How to Make Sun Salutations Suck Less

A Free Guide for Yoga Teachers Who Give a Damn

Preface

Let me be the first to say: I questioned the title How to Make Sun Salutations Suck Less.

It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with sun salutations as a movement, or the yoga lineages they come from.

What sucks is how most modern bodies are introduced to this practice without adequate preparation and guidance. And what sucks even more is how those same bodies are left feeling broken and inadequate when the whole reason they came to yoga in the first place was to feel better.

This guide will give you the tools to meet people where they’re at and ensure that everyone walks out of your classes feeling seen, encouraged, and eager for more.

Does this sound like your classes? 👇

  • Sun Salutations are thrown in as a quick warm-up

  • Students are desperate to offload their sore wrists and avoid weight-bearing positions because their wrists hurt so much

  • There are compensation-ridden chaturangas everywhere, along with stiff, rounded shoulders

  • Soft glutes and sore lower backs seem to be the norm, but you’re not sure what to do about it

It’s not that you don’t care. You do. You’ve probably noticed these patterns in your classes and thought, “There has to be a better way.” Maybe you’ve even stopped teaching sun salutations altogether.

But what if there was a way to use these movements—which have been a fixture in classical asana practice for longer than most of today’s yoga teachers have been alive—in a way that:

✅ Prioritizes joint mobility

✅ Builds stronger shoulders and more functional glutes

✅ Actually feels good for the bodies in front of you…

What if, instead of tolerating (or suffering through) sun salutations, students LOVED this part of your class? 

Imagine being the teacher who breaks the cycle of mediocrity.

The one whose students can’t wait for the next upward dog because it finally feels good.

The one who transforms downward dog from an awkward “hold and hope” shape into a powerful expression of strength and mobility.

When you stop treating sun salutations like a script and start using them as a playground for exploration, you set yourself apart.

You become the teacher who sees what others miss.

You learn to create curated movement experiences that make students feel strong, safe, and eager for more.
And that’s what will keep your students coming back to class again, and again, and again.

Here’s how to transform ho-hum sun salutations into life-giving, can’t-live-without-them movement non-negotiables…

#1 - Stop treating sun salutations like a
warm-up. 

This series of movements demands a lot from our joints. Everything from the wrists and shoulders to the lower back and ankles is loaded in a sun salutation. When these areas aren’t sufficiently prepped, they protest. And in body-speak, protesting feels a lot like pain and discomfort.

To keep your students feeling good throughout your class, ensure that key joints have been mobilized first. That could look like:

If I wanted to have the greatest impact on any group of students using one of the above, I’d target the wrists because…

#2 - Wrist Prep is the #1 thing most teachers aren’t doing enough of in class.

Wrist work is also the EASIEST way to make sun salutations more enjoyable for everyone. Here’s how:

When wrists have more access to extension, and more capacity to harness flexion (ie. the effort of pushing through the fingers to offload the wrist), weight-bearing on the hands gets 100x easier.

That’s why it’s impossible to build more strength and stamina in positions like plank and downward dog when the wrists can’t tolerate load. But when you teach these joints to participate in (vs be casualties of) movement, you create the foundation needed for everything else to fall into place.

That said, some movements simply demand more than what we have time to prepare for an train in a 60-min vinyasa flow class. Which brings me to…

#3 - Chaturanga: the #1 thing most teachers do TOO much in their classes.

This might seem radical, but hear me out: none of your students would mind if you never taught chaturanga again.

While chaturanga might look like a formidable goal, yoga classes don’t prioritize the progressive overload needed to perform this movement with integrity. 

For most folks walking in off the street into a studio, a single chaturanga is equal to (or more than) their one rep max. Even if they can pull off one beautifully balanced hover, what are the chances they can do that 5-10 more times without giving in to compensation? This is when repetition gets us in trouble: we do too much of a (not so) good thing, and our bodies pay the price. The demand of the pose outweighs the body’s capacity, leading to injury. And then we wonder why shoulder injuries are so prevalent in the yoga world.

So, what do we do instead? 

None other than the timeless yet scalable alternative of lowering all the way to the floor.

When you replace chaturanga with coming down to the floor—every time, not just when you’re tired—here’s what happens:

  • You insert an intentional pause in sun salutations where your body has the chance to recalibrate before upward-facing dog

  • You learn to control the movement through a full range of motion so that your chest, belly, and thighs come down at the same time (aka no collapsing to the floor), harnessing core strength and proximal stability

  • You have the opportunity to play with tempo and tension, two key elements of building strength through progressive overload

Tempo → Lower sloooowwly (5, 4, 3, 2, 1). Controlling this eccentric phase of movement is how we build more strength to eventually do full-range push-ups.

Tension → Pull your hands toward your feet and your feet toward your hands in plank. Maintain that pulling effort all the way to the bottom.

Say goodbye to arbitrary alignment rules (like keeping the elbows at 90 degrees for “safety”) and embrace the benefits of building control through a full range of motion.

#4 - Leverage the power of glute engagement.

Glutes are the real MVP of sun salutations, but more often than not, their power potential is completely ignored.

During a sun salutation, our glutes (and hamstrings) should engage in upward-facing dog to bring active hip extension into the pose. Before lifting the chest off the floor, intentionally drive the pubic bone toward the floor and subtly engage the effort of flexion in the lumbar spine (aka tuck the tailbone). Maintain that glute engagement as you press the floor away and move into the backbend. 

This intentional hip extension helps distribute the load so that the lumbar spine isn’t a hinge point. Think of extension like a group project where we want every part of the spine, along with the hips and pelvis, to contribute to the outcome. When one or more players don’t step up, the one(s) left to do more than their fair share of the work pay the price.

In other words, when we don’t pay attention to active hip extension (or worse, intentionally soften the glutes), the lower back bears more load than necessary. Over time, that can come back to haunt you as a literal pain in the ass.

While we’re on the topic of glutes, let’s not forget…

#5 - Swap Warrior 1 with a High Lunge

While Warrior 1 may have its place in a class where students struggle with balance and benefit from keeping the back heel down, a lunge has considerably more to offer:

  • The pelvis stays symmetrical, unlike the typically fixed and rotated position in Warrior 1

  • You can explore pelvic movement (tilting, shifting, rotation) and play with different positions to experience different results

  • Staying high on the back toes stretches the plantar fascia and challenges the toes in extension

  • The back knee can bend, putting sufficient slack in the chain to let the lower back move out of extension

  • Keeping the back heel lifted challenges overall stability and balance

Plus, a high lunge is a great place to examine the relationship between glute activation (of the rear leg) and hip extension. Similar to upward dog, engaging the glutes here will help take unnecessary compression out of the lower back and encourage more length through the front of the hip and thigh. When you’re able to leverage the glutes in a lunge, this movement becomes far more functional and far less restricted.

As you integrate all of this into your sun salutation approach, remember one last key thing: SLOW THE F DOWN.

Seriously…what’s the rush? When we move too quickly—or ask our students to move faster than what their brains and bodies can keep up with—we skip over countless opportunties to:

  • Pay attention

  • Figure out what our bodies need

  • Turn instructions and cues into embodied experiences

Plus, if your goal is to pair movement with the breath, moving quickly = breathing too fast. And you know what breathing quickly turns into? Hyperventilation. No one is coming to yoga to hyperventilate. 

We show up to this practice to down-regulate. To be mindful. And to walk off the mat feeling better than when we stepped onto it. So slow down. There’s no need to hustle through sun salutations—especially when they have so much to offer.

Enjoy the journey,

Cecily

Want to see the most comprehensive breakdown of a Sun Salutation that Cecily has ever offered?

Check out “Summer School: Sun Salutations”—a 5-day collection of recorded classes where you’ll see every element of a traditional sun salutation deconstructed to reveal new levels of depth, exploration, and movement integrity. Access the entire collection with a free 7-day trial for the Detour Virtual Studio, or purchase it to have on hand anytime you need a refresher for only $49USD.