Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign hello and welcome back to Deep in your practice. I'm your host, Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga in Kansas City, Missouri. I'm also our lead yoga teacher trainer for our yoga teacher training. And this episode is especially for teachers out there. But if you're not a teacher and you're a student, this is kind of like pulling back the veil a little bit. You might understand why some things a teacher offers in class feel really great and some might feel a little bit off. So today is all about sequencing, particularly in Vinyasa yoga. But these tips could apply to other styles of yoga, especially ones that are a bit more dynamic. Before yoga teacher training, I didn't really know anything about sequencing in Vinyasa yoga. Frankly, it wasn't really something I thought about that much as a student. I came to class, somebody told me what to do, and I was pretty happy with that. But I did notice that some classes I would leave feeling better than others. I would also notice that some classes, even though they offered the same posture or postures, that I was more easily able to obtain it in specific classes than others. I didn't know why, but as we go through these five sequencing tips today, it might start to make a little more sense. In my opinion, thoughtful sequencing can really enhance the student experience and make classes feel really balanced and engaging and transformational for students. And as a teacher, having sequencing rules, no matter how creative we are within them, can give us a really strong an effective roadmap for teaching classes and frankly, make it easier to plan our classes as well. So today I'll talk about five essential tips for designing effective and creative sequencing for yoga classes. Tip number one is to follow a bell curve. So you might remember bell curves from math class, but essentially it's a graph where the line starts low, it starts to curve upward and peaks at the top and then curve back downwards so it kind of looks like a bell, like the Liberty Bell, for instance. So when we follow a bell curve in yoga sequencing, that means that the class starts slow and grounded, and then it starts to build energy and intensity. It peaks at a certain point and then it gradually winds down to a state of relaxation. And oftentimes we start on the floor, end up standing, and end up back on the floor for savasana and closing out class. This structure is really effective because it supports this really natural progression of energy and it prepares the body and mind safely and winds it down. So yes, we might ramp things up during the meat of the class, but we're also going to bring students back down so they leave feeling really calm and centered. So breaking down this bell curve a little bit. At the beginning of class, we're focusing on grounding. So that might be some visualization, some breath work, body scanning, really bringing people to the here and now and warming up. And that includes gentle stretches. I won't get too deep into what the warmups I lead in my teacher training entail, but we do move the spine in different directions and just make sure all the joints are lubricated and the muscles are prepared and ready for what's to come. In class during the middle, we would offer things like sun salutations to get even warmer. So we're traveling up that curve and then flows that face the front of the mat and the side of the mat. For beginner teachers, I really keep those pretty separate. And then for more advanced teachers, we start to maybe mix those together in our sequencing in really intelligent ways. That also might mean standing balances, that might mean inversions, maybe even some ab work and peak poses, which I'll get to what that means later. And then as we take the bell curve down, we're looking at backbends, back bend releases, cool down postures. So like deep, passive, low to the ground stretches and Shavasana and different rituals that we use to close the class as well. So that's what the bell curve looks like. That's the journey we're taking through the class. And as we're applying this bell curve, timing is super important. We want to make sure that we allocate enough time for each phase of this bell curve so that we're not flowing like 55 minutes into a 60 minute class and think, oh crap, I've got to do Shavasana now. I've been there as a teacher. It can be the flows can be so fun and the energies going. But we do need to make sure that we give our students what they need to finish out class. So in my teacher training, we really break down how much time to spend in each of these sections of class. But for today, just keep in mind that this bell curve exists and it works really wonderfully. I've been using it now for my 11 years of teaching and I plan to continue doing so. Tip two is to incorporate theming into a class. Theming matters. It creates intention and meaning behind a physical practice. And there so many different kinds of themes you can have. When it comes to teaching yoga. I think it's really important that the theme resonates with you so you might look at your own Sadhana or your own personal practice and pull from that so that you're teaching from a really authentic place. For some people, pulling from the philosophy is going to feel authentic and good, or maybe stretch you just a little bit beyond your comfort zone, but in a way that feels authentic to you. For some people, we might be really anatomy focused, and for some of us, we like to change and mix things. Things up. So, and that's me. I like sometimes I'm super physical and sometimes I'm pulling from something a little bit more ethereal and then building that into a concrete class. So there are so many different kinds of intentions. I just gave a couple categories. But things like gratitude, courage, letting go, seasonal themes are really important times of day. Really, just taking into account where we are, what's going on, and how we can best support that, whether that's through the season's time of day, through what's going on in the world, et cetera, can really be helpful when determining what you're teaching. I like to incorporate a theme by introducing it at the class opening. It might be like a really quick sentence or two. It might be a short story, maybe a quote, maybe it's during the intention setting time. And then maybe we're kind of planting little seeds throughout the class so it will physically show up through the sequencing. But we also might use verbal cueing to bring students back to this theme or this intention. Not in a way that's like hitting their head over and over with it, but in a way, again, that's just planting little seeds throughout the practice to keep it really focused and intentional. So, for example, say your class is about courage. It might include really strong standing poses like warrior one or two, maybe some arm balances, maybe heart openers. And maybe trying something that requires a little bravery but is, you know, low stakes because this is yoga. Like maybe we try closing the eyes in tree pose or something like that. Something that gets people a little bit out of their comfort, comfort zone while still being aware of their personal needs. So that's incorporating a theme into a class. As teachers, you can do a different theme every single class. Or you can think of a curriculum for the month, for the quarter, for the year to tether your classes to which I find really helpful when you're class planning so that you're not just pulling things out of thin air. Instead, you're following this tract. I don't actually have a strong curriculum this year because I. I have a few things in the works. So I'm kind of experimenting through my teaching this year for something I'm doing next year. Sorry, I know that's really vague, but last year, for instance, it was completely tied to Ayurveda. So all of my classes were linked to the seasons, and that's how I was choosing my sequencing to help balance out the doshas. So, next tip tip three is work toward a peak pose. So what is a peak pose? It's typically a challenging posture toward the peak of the bell curve that requires some preparation. And I want to be really clear when I say this that there's not a hierarchy of yoga poses. Even within a pose, there's a lot of different options, and there's no hierarchy to what's better or worse than the others. But there is maybe some requirement of the amount of preparation, need, the amount of mobility, need the amount of strengthening, need to be able to do something in a specific way. So, for example, we're not going to offer Bird of Paradise in a warmup sequence. It requires, for most people, a lot of preparation. Opening the shoulders, opening and strengthening the hips, finding balance in the body. And we do that through reverse engineering, which I'll talk about in a second. But like I said, we're not doing Bird of Paradise in the middle of class. It's likely going to be more like a peak pose, where we've had time to prepare for it and even to be able to set students up for the different options that would occur during it. Like, if we're offering a strap in place of using a bind, we've pro we're not pulling out the strap for the first time ever in the class and using it in that way. Like, we've already prepped the students to know how to use it for that particular pose, more than likely. So I like to oftentimes choose a peak kind of pose or even a movement sequence and then reverse engineer that. And what I mean is I'm breaking down the anatomical and energetic components of the pose. I just said some. For Bird of Paradise, it requires balance, balance on one leg in particular. It requires a lot of openness through the shoulders in birth, both internal and external, rotation through the bind, and also a lot of opening and strengthening through the hip. So a lot of opening through the adductors, strengthening through the abductors. So I'm going to keep that in mind as I'm sequencing my flows prior to that, so that when it's time to find that shape, it's not the first time that the students have felt those different components in their body. It's really just the first time that we are putting them all together. That way they're really set up for success and hopefully have a lot of options to explore as well. If that particular peak pose, without props, et cetera, isn't quite accessible just yet, or if they're just wanting to explore it in a little bit different way that day. So a few more examples. Using Bird of Paradise in the warmup, we might do some hip openers, like maybe lizard pose. Maybe we're doing like circles with the knee to do more of dynamic hip warmup. I love doing like shoulder flossing with a strap if I know we're going into deep binds and stuff. So taking a strap overhead, pulling it tight, and doing big circles overhead, or taking it in front or behind you, that can be really nice. And then during the sequence, we're likely doing some twists because there's a little twisting that might be involved in getting into Bird of Paradise. We're offering things like Warrior 2, because that is the prep oftentimes to get into Bird of Paradise or even like a wide chair, because that can be the prep to get into Bird of Paradise. We're doing half binds, maybe full binds, maybe there's balancing prep, like half moon, maybe tree pose, things that are on one leg. So those are a few examples of prepping the body for a posture like that. And then in the cool down, I'll keep the peak pose in mind as well. If the peak pose is like a deep twist, for instance, we might want to do some nice side bend ends as a release so they can counter the poses. Or sometimes they can take the peak pose and use some of the same elements so that you might get a little bit deeper into some cool down poses because your body is prepped for them. So there's a couple different approaches there, but that's tip three working toward a peak pose. So now on to tip 4. Tip 4 is creating balance with multiple planes of movement. So we want to move our body really in all different directions and explore our range of motion through a yoga practice. So even if the practice is like super twist focused, that doesn't mean that we don't do any spinal extension or flexion or any side bends or anything like that. We do need to do all of it. So different planes of movement are sagittal, coronal, and transverse. So you can think of the sagittal plane as moving forward and backward. We can think of the coronal plane as moving like laterally, arms out to the side, legs out to the side, and transverse, moving through the transverse Plane is moving through rotation or twists. So we're incorporating all of these into a sequence. So when I am working with my 200 hour trainees, we actually keep the sagittal and coronal planes pretty separate. So we sequence flows in the sagittal, meaning things like warrior one, one leg forward fold, humble warrior, warrior three, things that face the front of the mat. We kind of group those together because we can move between those postures in a really safe way. And then we group coronal poses together. So side facing poses, Warrior 2, Reverse Warrior, Triangle, extended side angle, things like that again, so that you can move safely and elegantly between the postures. We keep them totally separate. And then it's a little more advanced sequencing, like I said earlier, to start combining some of them together within a flow in a really safe way that isn't clunky. And then we can move through the transverse or rotational plane through either of those flows, front, side or side facing. But I think it's important to incorporate all of this within a practice. One, because the spine needs that fluidity of movement. And two, it challenges us to strengthen and create mobility through all of our joints and muscles so that we leave feeling strong, centered, clear. Been to yoga classes before where like we've never done a twist the whole class, or maybe we didn't do a side bend the whole class. And I just feel off. I feel like something's missing because I didn't get to move my body through that particular range of motion. So balancing between these ranges matters a lot because engaging multiple planes of movement ensures this well rounded practice. It reduces repetitive strain in the body and addresses the body in this really holistic way and creates a nice challenge as well. So Last Tip Tip 5 is closing with intention. So this is creating a really strong and ritualistic closing for your class. It's not just finishing Shavasana and saying bye bye or rolling up the. And that during Shavasana, it's really allowing the students to integrate the physical and energetic experience that they just had and then take it into their day. For me, I think of Shavasana like a good night's sleep. So when you're sleeping, your body goes in mind to go through all kinds of processes to integrate your experiences and day and to restore. And Shavasana does a lot of the same thing as far as aiding in your yoga practice and helping to make sure that what you have done becomes a part of you moving forward. And also keep in mind, we have these busy lives. Most of us, we're rushing in to class. Oftentimes, that's why the grounding sequence is so important and we're often rushing to the next thing after class, which is why really closing with intention is so important as well. So thinking about closing, we cool down. So it's this downward slide of the bell curve. We are setting students up for a nice Shavasana, which is at least like 10% of the class. So if it's a 60 minute class, a 6 minute Shavasana is great. And we take a few moments before between Shavasana, between leaving for different things. It's going to be different for each teacher, but it might be expressing gratitude to yourself and others. It might mean coming back to your intention or dedication that you said at the beginning of class and setting an intention to carry that with you off your mat. It might mean sending gratitude and respect to the roots of the practice. Maybe it's chanting Om and then you figure out what your closing is for the class. I'm not going to go too deep into that today. A lot of us have moved away from Namaste Day and use different closings that feel authentic to us. That's something probably for a whole other podcast episode. So just a reminder, five tips for designing effective and creative sequencing. Tip one is to follow the bell curve. Tip two is to incorporate theming. Tip three is to work toward a peak pose. Tip four is to create balance with multiple planes of movement. And tip five is to close with intention. So yoga teachers, I really encourage you to experiment with these tips in your teaching. Definitely let me know how they go. And students maybe start to notice why some things feel really good and why sometimes things feel a little bit off. It might just you might appreciate and respect your yoga teachers even more for being so intentional in the way that they create this experience for you. I think sequencing is both a science and an art and it really evolves over time with your yoga teaching experience, with your creativity. And it's something that we can use as a love letter of creative expression for our clients, for our students, and that keeps teaching interesting and fun and exciting over time. If you are an aspiring yoga teacher, I would love to have you in our 200 hour yoga teacher training at True Love yoga. It starts March 30, 2025. We do one training a year. I'm also working on something extra special for yoga teachers for next year and I would love to otherwise see you in class or upcoming workshops. If you loved this episode, definitely let me know. I' love to do more episodes specifically for yoga teachers. Om Shanti Om. Peace.
