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Whether anatomy is your passion or your nemesis, it’s an undeniable consideration when you’re creating yoga sequences.
Most students know more about how to use their phone than they do their own body. As teachers, we rely on an anatomical framework for class to help students create a personal and experiential connection to their bodies so they can inhabit it more mindfully and more skillfully. And isn’t that one of the intentions of yoga—to expand our understanding of at least one aspect of the human experience?
But teaching classes inspired by anatomy can be surprisingly polarizing. Executed poorly, these classes can feel, well, boring. From the students’ perspective, these yoga sequences can feel like they overemphasize a particular body part to the point of exhaustion. Or the cues can sound like an unintelligible stream of multi-syllable anatomical terms in Latin that add nothing to their understanding but instead show off the knowledge of the teacher.
For teachers, the major drawback of a scientific field of study with its own terminology is it can be intimidating for anyone who doesn’t feel well-educated in anatomy. Also, teachers who are passionate about philosophy can see a focus on anatomy as being too physical, too superficial, to truly be yoga. Obviously, I disagree.
And therein lies the challenge.
So how can teachers ensure a yoga sequence feels personally transformative and not just smart for the sake of it? How can you relate anatomical information to the felt experience of having a human body?
How to Create Helpful Yoga Sequences Themed by Anatomy
When it comes to creating effective anatomical yoga sequences, consider the following factors as you determine how you’ll theme your class.
1. Solve Students’ Problems
The most effective yoga classes help solve a problem of some sort for students. So draw inspiration from your students and what they struggle with during class or inquire about after class, whether tight hamstrings that make it difficult to move into yoga inversions or rounded shoulders that lead to nagging mid-back pain during a long work day.
After you select your anatomical theme, thread it throughout your class in ways that are obvious. Remember, isolated theory without application can easily feel irrelevant, especially these days when students are already burdened by information overwhelm.
2. Keep it Simple and Specific
Ask for student requests before class and you’ll probably hear a chorus of “hips” or “core.” Sequences inspired by general themes such as these sound pretty easy and approachable to create. But the problem is they provide too much scope. There are so many related muscles and movements to explore that the details can easily get lost in the noise.
Instead, hone in on a single muscle, movement, or action. Maybe you opt for lateral hip awareness for better balance or posterior shoulder engagement for deeper breathing. Then show how that muscle, movement, or action plays out in an array of poses.
Although this approach may initially seem more limiting, it provides more clarity for both teacher and students. There’s time to revisit the specific muscle or action multiple times in various poses throughout the sequence so students can feel the area both contract and relax.
Keeping your focus more restrained also ensures you don’t overwhelm students with a lot of talk. Keep it simple.
3. Create Well-Rounded Classes
Teachers can be loathe to hone in on a specific area or action out of fear that it won’t appeal to all students. Even when your sequences are inspired by your students, that’s a legitimate concern. After all, you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a class that is all ab work when you were hoping to bring some life into your stiff hips.
Specific anatomical sequencing works best when inserted into a generally well-rounded and familiar class template for two reasons. First, it ensures a balanced experience—a satisfying blend of floor, standing, and balancing poses as well as work and rest in varied regions of the body. Second, ensuring that some parts of class feel familiar let you save your and your students’ attention for the things that are new.
The warm-ups, variations, standing flows, and stretches that support your theme work best when used with intention and sparingly. If you happen to come up with more options to support your theme than you can fit into a balanced one-hour class, save them for the next time or consider developing a class series or workshop on the topic.
4. Watch Your Language
Perhaps the quickest way to lose students’ interest and comprehension is to rely too heavily on unfamiliar words—whether that’s yoga speak, Sanskrit, or, in the case of anatomical yoga sequences, a stream of incomprehensible words in a dead language—without adequate context or explanation. Teaching is, after all, communication.
There’s no need to use technical anatomical language unless your students have expressed an interest in it or you want to explain more about an area they are already familiar with, such as the abs, psoas, triceps, or quads. Let your sequence be more about using body awareness or muscle engagement to solve a common problem rather than you rattling off complex terms. Students can connect with what you’re teaching better when you explain it as “between your shoulder blades” rather than “Rhomboid Major” or “Middle Trapezius.”
Students are even more likely to connect with the theme when it’s supported by a relatable visceral experience, like when you explain that squeezing their shoulder blades toward each other can counteract rounded shoulders and ask them to experience this on their mats.
As so often in teaching, it’s not just wanting to share information, it’s about having a clear intention of what you want to share along with a balanced approach to conveying that information.
