Raise your legs toward the sun
The Sundial is like twirling yourself in a dance while on your arms and sit bones
I’m in Toronto’s St. Lawrence neighbourhood this sunny morning to demonstrate a yoga pose called the Sundial. This aspirational move requires a good deal of external rotation at the hip and significant inner hamstring length, so do give yourself the gift of time and patience as you practise. 1. Sit with your knees bent and the soles of your feet meeting one another. 2. Use your hands to pick up your left calf and sling it over the left shoulder like the strap of a heavy backpack. Aim to hook the knee as close to your neck as possible. 3. Squeeze the knee into your body and position your left hand on the ground some distance from your body with your arm straight. 4. Then grasp the pinky-side of your lifted foot with the opposite hand, covering the top of the foot with your palm. 5. Pretend you are twirling yourself in a dance as you lift your right elbow and peek the head under the upper arm, gazing up to the right. 6. Straighten your left leg as much as your flexibility will safely allow. 7. Expand the left waist and count five luminous breaths before releasing the pose and moving over to the second side. Human Shadows The length of a human shadow can be used to tell time, as any vertical object can be used to measure the elevation of the sun.
Telling the time by looking at one’s shadow length requires knowledge of both the time of year and geographical latitude. The Canadian Clock Museum in Deep River, Ont., features a human analemmatic sundial. YuMee Chung is a recovering lawyer who teaches yoga in Toronto. She is on the faculty of a number of yoga teacher training programs and leads international yoga retreats. Learn more about her at padmani.com