It wasn’t the economics, social justice issues, or other structural aspects of the yoga studio system, though there are certainly problems with those as well. And as I took other teachers’ classes, I had the same misgivings. It’s a lovely structure for the physical part of yoga practice, based in the simple reality that warming up with easier versions of shapes makes the difficult versions both easier and safer.īut as I improvised variations of basically the same thing day after day, year after year, I came to feel that despite offering a lovely flow of postures (along with whatever wisdom teachings I could weave in), the class format itself might actually be limiting students’ progress. When I taught vinyasa classes, I always improvised my sequences, moving my students through a pretty standard progression of warm-ups and foundational poses to a “peak pose” or two, and then ending with inversions, corpse pose ( śavāsana), and breathwork ( prāṇāyāma). In other styles-like the vinyasa or “flow” that has become the norm in many yoga studios, or Iyengar-style classes that focus less on movement and more on alignment in held postures-teachers talk students through their own sequences, either planned in advance or improvised on the spot. In some styles, like Ashtanga or Bikram, the sequence is predetermined, and teachers may give alignment points or other reminders as everyone moves through it, either together (Bikram), or self-paced (Ashtanga). And the sequences can be thought of as choreography, though we don’t often call them that.

As a group movement sequence done in rhythm, yoga class can be structurally similar to dance or exercise classes, which are certainly part of its modern heritage. For many practitioners around the world now, yoga is synonymous with “guided group posture practice.” We get together, line up in parallel rows on sticky mats, and perform a sequence of physical shapes ( āsana), often linked by transitional movements and combined with rhythmic breathing.

Hatha yoga beginner sequence