By Sanjeev Patel, CYT 500
Yoga teachers may need to teach a variety of class types. Teaching yoga classes is an art form that grows with your experience. Yoga teacher training programs prepare you to teach many different types of people. The following is the beginning of a series of articles. This article gives you an opening for a two hour, fitness oriented, Hatha Yoga Class.
This sequence is just one of many possibilities. It is only for athletes and students in good health with no medical conditions. These students want to push their athletic limits. Hatha Yoga for therapeutic application is wonderful, but my athletic students want a serious challenge and this gives them what they seek.
To begin: Greet students and settle everyone to sit down. Ask for any medical conditions or injuries that you should be aware of even if students all look healthy. Pregnant students should not be in this class at all. Start the Yoga session with the corpse posture Savasna and relax for one minute.
Pranayama: Sit beginners in perfect posture. Intermediate Yoga students can choose any position they can sit in comfortably for a two minute round each of Kapalabhati, Bhastrika, and alternate nostril breathing. Explain to them the benefits and show all of them how to perform these Pranayama techniques.
Begin asana practice with eight rounds of sun salutations (a series of 12 sequences of postures and synchronized breath). Ask students to lie on their backs to regain their breath for a couple of minutes while doing a series of abdominal strengthening exercises. The abdominal strengthening exercises will continue for twenty minutes.
Start with the boat pose, alternate leg raises, next the double leg raises, hamstring stretches, crunches, cross crunches and a variety of leg raises. Come to all fours and perform cat crunches while kneeling on all fours. Show all students the dolphin, extended dolphin, and how to perform these asanas. Observe and assist them, while they work on dolphin poses. Work on dolphin variations for ten minutes.
Show students how to go into the headstand. Also, they learn how to measure and a step by step guide to going into this posture by watching first. Everybody is different and not everybody has enough strength to go into head stand straight away. I help students if they need my assistance. There is the option to carry on doing the dolphin, plank, or dolphin plank.
That’s it for now. My next article will discuss the Yoga lesson plan after this opening. This opening alone followed by meditation will make for a challenging Hatha Yoga practice. Please make sure your health is perfect before practicing head stands.
© Copyright 2010 – Sanjeev Patel / Aura Publications
Sanjeev Patel is a certified Yoga teacher and an exclusive author for Aura Wellness Center.
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