Yoga Sequencing

The Ancient Yoga Secret Of Creating A Powerful Customized Yoga Sequence.

Modern sports training takes enormous care to create sessions that are carefully sequenced.

You warm up your body before you do any strenuous exercise.

You might also stretch.

Then you build the intensity of your training then cool down, then stretch again.

With some sports training you take time between particularly strenuous exercise to give your body a chance to recover.

This carefully planned sequence is common place in scientifically based modern sports training.

But thousands of years before the field of sports science was developed, ancient yoga teachers and students began developing an even more sophisticated system to sequence their yoga sessions.

In a yoga session you can use sequencing to profoundly effect many different parts of your body including your arms, legs, joints even in your internal organs.

A yoga sequence can also change your thoughts, your emotions and more.

So how do you create a safe effective yoga sequence?

If you were training for a sport you would have a particular goal in mind for each training session.

You may want to improve a particular skill or range of skills or you might want to build strength in a particular muscle group.

In a yoga session, and especially in a Viniyoga session this goal or intention you have for the session is vital when you set out to create a sequence that will serve your intentions.

You might want to increase your level of energy or build your body – with a brhmana practice.

Or you might want to relax, calming and soothing your body – with a langhana practice.

Perhaps you want to experience a certain posture you enjoy.

You might have a particular physical or emotional problem you want to deal with in your session.

You can custom design a yoga practice as therapy for a wide variety of problems including...

# Lower back pain
# Upper back pain
# Neck and shoulder pain
# Pain in your sacrum, hips, knees and other joints...

# Digestive problems
# Repiratory problems like asthma and bronchitis
# High blood pressure, high cholesterol and other heart conditions

# Cramps and period pain
# Menopausal hot flashes
# Moodiness, depression and other mood disorders
# And many, many other conditions.

Also important is context in which you will be practicing. Consider the time of day, the temperature, what activities you will do before practice, and what you will do afterward.

Take into account any physical and emotional conditions that you are not specifically addressing in your practice. For example, you may want to strenghten your back, but to safely do so you need to avoid irritating your injured knee.

Here are a few fundamentals for creating a yoga sequence custom designed for you, your unique problems and your unique physiology.

First you need to keep in mind how contracting, relaxing and stretching a muscle effects that muscle.

You want to have each muscle and each group of muscles prepared before you place them under stress.

In yoga the most natural postures we use are those based around forward bends.

You bend forward all the time in everyday life – it's a very natural movement.

You bend forward to pick up something of the floor.

You bend forward as you sit down and as you get up from a lying position.

Because bending forward is a natural, low risk movement we frequently use forward bends in our yoga sequences as a "hub" or transition from one type of posture to the next.

Also when we move from a standing posture to a lying posture we try to do a kneeling posture in between to make that transition smoother and more natural.

We also use "symmetric" postures to balance your body after performing "assymetric" postures – and we often use assymetric postures to prepare for some deeper symmetric postures.

And if you're going to do a risky posture somewhere in your sequence we will plan to do it near the middle of your session.

That way your body will be prepared but you won't be tired so your risk of injury is at an absolute minimum.

Custom designing a yoga sequence is a sophisticated science and a HUGE part of Viniyoga teacher training.

Every posture has a different effect and changing the sequence in which you do postures changes the affect.

If you really consider the implications of that, you'll realize that there are an almost infinite number of combinations of postures and an infinite number of affects you could achieve from those combinations based on your unique physiology and phsychology.

And this is just the asana. When you add in the other elements of yoga – pranayama, sound, chanting, meditation, prayer and ritual – sequencing becomes even more complex.

That's why it's best to have your yoga sequences designed especially for you by a fully certified Viniyoga teacher – someone trained in the sophisticated science of biomechanics, anatomy and sequencing.