How did a number scared to Dharmic religions become associated with a popular form of yoga practice?
108 Sun Salutations is just what it sounds like - a yoga practice where you do 108 Sun Salutations!
The number 108 is considered sacred for a range of reasons across several Dharmic religions (including Hinduism and Buddhism). For example, in Hindu tradition Shiva had 108 attendants, and there are often 108 mala beads on the mala bead necklaces that are used to count during meditation.
Traditionally, it was a number believed to occur frequently as ratios in astronomy. Nowadays, we have more exact measurements of the size of the Earth, Moon, Sun and the distances between them, but it is easy to see why the number 108 came to be considered an important astronomical ratio: the distance between the Earth and the Sun is ~107 times the diameter of the Sun; the distance between the Moon and the Earth is ~111 times the diameter of the Moon, and the Sun’s diameter is ~109 times that of the Earth.
The number 108 comes up in many other places as well - you only have to do a quick online search to find several handfuls of references. As for anything with a significance to a great many people, some of the references disagree with one another, and I’d love to do a proper deep dive into the literature one day to find where this number first became significant. But that will be for another day.
It has become something of a tradition for yoga practitioners to complete 108 Sun Salutations at the time of the Summer and Winter solstices, a the turn of the seasons. However, the Winter solstice is in December, and for many people (especially those of us who celebrate a holiday season in late December, and New Year on 1 January), the month of January has come to be the month most associated with reflection on the past, consideration for the future, and the change between them. This is very clearly reflected in the modern Dutch term for New Year’s Eve: Oud en Nieuw (Old and New).
Anyone who has attended my classes, workshops or retreats will probably have worked out that I am someone who likes to question things, including traditional thinking and the reasoning behind it. Perhaps a good example — after I attended my second 108 Sun Salutations in Edinburgh, and the teacher mentioned the significance of the 108 ratio in astronomy, after the practice I promptly went a checked all the ratios. Perhaps that’s the liability of having an astronomer in your class!
That said, there is great power in ritual, and there is certainly immense power in taking time to reflect and look forward.
Practicing at home is hard, and one of the wonderful things about the 108 Sun Salutations is the meditative nature of it. You are not trying to learn complicated new postures or sequences — which can be especially hard to motivate from home — you are simply repeating something that you already know how to do (or will certainly know how to do after 108 repetitions!) You have time to get lost in the movement, and time to let you mind wander, and maybe even to clear and focus. It is also something that comes with a genuine feeling of achievement, because it is a lot to ask of yourself physically!
So, whether 108 holds a personal significance to you or not, hopefully taking the time to challenge yourself, to have some time with your mind, breath and body, to perform something of a ritual as we move into another year — might feel like it has some meaning to you. And that can be the most powerful thing of all.