General Principles of Sequencing for NYYoga Teacher Training

What follows is something I wrote for the Teacher Trainees at New York Yoga. Because some of the text relates directly to the sequence that New York Yoga teaches its trainees those parts are not relevant here and have been left out. Unfortunately for those parts to be relevant you would have to know the sequence. In this forum I have just left the parts of this document that address general principles. I hope you enjoy this information.

Peace.

upsidedowncarl

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General Principles of Sequencing
For NYYoga TT Sequence

These are all general statements not rules. A skilled teacher or practitioner can go against every one of these main points and still create a sequence that is safe, effective, powerful and useful, because, just like in therapeutic practice, HOW YOU USE THE POSES is more important than THE PARTICULAR POSES YOU USE, or the PARTICULAR ORDER YOU USE THEM IN.

Seated poses are more powerful as poses for opening your body because you need less effort and have more leverage to open the body and bring yourself deeper. Because of this, in standard sequencing it is useful to do seated poses after the body has been warmed up considerably first.

Gentler versions of a pose or of a particular kind of opening are useful to before stronger or deeper versions of a posture. An example: Cat/Cow can warm your spine for Cobra and Cobra can prepare your spine for Upward Facing Dog; the movements in a sun salutation including the work of the back muscles in Upward Facing Dog, but especially the opening of the hamstrings with the work and lengthening of the spine that happen in Downward Facing Dog and Prepare Pose (Half Forward Bend) and the brief stays in the Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana), prepare you for holding the Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) for a longer period of time. Holding the Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana) for a longer period of time and/or doing an Asymmetrical Standing Forward Bend (Parvsvottanasana) or a Standing Forward Bend with the Legs Spread Apart (Prasaritta Padottanasana) and holding these postures to open in, after the body has been warmed up, could intelligently help prepare you for doing a Seated Forward Bends like Upavishta Konasana (Seated Forward Bend with Legs Spread Apart), Janu Shirshasana (Asymmetrical Seated Forward Bend with One Leg Straight and One Knee Bent), and Paschimottanasana (Seated Forward Bend Over Both Legs). Standing poses like Warrior 1, Warrior 2, Extended Triangle, Extended Side Angle, Rotated Triangle and Revolved Triangle can prepare the legs, the spine, the pelvic structure, the shoulder girdle, the ribcage, and the arms for deeper poses of their kind. Back bends on your stomach can prepare you for Full Wheel (Urdhva Dhanurasana, the back bend on your back where your arms lift you all the way up off the floor). Before doing inversions it is worth preparing your neck, shoulders, upper back, and arms for supporting your body while upside down. Poses like Downward Facing Dog, Dolphin Pose and Bridge Pose might be useful for this kind of purpose.

After a deep posture or sequence of postures, it would be beneficial to release any residual tension left over from the work of the pose. This can be referred to as compensation or counterposing. After a deep forward bend a gentle back bend can be beneficial and vice versa. If there is tension in the neck or shoulders, something to release it would be called for. Often fish pose is presented as the counterpose for shoulderstand and this might compensate for tension in the neck and shoulders, but if you come out of shoulderstand feeling tension in your lower back you might need something additional for this tension. Something like bridge pose or locust might be beneficial work for the spine to take care of the lower back after shoulderstand. The important point to understand about counterposes is that each person may need something slightly different and if a counterpose does not remove the residual tension from a deep posture for a particular practitioner then the posture still has not fully been compensated for, at least for that practitioner.

Before resting in Shavasana (Final Relaxation) it would be worth cooling down with some simple relaxing poses lying on the back.

An intelligent and well-organized sequence can start from almost any orientation to gravity (lying on the back, sitting, kneeling, standing) and still be an intelligently organized sequence. However, a well-organized sequence will progress logically and help the practitioner prepare for deeper more challenging poses in thoughtfully prepared stages.