Yoga Sequencing Mistakes: 5 Fixes for Better Class Planning | Yoga Teaching Tips & Techniques #44

Transcript

as teachers we all want to create compelling effective enjoyable sequences and a lot of times we don't know where to begin and in a way even worse we get overwhelmed the truth is we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and we have so many different possibilities when it comes to creating sequences that we can freeze up or just not completely trust our choices in this conversation I'm going to share with you the five most effective ways to stop being so overwhelmed to refine focus and develop good yoga sequences and for you personally to have more confidence and more joy in your experience of teaching yoga my name is Jason crle I've been a highly respected yoga teacher for over 25 years and I have always specialized in helping teachers become more skillful and confident in their sequencing I've created the most comprehensive online sequencing course that's a available if you're interested you can find all the information at the link below without question the first thing to do is to implement a consistent sequencing structure implementing a consistent sequencing structure is going to reduce an incredible amount of burnout indecision overwhelm and fatigue it's also everybody going to give your students a more consistent learning environment so that they can grow and Thrive by implementing this structure and I'm going to show you an example you're still going to retain an incredible amount of creative freedom and the ability to be spontaneous in really simple terms we are going to have a placeholder we're going to have a specific place for all of our posture groups and that's not going to waver so that macro structure of where the posture groups sit in relationship to each other is not going to change but but we're going to maintain creativity and spontaneity over the individual poses and the pose combinations the pose flows within those groups let's look quickly at what I call my master sequencing template we begin with what I call the preparations in the Preparatory phase of class we're just beginning to warm up and prepare the body and mind and we're starting to introduce whatever we're going to focus on in class today following preparations we have sun salutations now this could be any sun salutation it could be any combination of sun citations the duration of this segment of class is entirely up to you you might be teaching a all levels haa class so you might just do a couple of Sunsations to get the body warm you might be teaching a more aanga or power flow based class in which case maybe you're going to do many more sun salutations ations with more complicated and demanding components to them but we're always going to have sun salutations following preparations third we flow from Sunsations into Sunsations plus standing poses and essentially what I mean by this is we maintain the sun salutation component so some sort of lunge base or jump back chaturanga up dog down dog Bas sascar but this is where also start to layer in our standing poses and our standing pose flows now this phase is going to blend into the next salutations plus arm balances now listen not every posture or posture group has to be included in your classes when we look at this master sequencing template we're essentially providing a placeholder for everything but you might not be including everything in your class so you might be teaching teaching classes and not including arm balances but if you're going to include an arm balance this is where we're going to put them if you're going to include several arm balances this is what where we're going to include them I also want to note that for many people including myself when we get to an arm balance phase of class sometimes this is where we actually like to drop the sun salutation flow bits because maybe we want to have class be a little bit more workshopy at this phase maybe we want to break break down Bosa or we want to break down side Crow so I have it as Sunsations plus arm balances in the spirit of keeping continuity and Rhythm and movement but you might shift you might at this phase kind of break Tempo and just do deeper more specific arm balance work following our arm balances we have back bends now there is a massive range of back bends we have face down back bends we have kneeling back bends we have reclined back bends we have inverted back bends right we have many different subcategories that in other contexts we can go into more deeply but the point is this is where we start to layer in back bends also including specific preps so maybe everybody at this phase you decide well before you do back bends you want to open the hip flexors and quads with low lunge quad stretch or a version of pigeon pose or reach back and catch that back foot of course maybe you want to do a little bit more targeted shoulder opening maybe you want to sit down and have people do gasana and fingers interlace behind the back so when we say back bends I'm keeping that very Broad and very open-ended remember you have a lot of creative possibilities but we just know this is now the period of class where we're incorporating this work following our back bends I always prefer to have a short phase a minute or two to of just being in a neutral spine pose and so this is a little bit quirky but I tend to want to kind of put the fork down after I've gotten all the way to this point like everything up to here I've been working hard I've been working my students pretty hard so I always love this just moment of being still and being present after our back bends and a neutral spine pose and typically what I do for that is if I have just done reclined back bends like upward bow just lay the back knees bent feet on the floor for a minute if I've done finished back bends with camel pose or kneeling based back bends I might just do a minute of seated meditation before transitioning on if I've done if I've completed back bends with more face down work like like Locust or Cobra or bow then I might do down dog or I might just lay face down rest the forehead and take a couple couple of deep breaths now we segue into forward bends and twists now to be honest with you it doesn't matter to me whether it's forward bends then twist twist then forward bends but these are the two categories that we want to work on and forward bends also include hip openers like seated hip openers forward bends tend to emphasize hamstring lengthening or outer hip lengthening or inner thigh lengthening depending on the posture but the point is at this phase in the forward bend phase we're doing seated calming slower quieter deeper poses where we're turning inwards and in this and in the twisting phase similar in the twist we're now doing seated postures simple twists you could even do complicated twists depending on the level but here's where we're going to layer in our seated twists and our seated side bends as a very quick side note I don't typically teach inversions in public classes the layers of this conversation would take us another long conversation so let me just say this if I were going to incorporate and sometimes I do inversions into this master sequencing template I would most likely put shoulder stand after the back bends I would most likely put handstand forearm balance and headstand before the back bends okay there are other ways that we could do it and I'm going to leave this to your Innovation preference and discretion the next essential key to minimizing sequencing overwhelm and for many of you this is going to be a little bit scary but is to embrace consistency we can Embrace what I refer to as the 8020 or the 730 rule it's very difficult to learn anything without repetition and consistency and I know as yoga teachers we're afraid to bore our students and we want to be new and different in novel of course but if we are always changing our sequences if we're always being random if we don't have continuity in what we're trying to teach our students our students are not going to develop nearly as much they're going to Plateau more quickly and us as teachers we're going to start to burn out and we're going to just start to sequence in ways that don't really make sense so what I want to suggest and there are many different ways to be more creative but I want to suggest a simple way that we can Implement greater consistency without losing creativity without losing spontaneity and the simple rule like I said 8020 7030 is this class over class we keep about 80 to 70% of the class the same and 30 to 20% we change I'm going to give you a really simple example that honestly I've just taught over the last two weeks so in the last two weeks I've been teaching classes using the master sequencing template as always but my focus has been really on three different things my focus has been on increasing our active range of motion in twists so layman's terms just increasing our twists developing the shoulder work that prepares for binds and opening the outer hips so those these are have been the three focal points and we'll talk about that in an upcoming tip but what I did in week one was when that we were doing our preparations I did a little bit more strong core strengthening we kind of warmed up a little bit more kind of a Little Bit Stronger core strengthening and then I did very very modest outer hip and shoulder preparation then in our sun salutations we just did four straightforward forward lunge salutations and then when we are doing our standing poses plus sun salutations phase again keeping in mind we're focused on twists shoulders and outer hips I had my students do high lunge twice I had my students do low lunge twice I had my students do revolve triangle pose let's pause the next week I essentially did the exact same Focus the next week I focused on same components twists shoulders hips specifically twists shoulder bind preparation in outer hip work so it was the same focal point so that was consistent when we were doing the preparations though in the second week we didn't really do any intense core stuff like we did the first week we had a little bit softer slower quieter shoulder and hip preparation so it was the same ingredient are the same components but there is a little bit of variability then when we got to the sun salutations I talk completely different sun salutations instead of teaching six low lunge salutations I taught two high lunge two low lunge and two sascar a then when we got to the standing poses I taught the exact same progression I taught the exact same progression as the first week of those twists so the point that I want to to kind of get here and then I I'll walk you a little further along is week over week we had consistency of focal points it wasn't random similarly we had some preparations that were the same we still the sun salutations but the sun salutations week over week they were completely different and then week over week in these two weeks we did the exact same standing pose flow so again we see about 80 to 70% of these two weeks was the same but about 20 to 30% we just kind of did the same focal points in different ways I'm going to continue telling you just a little bit more about this class and then I I think we'll get the point so then when we got a little bit further into class the first week the week that we had focused even more early on on the core strength component of twists I included twisting arm balance bces I broke down and included side Crow or side crane par bakasana I also broke down eapa kundas 2 so an arm balance with a Twist and then we also did um ashava eight crooked points pose which is another twisting arm balance so that first week and again I don't want you to think about what it was the first week second week it doesn't it doesn't really matter the point is how to be consistent while also bringing some freshness so that first week we did a little bit longer increments of arm balances twisting arm balances and then the second week we only came back and did one that second week we only did par vasana now I could have very easily like in switch those I could have very easily inverted those but really the point here is we still had twisting arm balances some were the same parosa some were different now continue on in kind of wrapping up this component when we got to the seated twists we did the exact same seated twists we did four of them arasi andr one artomi andr 2 uh Bahar vasana um and then we did a variation of Mari chasa 3 again the the the actual poses are not quite as important but in the first week and in the second week we did the exact same same twist progression so this is just a simple example of how to maintain consistency we had the same focal points for two weeks in a row we had some of the exact same progressions for two weeks in a row and then we also kind of played around with maintaining the same focal points in the same themes but kind of having different intensity and including different poses also so if you just keep this one thing in mind you want to create greater consistency you want to also maintain novelty newness freshness liveliness how do we do this about 80 to 70% of the things week over week keep them about the same and then 20 to 30% add a little freshness and newness the third key is to always include one one two maybe even three focal points in every single class now I just gave you an example of this we just looked at three focal points that I included in class but there are many different ways that we can do this and I'm going to break them down but before I do that I want to make two acknowledgements number one I think in the long run any given class it doesn't matter so much but generally speaking in the long run classes without without focal points without specific themes whether they're philosophical mental emotional or physical which we'll talk about momentarily classes without specific focal points or themes they're a little unmowed they're a little bit ungrounded they're a little bit untethered what we what we can really focus on when we teach yoga for me is two things whenever I sequence a class everybody I have honestly there are two things I want to do when I walk into that class number one help people feel better in their body and mind okay number two I want to teach them one or two things the way that I think about this and the way that I really work in depth with teachers to build this skill is I really think about there are three primary different categories of themes or three primary different Cate ories of focal points that we can help our students learn and grow in we can focus on physical development we can focus on mental or emotional development and we can focus on philosophical themes let's take a moment and break down each one of those categories a little bit further when we're focused on physical attributes or skills or developments physical focal points we can break that into three parts we can can focus on Peak poses so postural development we can focus number two on a region of the body number three we can focus on specific techniques and skills in addition to physical focal points that we might want to focus our sequence around we also have mental or emotional focal points mental or emotional attributes okay I can almost guarantee that the vast majority of you that are joining me for this conversation like physical stuff you respect physical stuff you're learning and you're teaching physical stuff but in your experience of yoga practice and in your experience of what you want to teach people it's not just completely limited to physical stuff so many of our deep underlying motivational reasons to practice and to teach are because these because this practice has touched us in a really human way it's helped us be a little bit more compassionate towards oursel it's helped us be a little bit more patient with oursel it's helped us see maybe our mental and emotional volatility or rigidity maybe your yoga practice has helped ease some sadness or it's ease some anxiety or it's helped you sleep right any number of human things that aren't just about what to do in parasa or how to stretch the hip flexors and quads in your back penss okay so what we can do is we can walk into a class and we can really think to ourselves you know what I want to focus on I want to give a a good allaround practice but I want to talk to my students just a little bit more about quieting their mind and noticing their um their negative selft talk so so really the focus is going to be everybody quieting the mind and witnessing negative selft talk if it arises finally along very similar lines we might anchor a practice in overt yoga philosophy something that overtly comes from the yoga tradition often times the simplest and and continuously effective Source material to incorporate is to work with some of the concepts of the yamas and the nas whether it's a paraga a HSA a sta anything for you personally if the yoga Sutra resonates with you the yamas and the yamas they're kind of endless the endless sources of reflection for us to step back and ask ourselves okay hey is greediness something that I need to work with in my practice or minimizing my own hoarding or greediness or my own attachment right and if so when does that come out for me right does that come out for me in my forward bends does that come out for me in my arm balances how does this actually present itself on the map for me and and can we build a class around this the fourth tip simplify and declutter your sequences everybody I think about this all the time teaching yoga and seeing sequences and I honestly think especially in Flow Yoga especially in like modern contemporary Flow Yoga there's too much going on part of the reason part of the reason a lot of students resonate with my classes is because things Stand Out lessons are taken classes are balanced and they feel good but there's a focal point I don't try to stuff too much in and everybody for a very long period of time as a teacher especially when I lacked confidence I just threw everything in everything in because I I just kind of I thought to myself oh I just want to put more and more and more stuff so we would do standing pose flows and combinations where it's like pose after pose after pose after pose 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 poses on one side sometimes that is fun but it's a little bit everybody going back to a food going back to a food analogy it's a little bit like going to a buffet and going to a buffet is fine once in a while but you go to a buffet and you just kind of like put everything in and everything in everything on your plate and then what do you remember about the meal usually like that you ate too much and that's again in the short term that's satisfying but when you over accessorize when you put too many poses in a sequence and too many poses in a flow the integrity and the quality of each thing starts to break down it's everything starts to get cluttered so how do we do this number one I I don't think there's a hard and fast rule as to how many poses in a row or how many poses to put in a sequence but I'm going to go over just one thing which is standing pose flows and I want you to think about one simple technique for simplifying and decluttering so my simple example on this everybody is let's say you have nine standing poses don't do them in a row do three in a row a row and then chaturanga up dog down dog then other side chaturanga up dog down dog then do three more in a row and so on so put so so you don't even necessarily have to do fewer poses although you can and I'll address that briefly in a moment but break them up the second thing that we can do everybody honestly do fewer things and and stay longer even in a flow and I know this isn't always everyone's preference but most people most of the time especially in the context of yoga don't need to be overwhelmed by volume and speed let them slow down a little bit let them develop the pose so instead of every pose being you know doing more poses for one breath or two breaths do fewer poses go deeper stay longer say three four five six breaths in a pose a little bit more breaking of the things up and then each individual posture that you do is going to have greater depth to it that's the final thing I said I'll say if I do nine things in a row I'm making up the number nine by the way but if I do too many things in a row not only is the skill likely to go be able to go down but then I just start to use momentum I'm a little bit more fatigued state I'm using a little bit more momentum and I'm not going to go that deep because I'm not going to notice any of the details and if we don't have some time for depth and details even in a flow we're kind of doing driveby postures right and so so you are going to have to take this in but but everybody here's the good thing you you don't need to feel anymore like you have to overwhelm your students with countless like with like consistently coming up with countless poses to like slap together make it simple make it simple go a little deeper stay a little bit longer and Savor the time that you're actually in the posture final tip probably the most important one or at least everybody the one that is least technical of all the tips and most most just up to you okay and this final tip is teach the class that you want to practice own it so often as yoga teachers we try to an anticipate what our students want and of course we want to be engaged and attentive and responsive of course I don't want to teach a class that is just like my Soliloquy uh on the world I I want to know what my students want and and I want to read that but everybody I can almost guarantee you and I know you know this deep down you know this if you have two people in class you have two people that probably want different things when we're teaching groups it is virtually impossible to anticipate everybody's needs everybody's desires and everybody's preferences so always be kind be inclusive be engaging all of those things but understand that in terms of the actual sequencing you will never anticipate or create the perfect sequence for everyone in that room ever there's going to be some people that wanted a little faster some people that want a little bit slower some people that want it more intense some people that want it less intense there's going to be some people that want a little bit more technique there's going to be some people that want less technique okay so instead of instead of putting yourself through the constant stress an unrelenting pressure of creating a class that you think everyone else is going to like create the class you like at least one person will like class if you create the class that you like right when you create the class that you like a lot of people are going to like it because you're naturally going to have shared interests but also everybody when you create the class that you want to take I say this to my students all the time right like as the teacher of the class I should almost make myself jealous from time to time I should almost make myself jealous that I want to be in this pose right now I want to be doing this this oh I was doing this earlier this felt so good not to put more pressure on you but when you're teaching the class that you want to be in you're going to be excited about it when people are into what they're into it's infectious right and when a teacher is is excited about a class and when a teacher when you are teaching class and it's not just coming from here but it's coming from here like it's coming from your lived experience like you like this thing and you want to share this thing and you like this pace and you like this intensity it's infectious there there is just this genuiness that comes through if you are sharing something that matters to you and that you would like to be doing right now there's going to be an audience for it okay a 100% all of the webinars that I do all of the classes that I teach the podcasts that Andrew and I do the teachers companion that I want to do the first consideration in 100% of the content I create is is am I interested like everything that I share with you including this conversation are things I'm genuinely interested in they're things I want to pass along to you so take that into your sequences and a big part of this everybody is trusting yourself and and even more than trusting yourself it's trusting that you your well let's let's limit it to this we'll limit the scope it's trusting that your experience of yoga is valid and that it's shared that your experience of how to prepare best for your back bends or how to prepare best for your forward bends or the kind of combinations that you like to do it's valid it's your preference it's valid when you when you kind of Center the sequence around something you really enjoy and feel good about and want to do and share and then tweak it as you see fit modify it as you see relevant to the people that are in the room I can't think of a single better protocol to work with the focus of this conversation everybody is managing sequencing overwhelm so let me wrap by saying this pick just one of those five things to work on you you don't have to do everything all at once so if any one of those last five tips feels particularly resonant to you and more immediate and applicable just start there right again you don't have to do everything all at once you don't have to be everything for everyone no one is just do your best focus on whatever one of these things comes to mind and as you do that take your existing sequencing process and protocol and just begin to hone in on that one technique right just begin to utilize take take what you already have and what you're already doing and step with start with one stage AG of refinement and minimizing your your sense of getting overwhelmed with developing sequences like I said at the beginning teaching sequencing to teachers is an absolute passion of mine it's it's my favorite subset skill that I love to teach as a yoga teacher those of you that want to go deeper with me on this subject I have Standalone course the art of yoga sequencing you can join me for that similarly sequencing is an integral part of my Advanced teacher training program my 300 hour program it's in so many ways my 300 hour program is really built around sequencing okay so if that resonates with you I would love to work with you in these environments otherwise I genuinely hope that this conversation sets up even if it's just one thing from this conversation that you can take and run with and feel more grounded and comfortable and and confident um then I'm happy about that okay everybody thanks a ton and I will uh hope to see you again soon