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Summer Solstice Ceremonies and Yoga

Updated: Jun 18


Origins of Summer Solstice Celebrations


In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice marks the point when the North Pole is at its closest tilt to the sun and is therefore consequently on the longest day of the year. The Solstice itself takes place at exactly 9.24am on Sunday 21st June 2026 this year.


We can look throughout history and across continents to all the different religious celebrations and cultural festivities that took place on this day such as honouring gods, praying for more sun, praying for a good crop, and honouring gods for the coming of rain and rich soil. Most of the celebrations involved lighting bonfires and often jumping over them to bless crops, livestock or fertility. In the UK our many neolithic stone circles are suspected to have been built for Solstice ceremonies, although no written record remains of what they were for. It has been observed that they often appear to have been aligned with the sun's movements around summer and winter solstices.


You can read in more detail about that in a National Geographic article here.


The particular types of customs and the reasons for partaking in them are often a reflection of a particular society in a certain place and time but we could equally say that we simply enjoy gathering together, lighting a fire and watching either the sunrise or the sunset and when better than at the height of summer? Although when you live in Scotland, the odds of a long sunny day definitely diminish.


These days, it often coincides with practising yoga outside and sometimes doing 108 sun salutations.


International Day of Yoga


The practice of doing yoga outside and in a group setting on the Summer Solstice began as part of an International Day of Yoga suggested by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi that was adopted by the United Nations in 2014 and practised on 21 June 2015, around the world including in New York, Paris, Beijing, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul and New Delhi. However, Modi and his cited 35,000 participants at New Delhi did not practice Surya Namaskar at all to avoid religious divisiveness and to make the practice more accessible. They practiced The official Common Yoga Protocol (CYP), designed by India's Ministry of AYUSH, a simplified, health focused routine with loosening stretches, yoga postures, breathing exercises, meditation and finishing with a sankalpa.


Many people who practice yoga choose not to engage in International Yoga Day because of concerns raised by critics and Muslim organisations in India that Modi and his government are using yoga to promote Hindu nationalism, calling it a Hindu religious practice and therefore not secular. There are several articles listed below if you want to read about that.


108 Sun Salutations


Doing 108 sun salutations in large groups around the world was popularised by Californian yoga teacher Shiva Rea who describes herself as "A Global Movement & Yoga teacher". In 2007, she organised a Global Mala for Peace for the International Day of Peace on 21st September, where she envisioned "a mala around the earth" and encouraged people around the world to practice 108 sun salutations and donate the proceeds to vetted international organisations focused on health and climate such as Trees for the Future. While she still holds retreats and events at seasonal solstices, her activism and fundraising are not directly associated with these events. Many yoga studios continue to arrange 108 sun salutations events - some for charity, some commercial.



Why 108?


The association with 108 and yoga originated from the Indian Vedas and on the sacred significance Indian scholars placed on 108 for its mathematical properties such as the calculation using trigonometry to determine that the distance between the Earth and the Sun is roughly 108 times the Sun's own diameter, that is is a hyperfactorial of 3, and a Harshad number (and a whole lot more sums and calculations that I can't get my head into - but click here for Wikipedia explanations of these numbers and more).


It's likely that this was then spread along with other teachings from the scriptures from India via the Vedas to Tibet, China, Japan and the rest of the world and then humans did what humans do, and started seeing the number everywhere and using it in stories.


108s

  • there are 108 beads in a mala bracelet used to recite mantras during meditation

  • there are 108 Vedic Texts in the Upanishads

  • The Kangyur (the official, historical Tibetan Buddhist canon) is traditionally compiled into exactly 108 volumes

  • the Sanskrit alphabet has 108 spoken frequencies

  • the number 108 appears in the design and architecture of ancient Vedic fire altars described in the Rig Veda

  • in Homer's the Odyssey there are 108 suitors for his wife Penelope

  • there are 108 stitches on a regulation baseball


Whether all of that means anything is beyond me - both the maths and the spiritual significance. But it's probably a bit like blue cars and the frequency illusion - once it's on your mind, you're going to see it everywhere.


I've done it a few times and definitely enjoy not only the physical challenge, but the endocannabinoid response from a long bout of medium intensity exercise - often talked about in terms of a "runners high". I also enjoy practising yoga in a group for all the reasons listed below.


Ceremony and community


Why do we and why should we perform rituals and ceremonies?


My own personal opinion is that we have lost some valuable things from religious practices in a mostly secular society, but we have also shed some habits that are not so great - like fleshy offerings to the Gods and blindly following doctrine. Connection, community and ceremony are a few things that have been somewhat lost, and that people are trying to bring back through these types of events.


Collective Effervescence


Emile Durkheim, a French Sociologist demonstrated in his work that there is a collective effervescence that comes about when people get together and do something in unison. He was studying totemism (a system of belief in which humans are said to have kinship or a mystical relationship with a spirit-being, such as an animal or plant) among Australian Aboriginal tribes in the 1920s. He wanted to know what held certain societies together and concluded that chanting together, making the same movements and focusing on the same thing brought about this collective effervescence or to use his own words "a kind of social electricity".


In a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of collective effervescence outcomes during collective gatherings and demonstrations, submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology, the authors reviewed and measured "the conceptions of Collective Effervescence (CE) - a state of intense shared emotional activation and sense of unison that emerges during instances of collective behaviour, like demonstrations, rituals, ceremonies, celebrations, and others."


What they found was that when people come together, pay attention to the same thing, act in unison (chanting, singing, dancing, gesturing, protesting) it produces a bunch of effects that are described as self-transcendent (a category of positive emotions — compassion, awe, gratitude, appreciation, inspiration, admiration, elevation, and love as cited in this paper by Jonathon Haidt) . They concluded that this happens whether religion is involved or not, and they studied the responses at a wide variety of events around the world (some of the reviewed events included scouting events, Rock Ness Music Festival, protests and meditation plus mindful movement).


We all kind of know that when we get together and sing or dance together, we feel connection - to ourselves, to our environment and to each other. It increases our self-esteem, our feelings of purpose and connection.


Practising together in a yoga asana class is a modern way of us coming together in community and performing something ceremonially. It doesn't need to have a religious basis for it to give us this feeling of exuberance. Is it really so bad to do it just because as human beings it helps us to feel connected and at ease with each other - perhaps more so than when we talk to each other? We give up all the bullshit chatter our ego minds distract us with and we just move and breathe together.


That said I think it is important that we keep reminding ourselves where these practices came from, and do a little bit of research into their historical roots so that we don't create untrue stories about what we're doing and why. Whether over eons of time that is possible, I'm not sure - but then that would make us question history altogether and I'm not going down that rabbit hole.


All this to say, we (Sonja and Vhairi) are holding an event Saturday 20th June at 8pm at Ayr Beach where we'll be meditating, yoga-asaning and having tea around a fire. With the sound of the waves, the summer sun setting and nature all around us. Simply being with each other and our gorgeous earth and appreciating it all. If you want to join us, let us know you're coming - https://fb.me/e/5I8MtARvz


You can come for free, or make a donation to AuDHD UK here -- http://buy.stripe.com/9B68wQd9K0sm4wY2pZfrW00



Resources used for this blog:

  • (the list below)

  • Research assistance: background research for this post, including locating sources and summarising academic papers, was carried out with the help of Claude (Anthropic), an AI assistant. The blog was written in my own words.



Scottish and UK summer solstice history

Global solstice traditions

International Yoga Day

Sun salutations and 108 sun salutations

Ritual theory (Durkheim, Turner, secular ritual)

Collective effervescence meta-analysis

Self-transcendent emotions

  • Haidt, J., & Morris, J. P. (2009). "Finding the self in self-transcendent emotions." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(19), 7687–7688. https://www.pnas.org/content/106/19/7687

  • Stellar, J. E., Gordon, A. M., Piff, P. K., Cordaro, D., Anderson, C. L., Bai, Y., Maruskin, L. A., & Keltner, D. (2017). "Self-Transcendent Emotions and Their Social Functions: Compassion, Gratitude, and Awe Bind Us to Others Through Prosociality."

  • Yaden, D. B., Haidt, J., Hood, R. W., Vago, D. R., & Newberg, A. B. (2017). "The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience." — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1037/gpr0000102











 
 
 

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