Take a Deep Breath: Yoga for Life with Sun

“Hug your right leg into your chest, lengthen your left leg all the way down [Pause]. Very good. Now switch sides: hug your left leg in, lengthen your right leg down. Keep breathing, use your breath. Breathing in, breathing out. [Pause]. Now switch legs again. Now, deeper breath. Lift your right shoulder and your head up. And lower your shoulder and head down. Switch legs. Take a breath. Lift your left shoulder and your head up. Pull your tummy in, so that you can feel your core engage. Lower your shoulder and head down. Switch legs. . .

“Now, take a breath here. With your right leg pulled into your chest, lift your left leg a few inches up off the floor. Lift your shoulder and head up again. Now, some of you will bring your head back down when you switch your legs; others might want to keep your head up. Lift your chest up. Good. And switch legs. And again. Switch. Keep switching. Yes; good. Now some of you might not even use your hands to pull your leg in. Others, put your head back down if your neck bothers you. Do a few more. [Pause]. And everyone, hug both legs into your chest, lower your head and shoulders back down. Take a breath.”  

In this short exercise, less than 3 minutes in duration, Sun demonstrates using the breath to increase body awareness, and adapting yoga poses for a wide range of ages and physical abilities. Sun’s commitment to foster students’ self-confidence and skill is what makes her such a popular and effective teacher. I met with Sun at the Palos Verdes Bay Club one breezy July morning to observe her demonstration of more advanced yoga poses, and to discuss how yoga can benefit everyone, from older seniors to young athletes.

How does yoga benefit both seniors and young people?

Many people start yoga by stretching if they have tight muscles or if they have injuries. You can practice yoga without having to go to physical extremes, This is how many people approach yoga and I think for seniors it’s the best way as there’s no impact on your joints; you’re not jumping or trying to climb up steps. Knowing how to hold a position increases balance, and balance is one of the most important factors as we get older. As we age, we tend to lose the sense of where our center is. We need to ground back down into the earth. Yoga also helps to make your bones and muscles strong, and condition your joints so you are in the correct alignment. So for example, if your hips are misaligned, you may find someday that your pants hem is longer on the right than the left. And why is that? Because one of your legs got shorter? No, your hips are misaligned.

Balance and alignment are very important even from an early age. Young people need to learn correct posture both sitting and standing so that their bones and joints will be aligned as they age.

So young people can benefit from yoga stretching as well. And older people will often tell me once they have developed a yoga practice that they are able to move their bodies in ways that they were never able to before, that they have increased their flexibility in new ways, so they can bend over, and squat, and then get up from the floor while maintaining their balance. I’ve had people tell me that, after practicing yoga, they are able to move and balance themselves in ways they never could when they were young!

Even as a yoga instructor, you believe that it’s important to keep on developing your practice to maintain your health. Can you say more about how practicing a handstand has helped your overall mental health?

I’ve always been afraid that my upper body isn’t strong enough to support my weight. I had to overcome the fear of balancing my whole body on my hands and arms. Unlike other young people, I didn’t know how to control my upper body enough to do a cartwheel or a flip. I never did that when I was a kid. Through the practice of yoga, slowly, gradually over the years, I gained confidence, and finally, I came to a point where I was doing all the poses except the handstand. I was still afraid. So I’ve been working for more than four years now to overcome my fear by learning to do a handstand.

My goal is to do a handstand without support in the middle of the room. I thought I could conquer this challenge in 2 years. After 3 years, I thought, “Oh my God, I’m still not there!”

So you’re still leaning up against the wall to do your handstand?

I still need the security blanket of a wall, and then I can do it. It’s more about fear now than about strength. So I’m still trying to get over the fear of falling over. And the age factor has begun to come in as well. Now I don’t want to fall over and break something since my body is older and takes more time to heal. When you’re young and you break something, in a few months you’re back. When you’re older, it could take a few years and you still wouldn’t be back to where you were before.

So I’m trying to find the balance of how much I should push myself, how much I should restrain myself. Restraint is a good practice for yoga, too. How much should I challenge myself, and when do I say that today, that’s enough for me? You need to find that balance of reaching for your goal without forcing yourself.

Yes, I always want to push the boundaries in yoga! How do you know when you’ve reached your limit, at least for that day?

That’s where the breath comes in. If you are in a yoga pose and you notice that you’re holding your breath, then you can tell that you’re feeling anxiety because you’re overreaching. That’s where you might strain a muscle or pull a ligament by going too far. Breathing helps you to calm yourself down when you’re in that situation. By paying attention to your breath, you can discover whether you can stay in the pose, or if you need to come out. You might even discover that you can venture further into the pose. Without breathing, yoga is not yoga; it’s just a stretch class.

Breathing helps you to be conscious of what you’re doing. You can sweat even though you’re calm. You’re not stressing your joints too much while still having a great workout. I also recommend that people do some other form of exercise that’s complementary to yoga.

What would be some other forms of complementary exercise?

Spinning is a good complement to yoga. Lifting weights is another good way to balance out your yoga practice.

How does the practice of yoga help you to grow and maintain balance in other areas of your life?

As with any goal you have in life, you have to figure out what you need to accomplish first in order to meet your goal. For example, with a handstand, you may need to strengthen your arms or strengthen your core first, before you attempt the handstand. So you have an overall purpose of becoming more fit. And this purpose, this goal, keeps you focused. If you know why you are practicing yoga, it will help you to keep going when the practice becomes difficult or frustrating.

So when I fall over when I’m trying to do a handstand, and I ask myself, “Why am I doing this? I could be just lifting weights to strengthen myself,” I have an answer to that question: Challenging myself to do a handstand keeps me focused by giving me a goal to achieve, and it makes me happy. It makes me happy that I’m trying to do something that feels almost impossible, and I kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. I tell myself, “Yeah, I’m growing, I can almost do this!”

But the handstand itself is not the most important thing. The journey, the process of getting there is even more valuable. Someone who has a gymnastics background can do a handstand fairly easily. So that’s not the goal for them. For me, it is. By focusing on this, I’m focusing on overcoming my weaknesses, which helps me achieve my goal.

And that influences other areas of my life. It keeps me young, motivated, focused, and healthy mentally because it puts me in that mode throughout my life. I know that when I encounter a setback, I may need to retreat and reflect, or build myself up in some way before I can move forward. I know I can do that.

There are still some things in my life that I need to work towards. As the saying goes, “Practicing on your mat is like practicing your life.” You have that same focused intention to meet your goals. Some goals might come easily, but some are out of your reach, or so it seems. But through persistence you might one day reach them and find happiness. And then there’s always another goal for you to reach for.

Like in yoga when you reach a pose, and the yoga teacher says, “That’s great, now here’s something else you can do that will test your strength or your flexibility even more!” So one day I might be able to do a handstand, and then the teacher will say, “Okay, now, can you do a handstand with one hand?” It’s a whole new beginning again. A new start, a new journey.

Was that how yoga was for you since you started practicing later in life, in your late forties? Was it something you initially did for your health?

For my back. I played intensive golf as an amateur. I’m a Korean, but when I was living in Hong Kong,I played for the Hong Kong Amateur Golf Association. I was a member of three golf courses in Hong Kong while I was living there. Members of the golf association saw me out playing tournaments and they invited me to join their team.

So you didn’t have to try out for the team?

No, they invited me; it was a great honor. And we got to travel all over East Asia to play in amateur golf tournaments.

You must have been an awesome golfer! Did you get to the point where your back pain was so great that you couldn’t play golf anymore?

Yes, I learned that when you’re playing one sport, you need to play another sport to counterbalance the first one. I didn’t know that at the time, so I was only playing golf. Golf is one-sided, lop-sided. You’re always using just one side of your body to swing. And I would practice 3-4 hours every day on the driving range, and then I’d be on the putting green, and then I’d play two rounds of golf everyday on the course. And all that practice hurt my back. I got scoliosis of the spine because I was only exercising one side of my body.

So I started going to the gym to stretch out my back, and that’s when I discovered yoga. I found that yoga was a great counterbalance to golf. I fell in love with yoga because my pain lessened and my spine became more aligned as I strengthened my core with yoga stretches. Yoga cured my pain, and by then I was hooked.

Is that when you decided you wanted to teach yoga?

Actually, I first got into teaching Nia, which includes yoga. Do you know what Nia is? Now I teach it here in Palos Verdes. Nia is a non-impact cardio class which combines dance, martial arts, and healing arts like yoga. It’s a one hour, non-stop conditioning class with different exercises at different speeds. Unlike yoga itself, which tends to be quite regimented, Nia is a bit more free-form. It’s both form and freedom. It’s done with music. It includes modern dance, including jazz dance, and self-expression.  

After I had taken Nia classes for a while, I decided I wanted to become a Nia teacher. And taking that teacher training really helped me with my self-confidence: I used to be really timid. But when I began taking Nia training, the instructor would say to me, “Sun, I can’t hear your voice!” So she took me out into the street and I stood on one side of the street while she stood on the other side. And she would call out to me, “Talk to me, Sun! I can’t hear you. Speak louder!” I had to belt it out.

So I became a Nia instructor after I had learned confidence from that experience. I gained the confidence to stand in front of people and teach Nia and then yoga, both after the age of fifty.

At fifty you kind of have a choice, right? You can say, I’m pretty much done with my life and now I’m going to coast, or you can say, I’m ready to start the next chapter.

Yes, it was a challenge at fifty to go back to school! I wasn’t excited about going back to the books. And both Nia and yoga teacher training involve a lot of textbook reading and exams. But I didn’t want to coast, so for my fiftieth birthday, I gave myself the gift of the Nia training course. It was $1700 for the training, and $3,000 all together for the follow-up courses, including traveling.That gave me the confidence to help people who wanted to learn Nia. And I also continued with my yoga practice.

And then someone told me, “Sun, you should become a yoga instructor!” So then I took yoga training and became a yoga instructor as well. I earned teaching certificates for both Nia and yoga.

Since you have open enrollment in your yoga classes, you have students with a range of experience. Some of them have practiced for years, and some of them are completely new to yoga. And some of those new students are over fifty.

Yes, that’s one of my challenges. When students come here [to the yoga class at Palos Verdes Bay Club], I mostly know who they are. But when I teach classes at Terranea Resort, the hotel guests are the ones who take classes. And I never know who I’m going to get. Sometimes I get other yoga teachers who are vacationing at the resort. And then in the same class, I’ll have an older student who tells me, “I’ve never done yoga, but I want to try it!” So that’s a challenge.

Yes, that would be! So how do you handle those differences in ability and knowledge?

I always go back to the breathing. If you’re more advanced, you can go further into the pose without becoming anxious and holding your breath. And if you’re just beginning, you can focus on the basics of a pose. So if you’re more advanced, you can take a basic pose and then put one leg up over your head, and if you are a beginner, you can do the same pose with both feet on the ground. So I offer a variety of options for each pose, and I encourage students to keep breathing and take a break when they need to.

What are some good yoga positions for beginners to practice?

“Cat and cow” is a good beginning pose.

Can you describe that pose? One of the things I value about your approach to teaching yoga is that you are so good at describing the specifics of each position.

You know, most yoga poses are named for animals. So for “Cat and Cow,” you would be on all fours, on your hands and knees, like a cat or a cow. And you’re extending and flexing your spine. A cat pose looks like a scared cat, so you raise your back into a dome shape, like a cat who has its back up. In the cow pose, you visualize a cow who is heavy with milk, and so the belly is hanging and sagging. And as you alternate between these two poses, you are extending and flexing your spine.

Is this a good set of poses if you have back pain?

If you have back pain, you would adapt this pose to what feels comfortable for you. So if you’re experiencing pain, you might not arch your back so much in the cat pose or sag your belly so much in the cow pose. And as you practice moving the spine, it will begin to heal and your range of motion will increase. And then you rest in child’s pose. There’s always a counter pose to the pose that you’re doing, and Child’s Pose is one of the counter poses for Cat and Cow.

How would you describe Child’s Pose?

Just imagine a baby folded over, lying on their tummy with their knees bent. Babies sleep like that all the time; I think that’s where the name came from. It’s a good exercise for stretching your knees and your ankles. If you have a knee injury, you can put a cushion in between your knees and your  hips to raise your knees a bit. But if you have no injuries, your knees will touch your hips and you will stretch out your knee, ankle, and hip joints since you’re folding yourself over.

And Child’s Pose also stretches your spine, so it releases any tension you might have in your back. It’s a resting position, a pausing position. For people who have injuries in their knees or ankles, though, they would need to modify the pose.

How do you know how much you need to modify a pose?

A good yoga instructor will tell you.Yoga was originally done one-on-one. Now it’s become more of a group practice and people take yoga classes. But originally, it was one teacher and one student, because the teacher has to determine which variation of the pose works for you, given your health.

So even though it’s expensive, it’s better to start one-on-one. Or choose an instructor who walks around and checks on each student individually. And it’s always a good idea to tell your yoga instructor if you have any health conditions. “I had a recent knee surgery or a hip surgery” or “My wrists are not in good condition.” You can still do yoga, just choose a modified pose. I always offer modifications so that you can adapt your practice to suit your health.

And as a beginner, feel free to start slow. Don’t say to yourself, “Oh, everyone else in the class is doing that variation of the pose, so I have to do it, even if my back is hurting.” If you overextend yourself, don’t blame it on yoga.There are lots of poses you can adapt so that you don’t injure yourself.

What are good poses for someone who is in excellent health, like an athlete?

For those who are more in control of their bodies, Vinyasa Yoga or Power Yoga are both good choices. In Power Yoga, you hold a pose for three-four minutes. Imagine holding a tree pose, where you stand erect with your hands on your hips and one foot on your other calf or thigh for three-four minutes! This kind of yoga focuses on balance and strength, In order to balance for an extended period of time, your core muscles need to be strong. If you hold a position, you’ll sweat.

In Vinyasa Yoga, you don’t need to hold one pose for too long. You are flowing through a series of poses which strengthen your arms, your legs, and your core. This type of yoga also builds up endurance.

There are so many different ways to practice yoga! It can build your flexibility and agility along with your strength and balance. And it’s always a process: you set goals for yourself, focusing on what you can do now in order to meet your goals for the future. Figure out what your body is capable of in the moment, and don’t give up because you can’t fully exercise a pose in the moment. If you concentrate on taking yoga one step at a time, focused on your goal, and persist in your practice, you can continue to move forward. That’s a great life lesson as well.

For example, in training myself to do a handstand, I had to start by lifting weights to strengthen my wrists before I could move onto the next step of standing on my hands, leaning against the wall. Now my focus is on standing on my hands in the middle of the room. And once I have accomplished that, I will have another goal, like standing on one hand!

Any parting words for those who have been practicing yoga for a while?

For me, it’s always good to think about what you want to do next, what your next goal is going to be. You never arrive; there’s always something more you can work on. And at the same time, you can look back and see how far you’ve come. You are going against age, and challenging yourself to keep moving forward.

Although I’m aging, I can do things now that I could never do before. For example, when I first started yoga, I couldn’t do a split. And now I can! But it doesn’t just come on its own. It takes years of practice. Nothing in life comes easily, unless you’re lucky or talented. So you have to work for it. But when you reach your goal, that’s bliss. It’s out there.