Hatha yoga's sun and moon sequence is a short, mirrored flow. A student lies on the back, opens into a crescent-moon side bend, rolls over for a backbend turned toward the sun, folds forward, then repeats everything on the other side before finishing in rest. In a seven-minute session filmed for her channel, teacher Annemaree Rowley (Anne-Marie on screen) walks through the practice with a partner named Stephanie, framing the whole thing as a balance of two energies: the hot, active sun and the receptive, cool moon. Those qualities, she says, are present in every person. Her ha-tha framing, her breath cues, and her sequencing choices make the video a compact lesson in how a yoga class can be built on opposites, and why the order of the shapes matters as much as the shapes themselves.
The session starts on the back, feet together, arms lifted overhead on an inhale. Rowley compares the stretch to the one people do on waking, and she asks for long, even breathing before any shape begins. That early-morning image sets the tone for the whole practice: the body is being woken gradually, not pushed.
From there the legs and arms slide together to one side, forming the crescent moon. The cue is specific. Keep the bottom shoulder and bottom hip on the floor, and lengthen out through the opposite side of the body. The point, as she puts it, is "giving the left lung more space to move." The face stays soft, the forehead stays parallel to the ceiling, and the neck and shoulders are invited to release. She also gives a mental instruction that is easy to skip past: keep your thoughts at bay, let the mind calm, let the body soothe.
That is the first of two crescent-moon passes. Each time, the shape is a lateral opening. It widens one side of the ribcage and asks the breath to find room where it has been compressed.
The video does not make a point of its order, but the structure is clear once you watch it through. The sequence moves from the lateral crescent into a backbend, then into a forward fold, then to the other crescent, and then into a second backbend and forward fold before rest. The lateral shape is the one tied to the moon. The backbend is the one tied to the sun.
Rowley makes that link explicit in the middle of the session, after the second crescent. She asks the student to notice the feeling of each shape.
"How does the moon make you feel? Gentle, peaceful, knowing." Then: "How does the sun make you feel? Can you sense building heat in the body?"
(Annemaree Rowley, in her sun and moon session, published on her channel in December 2013)
This is the teaching hiding in plain sight. The moon side is an invitation to cool down and receive. The sun side is an invitation to warm up and move energy. The sequence alternates them so that neither is allowed to run the show. A student who has just felt the cool openness of the crescent is then asked to feel the heat of the backbend, and then to return to the cool of the next crescent.
The video's description states the core idea directly: hatha yoga's postures represent the balancing of solar and lunar energies. It goes on to name the masculine qualities as "active, hot, fiery: the sun," and the feminine qualities as "receptive, intuitive, cool: the moon," and it adds that these characteristics are within us all. In the session, Rowley spells out the same pair of syllables: ha for sun, tha for moon. The practice is not a metaphor she applies afterward. It is the organizing principle of the sequence.
For a practitioner, the useful move is to stop treating the two sides of the sequence as a stretch-and-release routine and start treating them as two states of attention. The crescent asks for receptivity: softness in the face, breath moving into the lung on the open side, the mind allowed to settle. The backbend asks for activity: looking up into the hands, opening through the belly, chest, and throat, and noticing the heat that comes with it. Neither state is better. The session is built so the student meets both in turn.
The most useful instructions in the video are the ones about limits. In the backbend, Rowley asks for straight legs "as straight as possible," a firm belly to support the lower back, and a gentle tilt of the head back with the eyes closed. She is equally direct about the forward fold. The student takes hold of the ankles or feet, straightens the legs out to the side, and draws the chest toward the thighs. Then she adds the sentence that matters most for a student who is tempted to force it: "don't push, just do what you can do."
Her cue for the knees is practical. If the knees need to bend, bend them. The fold is meant to be felt in the back of the lungs, which she describes as the breath being pushed into the back of the lung. You do not get there by pulling harder. You get there by breathing into a shape that already fits.
The transition cues are also worth following closely. Before each side changes, the student bends the knees back into the chest and rolls over, then straightens the legs on the floor. The sequence never asks for a dramatic change of position without first returning to the spine on the floor. That return is a small reset, and it is part of why the practice feels balanced rather than abrupt.
Partway through the backbend, Rowley asks the student to reflect on heat. Her language is ritual rather than anatomical: fire, she says, destroys but also purifies, and it is the precursor to transformation and regeneration. She adds the image of a morning waiting to open inside the student, ready to burst into light. Whatever a viewer makes of that language, the function is clear. The heat of the sun side is not framed as a workout. It is framed as the first step in a change.
The session closes with a deliberate return to stillness. After the final forward fold, the student comes out gently, bends the knees, rolls onto the back, and rests in shavasana. The video ends on the word rest. That placement is the teaching: the sun and moon work is a means of moving between states, and the final state is the one where neither heat nor cool is being asked for.
The clip is brief, and it was posted in December 2013 with a modest view count. Its value is not in novelty. It is in the clarity of a single, well-sequenced idea. A student who works with the sun and moon sequence learns three things at once: how to alternate lateral and backward openings, how to pay attention to the feeling of heat versus cool, and how to let the breath do the work the body cannot yet do. Those lessons carry into any practice that uses opposing shapes.
Watch the session once to see the full sequence, then try it with a slow, even breath and no goal beyond finishing each side. Keep the lateral crescent as the place of softness and the backbend as the place of warmth, and notice which one you are tempted to rush. If a shape asks you to push, follow Rowley's own instruction and do only what you can. Then return to rest. The video is short, but the practice it teaches is a complete lesson in balance: hold both states, feel each one fully, and let neither take over.
