I just finished my 108 sun salutations an hour ago - yes, past 10 at night! My Mom and kids all got involved for parts of it and between dinner, a bonfire and getting kids to bed, it unfortunately was not as constant as I would have liked. When I did get 20 or 30 in a row going, I could feel the power of the series! I was afraid I would lose track, but it was like I was hypnotized and so relaxed that I knew my subconscious would keep track for me.
So, I have done this a few times and never really understood what a solstice is and why we do 108.
So here are a few fun facts I learned.
My Dad told me that the solstice is only a moment in time where the sun is closest to the earth. Since it's the closest to the earth, we can mark that as the longest day of the year. Here in Canada, the sun is just going down at 10pm tonight!
My daughter asked "why do we do 108 sun salutations Mom?" and I had a pretty weak answer, so I looked it up and found my favorite answer is that the distance to the sun is 108 times that of the earth. As we do the sun salutation, we can imagine circling the earth - Heaven, earth, bridge, child, Mountain, horizon, earth, heaven - Heart. I imagined these things as I went through some. Some musings that came to me were: I am in constant movement, circling my own worlds over and over in my days. Am I present enough to recognize my breath and body enough to reach The Son - my ultimate goal?
Some other reasons for 108 from Huffington Post were that there are 108 names for Buddha, there are 108 beads on a Catholic rosary, 108 beads on a Tibetan Mala, 108 is 6 times 18 which is the Jewish number of good luck, 12 times the number 9 which is the number of vinyasa in a Sun salutation and many other reasons on good 'ol google!
So there you go. I short intro to the 108 Sun Salutations! Try it next solstice! it is an awesome tradition, and fun to think that millions around the world are doing it!
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