In this episode
Show notes
Common sequencing mistakes trip up almost every new yoga teacher, and Paul dives into the challenge of keeping things simple yet effective.
He stresses the potential dangers of complicated sequences, explaining how they can be hard for students to follow and may increase the risk of injuries. Paul suggests that simpler sequencing not only makes yoga more enjoyable but also ensures it's safer and more beneficial for students.
Drawing parallels to creating music, Paul encourages embracing creativity within simplicity, saying that the essence of a yoga class lies in its ability to connect with students of all levels.
Throughout the conversation, Paul highlights the utmost importance of prioritizing safety and understanding the different needs of students. Ignoring these considerations, he warns, can lead to harmful consequences.
The discussion also touches on the significance of warming up properly before attempting deep backbends, which helps prevent muscle strains and injuries. Paul also emphasizes the need for stability and alignment in flowing sequences, stressing the importance of thoughtful sequencing and body awareness.
Teaching accessible and inclusive yoga classes is a central theme, with Paul advocating for a balanced approach that caters to both beginners and advanced practitioners. He suggests offering modifications for beginners while still allowing room for advanced students to explore safely.
Lastly, the conversation points out common mistakes to avoid in yoga teaching, like transitioning too quickly between poses and not considering the time of day when planning classes. Listeners are encouraged to learn more about these topics in the full episode.
The IN Movement Podcast was formerly the Going Pro Yoga Podcast — and before that, the Yoga Teacher Evolution Podcast and the Rat Race Rebellion Podcast. Same mission, evolved name.
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Teach a really straightforward class with a a lot of great cueing and sophistication. Do some minor modifications here and there, but at at first, especially if you're a newer teacher and your class is like a level one or a level 1-2 class, you do not want to make the class too complicated because then people aren't going to be able to to follow it.
And also, the more complicated your sequencing is, the higher potential there is for a student to get injured. Welcome to the Going Pro Yoga Podcast. If you love yoga. As much as I do then this. Podcast is for you. We talk.
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Welcome back to the Going Pro Yoga podcasts. And today we have Paul with us. Woo Hoo. Hey, Paul, how's it going? Good to be back. Yeah, it's good to have you back. So this is the first episode of a four part series. So this is the first time we're doing this.
We're doing a four part series on mastering, sequencing, yoga sequencing. And Paul is going to start us off with episode one and we're going to talk about the common mistakes and their solutions for yoga sequencing, which is really exciting. Great topic.
Yeah. So sequencing is something that is obviously really important when it comes to teaching yoga. But even if you know your own practice, it's important to some level to know how to prepare your body, I would say. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
So what would you say are the most common mistakes that people have with sequencing? Or the challenges maybe for newer teachers perhaps? Yeah, I would say the most common challenge that a new teacher faces is actually keeping things simple. Because a lot of new teachers will want to do what they can do to try and stand out because like, oh how, how is somebody going to choose my class versus Paul's class or somebody who's been teaching for a long time?
Oh, I need to make my sequencing super creative and super flowy, and I need to to thread all of these all of these poses together 1 by 1 by 1. And to me, that's actually one of the most common mistakes is is with sequencing and with teaching yoga. I always love that quote.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough or there's nothing more sophisticated than simplicity. So teach a really straightforward class with a a lot of great cueing and sophistication. Do some minor modifications here and there.
But at first, especially if you're a newer teacher and your class is like a level one or a level 1-2 class, you do not want to make the class too complicated because then people aren't going to be able to to follow it. And also the more complicated your sequencing is, the higher potential there is for a student to get injured, right?
Yeah. So what would it look like? Just to kind of translate a complicated sequence like, what is that really? Yeah, to me that is that you starting them in down dog and then having them go through like 9-8 or nine poses in a row, like especially like if they're holding everything on one leg and you're not straightening the leg out to to take a breath or breath or two to to relax, that's outright dangerous in my opinion.
So yeah, really just starting them from a if you're doing a vinyasa or power yoga class, starting them into down dog and then you can hold them in some sort of a plank variation with the knee to the chest. You can hold them into like a a little arm balance like a like a like a side plank or something and step them through into a low lunge or a Crescent or a warrior two. Do one or two more poses.
Then either take a break and then take a vinyasa or either take a vinyasa or then take a break and then move do something on the other side and then come back to that. But again, too many poses in a row. First off, it's complicated, which means the beginners aren't going to be able to follow. And one of the most common places where a person might injure themself is actually transitioning from 1 pose to the next and doing that in a way that's not skillful when their body is tired.
Or if you're moving like from an external into A twist or just something that that you and I have always said you should never do, that is dangerous to somebody who has a less experienced body and a less experienced mind.
So keeping this the sequencing straightforward and teaching in a way where the class is inclusive, but then the more advanced people you just give them more sophisticated cues to pay attention to. Yeah. OK. That makes sense.
What do you think about, I would say probably the reason why a lot of people create more complicated sequences is because they want to look like they know what they're doing and they want to look like they're they're good, right?
Because it's like the more complicated, not complicated. They're probably not thinking complicated. They're probably thinking like creative or they're thinking cool. Yeah. Or like, oh, this transition to this transition is so unique.
That makes my class special and therefore it's going to be better and people are going to like it and you know, so on and so forth. So what I'm hearing you say is the complication or that created creativity that, you know, trying to create something. It's almost like trying to recreate the wheel when you know, if you just do simple sequencing and just kind of like hold postures a little bit longer, focus on actually stabilizing the body, it's going
to be more people are going to enjoy it more. They're going to feel better and then when you do flow, it'll probably feel more solid kind of thing, right? Yeah. When I would say to a person like that, exactly, what I would say to a person like that is, is I would have them think of themselves as a musician and spend 10 minutes listening to jazz.
Jazz is extremely complicated, but it's not an accessible form of music to most people. So it would be the same thing with yoga. Like, just because you're able to make something very complicated doesn't mean that it's going to sound good in a person's ears for most people.
And I'm a musician, I really appreciate jazz, and I can I can tell what these musicians are doing when they're. But like, 90% of the people in the world can't comprehend that. So you're teaching to the masses in a in a normal yoga class, most people, you're teaching a rock'n'roll class.
You're teaching, you know, you're teaching pop music. Most of those songs are five or six chords played really well with passion and with some difference in like how loud the music is and then how fast or slow it is. But it takes. Just keep it simple.
That's basically that. That would be my my note. Like, you can be super creative and write something that's simple. Like most of the most beautiful songs ever written are simple songs, but they have a they convey a message that's super powerful.
So your yoga class, your yoga sequence can be that. It's like, I think of it like you're writing a piece of music or you're writing a story and and you want that story to appeal to as many people as possible, right? Which I think is the keyword. There as many people as or key phrase as many people as possible.
Unless the class is listed as Advanced Vinyasa and beginners aren't really welcome, then yeah, go ahead and blow the roof off the place and and do that. If if as long as you tell people like this is a Level 3 class, this is, you know, if you're the type of teacher that does tons of arm balances and inversions, you know, then you can do that and that's fine.
Yeah. Just make sure that it it's advertised as that you know and and you can still make an advanced class, still needs to have safe sequencing and safe transitioning from 1 pose to the next. And I have seen a lot of teachers with really crazy strong practices. They teach classes that just simply aren't safe because they're just trying to show off, right? And that's not cool.
Yeah. Yeah I think that's I mean showing off probably yes, in an ego sense but I think it's more so probably a self worth of being like I I'm trying to show them that I I'm I'm a good teacher by having a long complicated sequence or or maybe the way that they learned was to just piece together you know 56789 poses in a row and it's like oh if I'm in this pose what would what would be cool to go into the next pose would be as opposed to like how do I prepare
the body It's more so. But like what's cool? I would say yes. At least that's what I see. I saw someone yesterday at teaching in the shallow that's literally right across and the rice paddies for me. And I could hear him sequencing and he was just going from pose.
He wasn't even cueing stability. He was just trying to think of ways to go from one cool pose to the next cool pose to the next cool pose. And I was just like the guy was really strong and he was able to handle the sequencing.
But you know, if you do that in a public class, or if you do that to beginners, especially if you're a new teacher because you're usually going to be teaching to newer people, probably family members and friends and stuff like that, they're not going to be able to probably follow that, no.
And like you said before, the transitions, if they're complicated, their body won't be ready to be able to actually support those movements or the. Transitions yeah it's straight up dangerous and and yeah it is it is the perhaps the teacher with the self worth or the there are teachers that have plenty of self worth and they're like I'm going to show off you know like I have this incredible back bend practice and I'm going to get in the middle of the room and I'm gonna show you my scorpion or
I'm gonna show you these arm balances and and that that that people do that as well Let's let's it's it goes both ways you know it's not always from a place of insecurity. It can also be from a place of ego right. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough.
OK, cool. So I have a note here about students needs. So one of the common mistakes is about ignoring student needs of the class or of the room, which yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I would say the best way.
You need to think about people who have bodies that are different than yours. So if we're in our teacher training and and we're going over a sequence, I'll usually tell someone like, hey, partner up with somebody who has a body type that's very different than yours.
So if you're like a a short. Very flexible. Woman, partner with the tall, most strong, muscular, but tight man, you know, or do you find somebody with a body type that's different than yours and teach the sequence to that person?
And you're going to learn so much about, like, how those poses feel for certain people, and certain people need the body to be significantly warmer than others. And you know, I'm 43 years old now and I don't have, you know, luckily I don't have any major injuries.
My body does need to be warmed up more than it used to like 10-15 years ago. So I can still do most of the poses that I could do 10 years ago, but I need more warming up. So like really warming up before deep back bends is is very important. That's like the biggest thing that we see is people offering up dog way too early, people offering shoulder binds way too early.
And that's how you pinch a muscle in your neck. That's how you sprain your lower back. There's lots of yeah, those are big. Those are two of the big red flags that I see. OK. And I had a thought about flow like flowing because I know that we're, you know, we we we predominantly teach power yoga for the most part, which is the vinyasa as well. But I know there's a lot of teachers who love to just flow. They like to teach flows, right?
And when it comes to sequencing, I think that also kind of comes into play of piercing together a lot of cool poses so that it flows really well as opposed to focusing on the stability and stuff like that. So what would you say to someone who's like, yeah, but I just wanted to keep moving.
I want to keep moving and creating new, you know, I want to go from 1 pose to the next pose to the next pose, because I'm sure you've seen this before, like basically like a typical vinyasa class, but probably less stability because I'm thinking there's probably a lot of people who like or really resonate with flowing. Like, I just love to flow.
I love to move. I don't really like to stop and hold too much. But in order to be a good teacher, you have to do things that you don't like. You have to learn how to be good at the things that you don't like. So if you want to have like a well-rounded skill set as a yoga teacher, teaching flows is great. But if you can't teach alignment like the class that you listened in on yesterday, you know you're like the guys just going from 1 pose to the next one pose to the
next, trying to make it cool. You know that to me lacks the the depth of that that you need. So nothing wrong with teaching flows, but I want to know why you're going from this pose to the next pose. You know why. And if you're going from this pose to this pose, what have you done to prepare the body to go from this pose to this pose?
Why are you doing everything you're doing? Like, literally everything? Like, if you really want to be a great teacher, like, I want to know every single pose from the beginning to the end of your class, why you chose it.
And like, that's like a level of discipline and a level of excellence to give yourself as a new teacher. And if you can do that for a few years, when you're like year two to year 5-6 or seven as a teacher, by the time you you get through that little, it'll just come so naturally to you, you know? So what I'm hearing is like intention, like more intention, intentional sequencing, like the poses that you're choosing, like, why, yeah.
Why are you doing what you're doing? Why and how you know? How are you teaching it? Like, are you? It's not just like are you teaching it slowly? What's your voice? What's your tone like? Are you are you being a drill Sergeant? Are you being you know?
Are you pushing people? Are you encouraging them to go past their edge or are you meeting them slightly? Well, we want to go, We want people to go a little bit past their edge, but you don't want to like throw them into the deep end, you know. So something in between, you know, let me see that. Like, let me see that you understand the body if you're going to do one of those complicated flows and and more importantly the the the whole thing is, but I like flowing. Like that's cool.
But it's like it's not you. It's not about you. It's about like, yeah, it's about your students and it's like it's like it's like that to me is like a basketball player being like, I just want to drain threes. It's like, yeah, but you got to learn defense.
You have to learn footwork. You have, you know what I mean? Like, and this team needs you to pass, you know, So like that those are the things that I would say to a teacher like that just remembering that the class is. Yeah. It's about you teaching the type of class that you would want to take.
Absolutely. But knowing why you like that type of class, and it's probably not just the flow, it's it's the the flow that is threaded together in a way that's intelligent. OK. And so with regards to, let's say success, whatever success is or just like the growth of your classes or attracting more students, you know, if that's something that you want to do, if you want to have a bigger class or you know, you want to have these smaller classes and teach advanced sequences and
like that's cool. But I'm thinking some people might actually want to, you know, grow and like maybe actually teach to 15/20/20, 5:30 plus people. I think it's even more important to consider that when you're sequencing or you're teaching that it's definitely not about making it super complicated, which was your first point, but actually making it more accessible to somebody who might walk into the room who it's like their first yoga class.
Yeah. Or it's their 5th yoga class. Or they're like 50 or 60 years old and they started it at home and they're like, I'm gonna start going to a group classes at the studio nearby or whatever and how that might affect their experience if it's too complicated or too flowy or their bodies are not prepared for certain level 2 or Level 3 post postures, right? Yeah, I think exactly.
I think every single class that you that you teach, you have to teach. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the person who is the most beginner and then also the person who's the most advanced 'cause you want that person coming. As long as that person is respectful, you want them coming back to your class too.
So if you do have like one of those hand stander like person with a really elaborate physical practice, as long as they can practice within your sequence tastefully and respectfully, you let them do their little arm balances.
You let them do their stuff because I see it goes it goes both ways too you know like and the beginner. Also you make them feel safe by by making your sequencing accept accessible and offering modifications for beginners and alternate poses for the people who are the yoga teachers.
And and then when if you're in a class and a couple of the people norm are flying around. I always like to say something like the happiest person in the room is never the person with the fanciest practice. You know. So I say things like that just to remind people that that having a fancy practice doesn't really necessarily mean anything about your mental health or your emotional health.
And that that that type of stuff is the the deeper aspects of yoga, the, you know, the breathing, the meditation, the yamas, the niyamas doing, doing the personal work. And I think we want to make our classes inclusive and you want to protect people's feelings but not overprotect too, you know, so that sometimes like I have seen people go too far with like no hand stands in my class and the class is like a strong class. It's like, but maybe somebody
wants to do a handstand in your class and maybe they've worked for years to be able to do that pose and something they like to do, you know? And if a beginner looks at someone who's doing a handstand and it makes them quit yoga, that's a shame Like that, you know?
Like it should be inspiring, you know, watching somebody who's been doing something for longer than you do it really beautifully and elegantly, you know? Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Well, those are my notes.
Is there any other common mistakes? Yeah, you. Come up with, yeah, doing, doing deep, doing deep poses to Curly. So whether it's a deep back bend, a deep twist, a deep shoulder bind, that that would be the biggest thing. And then also standing on one leg, balancing on one leg for too long, or holding too many poses row while you're standing in one leg.
That's dangerous. Like, I would really not recommend doing that. Right. And and some of those, I would call them like staggered pose, I guess they're like external poses or neutral poses where your front leg is bent. Yeah, you know, warrior two, reverse warrior, you're not standing necessarily on one leg, but that front leg is, it's burning.
Yeah, it's burning. Right? So. If you do a lot of poses like that and then you then all of a sudden you step to the front and you go into Warrior Three and then you go into Half Moon, that one leg up there's, that's that's how people get hurt as their their fatigue kicks in right, the muscles.
And then they transition from 1 pose to the next and they twist their knee. Yeah. Or they twist the lower back. Yeah, Yeah. OK, yeah, cool. Well, not cool about that, but good. Good note, good note. OK, great. Any other common mistakes that come up for you? Another thing to think about is what time of day is your class. If it's early in the morning and it's winter time, people's bodies are going to be tight because they're cold, so you need to spend longer time
warming up. If it's night time, you can spend less time warming up but longer time cooling down. So just thinking like, OK, what time of day is it? And and you teach a 7:00 AM class, even if it's the same students in the same yoga studio at the same level 2-3 class teach the 7:00 AM class slightly different than the 7:00 PM class. And how?
Out again, more warmups for the for the 7:00 AM and more cool down for the the 7:00 PM. Yeah. OK, good. Nice. Any others? That's just what comes to mind right now. Yeah, yeah, that's that's pretty good. I mean, I feel like we talked about a lot of topics, a lot of common mistakes, provided some solutions. So I feel pretty happy about that. Cool.
Yeah, great. And then the next episode, we're going to have you back. Awesome. And we're going to talk about sequencing for everybody type. So we kind of touched on it a little bit. Yeah, right. But and and I'll probably jump in on this, but that's going to be what the next episode is going to be about. So I'm excited to talk about that one. With you.
Amazing. Cool. All right. Any final words for our audience? No work on your queuing just as much as your sequencing because they're literally like two sides of the same coin, right? Yeah, Yeah, yeah. That's. A good point.
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