Honoring the Spring Equinox

I can still remember my first experience completing 108 Sun Salutations for the spring equinox. The ritual takes nearly three hours, and at times feels like a marathon that may never end. But somewhere inside the repetition, the practice becomes a moving prayer.

It feels like you’re offering your body to the turning of the seasons, honoring the sun, and bowing to the constant transitions of life. Breath and movement swing like a pendulum until suddenly you reach the final salutation. What follows is a wave of accomplishment and euphoria—a sense that something inside has been revealed. This is prana, our life force, rising to the surface and reminding us that renewal is always possible.

The spring equinox, which lands on Friday, March 20, announces a sacred pause, a seasonal moment in time to honor transition. Spring has long been associated with renewal, and in yoga, it also aligns with saucha, the first of the Niyamas. Saucha means purity, cleanliness, and clarity—not only of body and space, but of thoughts, habits, and energetic pathways. Just as we clear our homes of winter’s dust, we’re called to cleanse our inner landscape: the mental clutter, emotional residue, and outdated patterns that weigh us down.

Practicing 108 Sun Salutations at the equinox becomes a kind of internal spring cleaning. Every inhale and exhale scrubs the inner walls of the lungs. Every fold and rise rinses the spine. Every repetition is a reminder: you are shedding the old, making space for the new. It’s a ritual that builds heat, breaks stagnation, and clears energetic debris that accumulates through months of stillness. But perhaps even more importantly, completing 108 repetitions acts as a pattern interrupter—a way of snapping us out of our automatic habits. Moving through something intentionally challenging, rhythmic, and repetitive rewires the mind. It pulls us into presence, devotion, and discipline, reminding us that transformation often requires a threshold moment.

While I highly recommend some variation on the 108, it’s true too that the equinox doesn’t demand grand physical gestures. Simple rituals like lighting a candle, journaling intentions, cleansing your space, or stepping barefoot onto the earth are also enough.

This is your reminder that spring isn’t just arriving outside— it’s arriving within you, too.