Dynamic Suryanamaskar

Sun Salutations

Suryanamaskar, when followed with sincerity, brings the practitioner many benefits at every level of existence. In my first fifteen years of yogic practice it was slow and with a very low number of rounds and level of intensity. In fact I was paying very little attention to Suryanamaskar considering it a rather strange adaptation of an ancient Vedic ritual. My style of hatha yoga practice was that of Swami Kuvalayananda, Swami Shivananda of Rishikesh or the Bihar School of Yoga. I had my share of interesting yogic experiences, but my progress intensified tremendously once one of Swami Muktananda’s devotees persuaded me to try it a different way. That was in 1981. Before that time I was hardly doing any Suryanamaskar rounds, so naturally I was very proud when, after some six months of practice, I reached the level of 216 rounds (108 cycles). At that time I was unaware that a human being could do over a thousand rounds. I already felt the wonderful benefits of having amazing vigour and stamina, which I could test to my heart’s content in the hills of the San Francisco Bay Area. This kind of vigour and enthusiasm I found very useful for meditation.

Meeting, in late 2002, Janglidas Maharaj rekindled my interest in performing large numbers of Suryanamaskars in addition to my other classical hatha yogic routine. Thus, slowly, I started increasing my practice until I reached that amazing number of more than 1008 rounds. Accounts of some of my experiences the reader will find in this book, but, to describe most of them, a separate book would have to be written. Over the thirty years of practice and after many millions of Suryanamaskars performed, I hope that I can have in the reader’s eyes some credibility when I speak on the subject. Since inner experiences are by their very nature subjective, I felt that it would make sense to try to verify them by some objective and scientific methods. After all, the truth is one but it has many faces, which should not contradict one another.