Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes Author: Mark Stephens | Language: English | ISBN:
B007JCBY34 | Format: EPUB
Yoga Sequencing: Designing Transformative Yoga Classes Description
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.
From the Trade Paperback edition.- File Size: 6073 KB
- Print Length: 528 pages
- Publisher: North Atlantic Books; 1 edition (September 18, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B007JCBY34
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,140 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Education & Reference > Schools & Teaching > Education Theory > Physical Education - #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Yoga - #87
in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Yoga
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Education & Reference > Schools & Teaching > Education Theory > Physical Education - #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Yoga - #87
in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Exercise & Fitness > Yoga
Yoga Sequencing is the best book ever written on how to design outstanding yoga classes; indeed, it's one of the best books ever written on yoga. And while it's an absolute must for all yoga teachers and teacher training programs, it's a wonderful resource for all levels of yoga students too.
This 528-page tome first covers the foundations and principles of sequencing in extraordinary yet very practical detail. As with the entire book, we discover in the first pages that the author, Mark Stephens, moves easily between all of the vast literature about yoga and the down to earth practicalities of teaching yoga in the modern world. He explains the five principles of sequencing in a way that makes them into useful tools that yoga teachers and students alike can apply in creatively fashioning their classes. He then shows how these principles are applied in developing the essential structure of yoga classes. Here the author introduces and explains the concept of peak postures and the method for identifying the constituent elements of postures, which is the key insight one needs in determining the sensible order of postures in any yoga class or routine.
Rather than leaving it to the reader to figure out all of the elements of every yoga posture, Stephens provides a vast resource in the appendix giving the constituent elements of each of over 125 asanas. This one resource - Appendix B - is more than worth the price of the entire book.
After showing how to set up the general structure of a class, Stephens goes into a detailed presentation of how to arrange the order of postures within and across the every family of postures - standing poses, core, arm balances, back bends, twists, forward bends, hip openers and inversions.
I bought this book because I have an interest in sequencing. I went through my first teacher training at YogaWorks and Mr. Stephen's style is strongly YogaWorks. If you are unfamiliar with that branding, think "Ashtanga-lite." The workout start with sun salutes, but not as a many as a Ashtanga primary series. Once the sun salutes are done, there are standing poses, then sitting, with diversity, YogaWorks style not a set sequence like the Ashtanga series. One thing I value about the YogaWorks style is the concept of sequencing towards a peak pose.
Mr. Stephen's promise to show you how to "Design" a sequence is true. Following the concept of working towards a peak pose, or sequencing towards a theme, this book shows how to do either and more.
I eagerly bought this book in first addition and there are quite a few typos and mistakes. You look at the written description of the pose and it does not match the thumbnail picture. If you are familiar with yoga some of the mistakes are pretty hilarious. If you are new to yoga it would be bewildering.
My major criticism of this book: the sequencing is pretty narrow. If you are in fairly good shape you can use these sequences to get into better shape. But what he gives for a level one beginner class would be impossible for my beginner students to do. I can't believe that my students are atypical. I think a book ought be written for sequencing real beginners, because people beyond beginner status are less likely to need a sequencing guide.
Most yoga books for beginners such as Light on Yoga, or Moving into Stillness, or the Iyengar style books by the Mehta's include A beginner sequence, and all of those sequences are good, effective and beneficial.
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