Yoga Sequencing―Designing Transformative Yoga Classes

Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes presents the essential principles and methods for planning and sequencing yoga classes. Addressing one of the most popular topics in the yoga profession, this book offers sixty-seven model sequences of yoga poses (asanas) that cover the broad range of yoga student experience, including multiple sequences for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students; yoga for kids, teens, women across the life cycle, and seniors; classes to relieve depression and anxiety; and sequences for each of the major chakras and ayurvedic constitutions. Each sequence provides guidance for teaching the different breathing (pranayama) and meditation techniques that give yoga its transformative power.

Enhanced with over 2,000 instructional photos and an elaborate guide to the constituent elements of over 150 yoga asanas, the book draws equally from ancient yoga philosophy and contemporary insights into functional anatomy, biomechanics, and kinesiology. The nuanced interrelationships among asanas within and between the seven asana families are explored and the anatomy of opening and stabilizing each pose is explained for sequences designed around specific needs and intentions. A comprehensive appendix includes a glossary of yoga-related terms, an alphabetical asana index with thumbnail photographs of each asana, a class planning worksheet, representative sequences from several popular styles of hatha yoga, and a list of resources for further exploring sequencing and the larger practice of teaching yoga.

Mark Stephens took his first formal yoga classes in 1991, completed his initial yoga teacher training in 1995, and began teaching yoga in 1996. In 1997, he founded Yoga Inside Foundation, establishing yoga programs and training yoga teachers for service in over 300 treatment centers, schools, hospitals, prisons, and other settings across North America. He received Yoga Journal's first Annual Karma Yoga Award for his nonprofit work in 2000. Stephens has founded and directed two yoga studios, L.A. Yoga Center and Santa Cruz Yoga, and has taught workshops and retreats worldwide, including outdoor adventure retreats combined with sea kayaking, trekking, skiing, and rock climbing. He returned to his native Santa Cruz in 2004, where he teaches classes, workshops, and teacher trainings at Santa Cruz Yoga.