Sun Salutations are the connective tissue of modern vinyasa. Whether you’ve been practising for ten years or you’re three weeks into your first yoga class, you’ve almost certainly moved through Surya Namaskar A, Surya Namaskar B, or both — sometimes without anyone naming the difference. The two sequences look similar from a distance, but they’re built to do different things, and understanding why turns the opening minutes of any vinyasa class from cardio warm-up into intentional preparation. This guide breaks both down pose by pose, explains the design logic of each, and shows you how to use A and B together to actually accomplish what they’re designed for.
Where Sun Salutations come from
The “Sun Salutation” name is at least a thousand years old as a religious practice — the morning prostration to Surya, the sun, with mantras and devotional bows. The flowing, asana-based version most yoga students recognise today is much more recent. The form was crystallised in the early 20th century by T. Krishnamacharya at the Mysore Palace and was further codified by his student K. Pattabhi Jois into the opening sequences of Ashtanga Yoga. From there it migrated into nearly every contemporary vinyasa lineage — Power Yoga, Jivamukti, Baptiste, Vinyasa Flow — usually with small variations in the linking transitions.
The Ashtanga primary series version is also the version that gives us the cleanest A/B split. In Ashtanga, Sun A is performed five times and Sun B five times at the start of every practice. They’re the warm-up, but they’re also a self-contained mini-practice — twelve breaths in A, sixteen in B, performed in strict synchrony with the breath.
Sun Salutation A: the breakdown
Sun A has nine pose positions and is moved through in a rhythm of one breath per movement.
- Mountain Pose (Tadasana) — neutral starting point.
- Inhale, sweep arms overhead — Upward Salute (Urdhva Hastasana).
- Exhale, fold forward — Standing Forward Fold (Uttanasana).
- Inhale, halfway lift — Half Standing Forward Fold (Ardha Uttanasana).
- Exhale, step or jump back — Plank to Low Push-up (Chaturanga Dandasana).
- Inhale, roll forward — Upward-Facing Dog (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana).
- Exhale, lift the hips — Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana). Hold five breaths.
- Inhale, step or jump forward — Half Standing Forward Fold.
- Exhale, fold — Standing Forward Fold.
- Inhale, rise — Mountain Pose with arms overhead.
- Exhale, hands to heart or down by sides — back to Tadasana.
What Sun A is actually doing: it’s a full-body wave that visits every plane of motion in the spine — flexion (the fold), extension (the upward dog), and the long axial extension of the standing postures. It also lengthens the entire posterior chain (hamstrings, calves, back) while warming the shoulders and core. By the end of three rounds, the body is genuinely warm; by the end of five, you’re sweating without having done anything that looks like cardio.
Sun Salutation B: the breakdown
Sun B layers two extra elements onto the same skeleton: Chair Pose (Utkatasana) at the bookends, and Warrior I (Virabhadrasana I) inserted between Upward Dog and Downward Dog on each side.
- Mountain Pose.
- Inhale, bend the knees and sweep the arms up — Chair Pose.
- Exhale, fold — Standing Forward Fold.
- Inhale, halfway lift.
- Exhale, step back through Plank — Chaturanga.
- Inhale, Upward Dog.
- Exhale, Downward Dog.
- Inhale, step the right foot forward, pivot the back heel down, rise into Warrior I right.
- Exhale, hands to the mat, step back through Chaturanga.
- Inhale, Upward Dog.
- Exhale, Downward Dog.
- Inhale, step the left foot forward — Warrior I left.
- Exhale, Chaturanga.
- Inhale, Upward Dog.
- Exhale, Downward Dog. Hold five breaths.
- Inhale, step or jump forward — Half lift.
- Exhale, fold.
- Inhale, rise into Chair Pose.
- Exhale, Mountain Pose.
What Sun B adds: Chair Pose loads the quads and the entire posterior chain in a flexed-hip pattern that’s effectively a full-body squat with arms overhead. Warrior I demands hip extension on the back leg, hip flexion on the front, external and internal rotation of the femurs simultaneously, and full thoracic and shoulder mobility. Each round of Sun B asks the body to move through a much wider range than Sun A, in both legs, in both directions.
The A vs B distinction in one sentence
Sun A is a mobility wave that warms the spine and the back of the body; Sun B is a strength-and-asymmetry sequence that adds the legs, the deep hip rotators, and the unilateral patterning that the rest of a class will demand. They’re complementary, not interchangeable.
How to use A and B together
The classical Mysore-style opening
Five rounds of Sun A, then five rounds of Sun B. This takes roughly ten to twelve minutes and produces a deeply warmed body without a single named “warm-up” pose. If you have an established practice and a quiet morning window, this alone — followed by Savasana — is a complete short practice. It’s the same logic that powers our ten-minute morning yoga routine, scaled up.
The vinyasa class opening
Most modern vinyasa classes use three rounds of A followed by two or three rounds of B as the opening fifteen minutes of class, before moving into peak postures. The principle is sound: A wakes up the spine and shoulders, B wakes up the legs and asymmetry, and the rest of class can then build on a fully primed body. This is also where the peak-pose sequencing framework meets the salutations head-on.
The “morning practice” version
If you have ten minutes and want a complete, body-warming start to your day: three rounds of A, three rounds of B, three full breath cycles in Tadasana. That’s roughly seven minutes of moving and three minutes of stilling. Repeat five days a week and your body will tell you the difference within a fortnight.
Common problems and how to fix them
The collapsing Chaturanga
The most-injured pose in modern yoga. Most students start dropping straight to the floor instead of holding the elbow-bent push-up, which loads the front of the shoulder unsustainably. The fix: lower the knees, hold the form, work the strength in over weeks. There’s no rush.
Lumbar collapse in Upward Dog
If the lower back feels pinched in Upward Dog, you’re hanging in your lumbar spine instead of generating extension from the upper back. Press the floor away strongly through the hands and the tops of the feet, and lift the chest as if a string at the sternum is pulling the heart forward.
The “back foot won’t pivot” Warrior I
If the back heel won’t comfortably anchor in Warrior I, lift it onto a folded blanket or bring the back heel up off the floor entirely (a “high lunge” Warrior I). Forcing the heel down by yanking on it from the spine is exactly the wrong approach — it’s the same anatomical problem we cover at length in our hip-anatomy guide for teachers.
The fast, breathless flow
Sun Salutations done quickly with shallow breath is just calisthenics with Sanskrit names. The classical instruction is one full nasal breath per movement, with an audible ujjayi sound. If your breath can’t keep up with the rhythm, the movement is too fast — slow the movement down to match the breath, not the other way around.
The other Sun Salutations
It’s worth noting that A and B aren’t the only versions. Classical Hatha yoga has a 12-pose Surya Namaskar that’s distinct from both Ashtanga forms. Sivananda’s Sun Salutation has its own structure. Iyengar lineages often teach a slower, longer-hold variation. Bikram-style Half Sun Salutation is essentially Sun A truncated to standing only. The A and B versions described above are the dominant versions in vinyasa, but they’re not the only valid forms — and if your home lineage teaches something different, the breath-with-movement principle still applies. For wider context on building flow practices, our vinyasa flow building blocks guide is the natural next step.
The bottom line
Sun A and Sun B are the most efficient ten minutes of warm-up in modern yoga. Done well, they prepare the body for everything else; done badly, they’re where most repetitive-strain injuries in yoga begin. Slow down, match the breath, lower the knees in Chaturanga without ego, and make the salutations the part of your practice you genuinely cannot rush. The rest of the class will thank you.
