Suryanamaskar is considered a part of modern-day yogic practices though it was neither considered an asana nor a part of traditional Yoga. Practicing Suryanamaskar before beginning routine activities vitalizes the practitioner and gives a completely energized day. Starting from the Raja of Aundh who first introduced surya namaskar, there is a line of eminent people who popularized this dynamic group of asanas including T Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, Swami Satyananda from Bihar school of Yoga, so on and so forth. Their contributions resulted in this excellent series of Asanas being introduced to the practitioners. Such a miraculous group of postures also involves dynamic breathing patterns at each posture and gives a form of complete practice involving asanas and pranayama. There are a total of 12 postures in Suryanamaskar practice and 24 steps in one round. This is in the form of salutation to the “Sun” along with chanting the twelve names of the sun god. In this review, we accentuate the importance of Suryanamaskar highlighting its effects on physical, psychological and physiological aspects of the body based on published research. In addition, the usefulness of surya namaskar as one complete sadhana for the whole body is emphasized.
Keywords: Surya namaskar, Physical, Physiological, Endocrine, Chakras, Women health
Highlights
- •Surya Namaskar is a yogic practice for Total body health.
- •It has direct and indirect impacts on various glands.
- •It works from physical level to intellectual levels.
- •Complete health capsule for women throughout all stages of life.
- •Surya namaskar is total coordination of body, breath and mind.
1. Introduction
Every day for all living beings begins with the sunrise for there is no life on earth without the sun. The Sun is indeed worshipped as a god in various cultures by the name of Mithras in Persians, Apollo in Greeks, Osiris in Egyptians, and Surya in the vedic period of India and so on [1]. In Ramayana, Sage Agasthya advised Lord Sri Rama to worship the sun god by chanting Aditya Hridayam to achieve victory in his encounter with the demon king Ravana. These verses depict the various forms and names of the sun god, praising his glory and his 12 forms (signifying the shape of 12 months of a year) in the Yuddha Kanda of Ramayana [2]. The sun is considered as the Pratyaksha swarupa (the ultimate power visible to the eye), which represents truth, a manifestation of knowledge, and the giver of intellect & prosperity.
The sanctity of the sun god is explained in a chapter containing 132 verses named ‘Surya namaskar’ in Taittriya Aranyaka under Krishna Yajur Veda. This is being chanted as a ritual practice among South Indians along with the performance of namaskara (salutation) at the end of each verse [3]. In present times Suryanamaskar is both a physical as well as a spiritual practice. It was inserted into yogic practices owing to its immense potential in maintaining the practitioner's physical and mental health which is the basic requirement for higher yogic practices. We reviewed this spectacular practice of various schools through standard textbooks published by the respective schools and highlight its importance in disease management through research articles indexed in PubMed/Scopus/web of science.
2. Origin of Suryanamaskar
‘Suryanamaskar’ or the ‘sun salutation’ a set of dynamic postures, is considered neither an Asana nor a part of traditional Yoga. Suryanamaskar is a complete physical exercise that is believed to be conceived and propagated by the King of Aundh, Late Shrimant Balasaheb Pant Pratinidhi in the 1920s and later by Sri K V Iyer, and Sri Krishnamacharya. The Danda exercises explained in Vyayama Dipika were found to be the basis for Suryanamaskar models presented by Sri Krishnamacharya . Dandaal is an ancient common and important physical training practiced in India by wrestlers, and martial artists. The pushups used for bodybuilding purposes in western countries could have been originated from Dandaal. The similarities between Dandaal and Suryanamaskar are schematically represented in and explained later. Suryanamaskar became a traditional blend of the practice of two different systems such as physical culture and Yoga and thus it heads out to be the forerunner practice of modern-day physical exercises . Further simplified versions were used by other schools of Yoga including Swami Sivananda Yoga Vedanta center, Bihar School of Yoga (BSY), Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (SVYASA) and were progressively incorporated into modern-day yogic practices.
