Surya Kriya and SuryaNamaskar

– Excerpted from a Talk by Sadhguru Jaggi

On Guru Pournami, we inaugurated the Hata Yoga Teacher Training School in the Adiyogi Alayam. Forty-five people, largely from the U.S., but also a few from Eastern Europe, Africa and India have come to take part in this 21-week program.

The word “ha” means sun; “ta” means moon. Without the sun and the moon, there is no Hata Yoga. With the Hata Yoga school, we will start teaching a certain form of sun-related practice which is very much like Suryanamaskar, but is called “Suryakriya” because it involves a certain level of breath and powerful activation of energy . The postures in Suryanamaskar are preparatory in nature if you do it one way, or balancing in nature between the Ida and Pingala*. Largely, it is called Suryanamaskar because it is mainly to activate the solar plexus, to raise the “samat prana” or the solar heat in the system. When we say “solar” it is not just symbolic. All heat that you experience on this planet is essentially from the sun — stored and released in many ways. Or, hydrocarbons have formed the way they have formed essentially because they are sun-baked. If you take a piece of wood and burn it, it is only releasing solar energy. If the solar energy is taken away, the whole planet will freeze into solid ice.

Everything is run by solar power. You may think we are generating power by thermal or by gas, but everything is happening because of solar power. The only exception could be the breaking of the atom. That is not solar and that is why it is considered the most effective and dangerous because you are not using the normal powerhouse of this system, which is the sun. When we activate the sun in the system, the body begins to glow and shine. If you have certain types of problems which manifest, usually in the form of excess mucus in the system — not just in your nasal passages, but all over — this can become balanced.

For one who is doing Suryanamaskar, glandular secretions and mucus levels will be very easily balanced and in good shape, and this determines a lot of things about you — not just your physical health. Your physical health, psychological health and spiritual possibility are determined by this, depending upon how much solar energy is within you. Or in other words, how balanced your secretions are. If your glandular secretions are slightly imbalanced, it is very hard to even sit and listen, forget about meditating or doing something else. It will make you feel crazy because the chemistry will go wonky. Suryanamaskar is one of the simplest and most effective sadhanas to bring that balance.

Suryakriya was reduced to Suryanamaskar when people decided to teach it to a larger public. When you decide to teach it to a larger public, where it is very difficult to follow up and correct, you take away some powerful elements from it because powerful elements also come with the possibility that if people do it improperly, it could cause harm. So you make it a little watered down, but the application is wide. You can apply it to larger societies with no follow up which makes it more practical. But wherever people are doing it in close circles, where we can easily follow up, we will do it in a completely different way.

Hata Yoga is a way of aligning your system to the cosmic geometry, getting your own geometry right so that you are just a replica of the cosmic geometry. It needs to be done with enormous care. If you are far away from this geometry, no problem. But as you get closer, you have to be more careful about how you do it. If your practice becomes very powerful, then we have to exercise extreme care to ensure that it is spot-on, otherwise other things will happen. And Suryakriya is a tremendous possibility if you know how to use it.

Different dimensions of kriyas and asanas to activate the solar power within have always been done from the time of Adiyogi. Adiyogi himself taught methods, different postures to activate the sun. Somewhere in Mahabharat, there is a mention of Krishna paying his salutations to the sun. Somebody described it as a strange practice, something physical he would do every day in the morning — paying gratitude to the sun and seeking his guidance on a daily basis when the sun comes up. He himself was doing some kind of Suryakriya. What form he did we do not know. But I can easily put forth at least 20 different forms, and he must have been doing one of them, or slight modifications of them. There is no other way you could do it.

Until now, we have never really taught serious Hata Yoga at the Isha Yoga Center, though I grew up in the stables of Hata Yoga. We only used it as a preparatory step for Samyama meditations; we just put together 18 asanas as a preparatory step for Samyama. I thought I would avoid it, but about three years ago, after one of my visits to California, I decided we must teach Hata Yoga because it is taking on such absolutely weird forms. It is important that we bring back classical yoga as it was. So that is one more thing to do for us, and in the next few years, it will become a major activity, an important element of the Isha Yoga Center. In fact, we will be teaching it as Suryakriya.

I am thinking we will run 21-day Hata Yoga programs in the ashram, maybe once in two or three months, and we will start somewhere in March 2013, maybe after Mahashivaratri. This is just for learning to practice, not to teach. We have been teaching it in two-and-a-half days right now, but we want to teach Hata Yoga over a period of 21 days.

For those of you, whether you speak English or Tamil, who wish to be in a 21-day Hata Yoga program, you must plan 2013 so that you have 21 days of sadhana and preparation to perfect your Hata Yoga in a certain way, a powerful system to practice. But only those who are going to continue to practice should come; otherwise don’t come and take our lives because it takes enormous effort to teach somebody. Hata Yoga can be a complete spiritual process by itself. If you do one thing properly, it is enough.

*The left and right energy channels.

Q: Sadhguru, you said we shouldn't look at Surya Namaskar as a physical exercise. What's its purpose then?

Sadhguru: The purpose is to generate your prana [1] in such a way that it radiates like the sun. The sun has no intention of either roasting you in the summer season, or giving you solar energy, or making your plants grow. The sun just burns; this burning radiates and we all benefit from that. This is the nature of the existence. And this is how a human being should be too – but he’s unwilling to be that way. He doesn’t radiate anything – he thinks he has to do. Petty human beings are just living on intentions which they think are lofty, which make them feel great. This is a poor way to exist. They find a little bit of fulfillment through their intentions, not by their way of being; they haven’t attained to such grandeur.

Surya Namaskar is designed in such a way that it makes your energies radiate. Then you don’t have to have good intentions; you don’t have to have any intentions. If you simply sit here, your presence is beautiful and beneficial. Nobody needs to think we should make use of such a person’s presence; anyway it is beneficial, whether others are aware of it or not. To what extent you radiate depends on whether you are willing to face the sun or whether you sit under a concrete block. So if you are radiating, what will happen? What does it mean?

Radiation means who you are is spreading in a subtle way. If I sit here like a cold block of meat, I’m just here. If I am radiating, in a subtle way, I’m all over the place. The more I am able to experience the existence, the more the existence is able to benefit from me – both ways it works; it’s a transaction.

So if I radiate, my being radiates in a big way. It is like a large umbrella that people can experience. And above all, I can experience the existence because who I am is not a piece of meat anymore, it’s radiating. If it radiates, prana will come in touch with akasha [2]. You are doing Surya Namaskar because you want to become like the sun. Becoming like the sun does not mean you will burn up tomorrow morning. It simply means you will be in akasha. Right now you are just stuck to the planet, but if you become like the sun, you are in akasha; you are in the vast expanse of creation; you are not stuck to a limited space anymore.

So, does the akasha have an influence upon us? First of all, it is always holding us in place. Your understanding may be that earth’s gravity is holding you in place, but that’s not how it is. The idea that the earth is like a magnet, holding all of us down, is a simplistic way of looking at things. What is holding the earth in place? To think that the sun’s gravity is holding you is a very childish, infantile conclusion. The sun doesn’t even have a solid substance. What is holding the whole solar system in place? Why is it not falling off? That’s because of akasha. You want to be held in the embrace of akasha because that way, your experience of life becomes purely existential and universal in possibility; it is no more limited to the physical.Maladihalli Swami, who first taught me yoga , used to do 4008 Surya Namaskars per day. Just like me he got into yoga for the wrong reasons. Right from his infancy, he had been a chronic asthmatic. He was just wheezing day and night. In those days, there was no proper medicine or treatment, and even if there had been, his parents would not have been able to afford it. They did whatever they could, but the boy was just wasting away.

When he was about 11 or 12 years of age, a yogi came by and the parents asked him to heal the boy. The yogi said, “Anyway this boy is not going to be of any use to you. If you keep him with you, he will die. Give him to me; I will take him with me.” He didn’t belong to the kind of people who are recruiting disciples. He wanted to walk alone; generally, he didn’t take anybody. But he took compassion upon this boy because he had his mission. This yogi was Palani Swamy – that’s my Guru too. So he took this young boy and trained him in the ways of yoga. The boy not only grew out of his ailment, he grew into a physically almost superhuman person – and he came and reminded me of yoga. [Laughs]

There is one incident which happened when Malladihalli Swami was 86. Swami was also a specialist in nadi vaidya(an ayurvedic doctor who specialises in reading the pulse and predicting the doshas). It so happened that the train Swami and his assistant were travelling by broke down in the night about 70 km before the destination where he used to start his free treatment by 7 AM everyday. Swami on knowing that the repair work was going to get late, started running along the railway track barefooted and reached the destination in time and started the treatment as if nothing had happened. It was only after the assistant reached a good 8 hours later that people came to know that the 86 year old man had run 70 km barefooted at one stretch in the night. His soles were cut and bleeding and yet he did not care about himself and was only bothered about his patients.

So if you radiate substantially, akasha is not only something that your planet is held in, it is something that you also swim in on a daily basis. Then your life is very different.

My sadhana is very, very limited. I neither have the time nor the inclination to do any physical part of the sadhana. Now this is going to make your eyes red. [Laughter] I do only one Surya Namaskar every day. Wherever I am, I just do one, and I can do even without that. I can just sit and mentally do it – even then, it still works. This is because even though you do have a body and you are limited to the physical laws, if you are in touch with what is known as akasha, that which is holding the whole system up, will also hold you up.

Life has left everything open for you; the existence has not blocked anything for you. If you are willing, you can access the whole universe. Somebody said, “Knock, and it shall be opened.” You don’t even have to knock because there is no door – it’s open. You just have to walk through it, that’s all. But because your instinct of self-preservation keeps on telling you, “Unless you build a wall, you’re not safe,” unconsciously, you go on building walls all the time.

So what you are battling with is neither the creation’s nor the Creator’s unwillingness to open up the possibility. What you are struggling with is just the concrete walls that you have built. That is why the yogic system does not talk about God, the Ultimate Being, or the Creator – it only talks about karma – because we are interested in what blocks you. We are not interested in talking about the Ultimate. If we talk about the Ultimate, you will go into fanciful imagination. We are only talking about what is blocking you because that is what needs to be attended to.

God doesn’t need your attention. There is nothing to do about the Ultimate; that which binds you has to be broken, that’s all, and that bondage is 100% your making. That is why we are only talking karma. You have no work with the Existence. You have work only with the existence that you have created.