses. In this free video series our expert will show you how to do yoga sun salutations. You will learn the basic yoga poses for a sun salutation, including the forward bend, downward dog pose, plank pose and upward dog pose. You will also learn how to do kneeling variations of yoga sun salutation poses and see a demonstration of a full yoga sun salutation with and without variations. If you are interested in yoga, this series of sun salutations is a great place to get started.

Video Transcript

"In this series, we're going to be talking about sun salutations. Now the sun salutations are a series of poses that are linked together, and they flow together, usually with the breath. Sun salutations can serve as a warm-up so they create heat in the body, and they also serve to balance the muscles in both sides of the body, since we're doing exactly the same poses on each side of the body as we flow through. Now, there are a lot of different variations on the sun salutations, so we'll be going through just a couple of them. And one of the modifications that we're going to be going through are some kneeling modifications, so a more gentle sun salutation, as well as the full sun salutation. So we'll be going through poses like a plank; a full plank, and also the kneeling version, and the tricep push-up that's referred to as Chaturanga, or crocodile pose, as well as the kneeling version of that."