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.

About the Author

The author of Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations & Techniques (North Atlantic Books, 2010), Mark Stephens has practiced yoga for over 20 years and has taught yoga full time since 1996. The founder of Yoga Inside Foundation, L.A. Yoga Center and Santa Cruz Yoga, Stephens has trained over 1,000 yoga teachers. At Yoga Inside Foundation, he trained and supported yoga teachers in over 300 alternative settings across the U.S. and Canada; he received Yoga Journal's 1st Annual Karma Yoga Award in 2000 for this work. Prior to teaching yoga, Stephens was a doctoral fellow at UCLA in comparative and historical sociology and taught for many years in college (UCLA, L.A. City College, UC Santa Cruz) and alternative education. His writings, interviews, commentaries, quotes and quips have appeared in Yoga Journal, Yoga International, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, People, Health, Huffington Post, Elephant Jounral and other online and print media. Stephens conducts yoga teacher training programs worldwide and produces instructional materials for yoga trainers, yoga teachers and yoga students.