These few basic postures are often used as a warm up before moving into more difficult poses or asanas. I’ve been in enough classes where the entire class was centered around Sun Salutations with the instructor adding extra poses here and there throughout the many repetitions of ups and downs. My best memory of doing Sun Salutations isn’t actually from any class, but from the only home practice I’ve ever done and it was as a pre-teen, with my mother. Everyday, during one summer, my mom would come into my room wearing her black one piece knee length unitard (an ingenious piece of workout wear with nothing to bind your movements and enough coverage to bend over without embarrassing yourself), put on Pachelbel’s Canon in D, and we would salute the sun by doing many repetitions of this asana. It was rad. My body was young and flexible, my mother was always complementary of my poses, and it was a beautiful way for us to spend time together that didn’t involve words, judgements or criticisms. I wish we’d never stopped.

In my family, we are a bunch of sun worshipers in various forms. Whether it be my father’s serious tanning sessions (I can still smell the Hawaiian Tropic from my childhood), to our day long outings to the beach as children, or our most recent day spend on a boat at the lake, none of us can deny how good you feel after a punch of Vitamin D and how nice you look with a tan. I love the sun and how it makes me feel.

There are long stretches during the Boise winter where you can’t feel the sun’s warmth on your skin, and that makes me pretty sad. But there is a moment when you turn your face to that fiery orb on a freezing cold day, and it ever so slightly warms your nose and cheeks. That is hopeful. Then there’s the heat from the past month that is relentless and I do my darnedest to stay out of the sun’s direct line of fire. If there is only one thing that remains constant to every being on this planet, it is the sun and our relationship to it. For the month of August I’ve decided to pay homage to the life giving force that makes me so happy, and makes it possible for life to exist. Sun…I salute you!

From the garden.

Porter Bear Walking across parallel bars at gymnastics.

Stretching

My own sun worshipper in the making.

Porter’s Grandad got him a Strider Bike, and I now know what Christmas will look like for the next few years. There will be many hugs, much excitement and some levitation.