Standing Sequence & Peak Pose Flow: 45-Min Yoga Class

Like you were saying yesterday, the standing sequence, you're grounding in? You're definitely grounding. But you can say the same about the cool down sequence or the first sequence. Yeah, sun salitations.

So everything you said is right. But I want to try to encapsulate the standing sequence so that you have a kind of emotional connection to that one. Because what happens? Thought experiments can be good to make a point.

I don't have a point, but there is a point or several points to the standing sequence. If we take it away, what happens to the class? It feels like it's like the main part. It's like the warm-up is leading up to it and it's sort of like the main course.

Yes. What happens if we take away the main course for the five course dinner? You mean the dessert that you cook. You're laughing.

When you use analogies and metaphors, use food and sex. Those tend to resonate really quickly with people. Food, sex and sports is like everybody will remember it. Yeah, but if you take away the standing sequence, the class doesn't really have a peak.

The standing sequence is the peak of the intensity. It's where it changes from going up, up, up to going down, down, down. Playtime isn't peak. That's like after the peak, the playtime happens.

And then backbends is a little bit intense. Hip openers a little bit intense. And then chavasen is not intense at all. So the standing sequence should be the peak of the intensity.

Standing sequence focus on legs, obviously. You don't want to make the arms tired in the standing sequence. You do that with the sun salutation, be the planks. You don't introduce new concepts in the standing sequence.

You introduce the concepts, the ideas, the details, the do's and don'ts. You introduce that in the standing sequence. The details, the do's and don'ts. You introduce that at least two times before.

In the warm-up and in the sun salutations. What did we do today in the nyaflo? For the warm-ups we did crescent poses. We did a twist.

We did a standing split. We did a rolling knee. Everything that was part of the standing sequence was introduced before. Were you surprised during the standing sequence at all?

Did you feel like, oh, what's this? What does it mean? It was self-evident and obvious because the class had structure and progression. You don't want to talk too much during the standing sequence.

You want to remind. And they should be in their body. They should be in the breath. They should be in the body.

They should not start talking about stuff that makes them listen to you so much. And basically what you're doing is just tell people where to go and remind them to breathe. Because the standing sequence they're doing yoga. In the warm-up, in the sun salutations, they're learning.

They're, oh, I didn't know that. Or they're, oh, yeah, you're right. I remember now. But during the standing sequence you shouldn't really be instructing so much.

You just take them through the whole thing. You just take them through it and push them a little bit or reel them back a little bit, just dialing the pace and the intensity. And they should sweat, of course. If they're not sweating, the class is not hard enough.

The yoga for athletes, they have to sweat. They can cheat, of course, but sweat should be the default. Most people that are fitness people or athletes, they want to feel like they're doing a workout. Otherwise, they're wasting their time.

And you have to give them 50% what they need and 50% what they want. And if they want to sweat, sweat they shall do. And posture, standing sequence. Standing sequence.

You have to, they need to have good posture. If they don't have good posture, you're not doing your job. Your job is to make sure that they have good posture. This is unacceptable.

If they can't lift their arms, you make them do this. A warrior too should never look like this. Your job is to put them here and not be there. In all standing poses, they can't breathe if they don't have good posture.

And they can't do yoga if they can't breathe. So that's also part of the standing sequence. I think that's enough from my part. Repeat back to me what you heard.

Stoic way. No, you can't read. Just what you take away from the idea. What we've been through now, the last...

The standing sequence. And don't tell me what you think I want to hear, but challenge, whatever. Standing sequence was the peak pose in today's morning class. We were working towards the peak pose while we were giving structure and details until peak pose.

What was the peak pose today? The peak pose was the standing split, the standing twist. Twist it half more. Or for me that was the most challenging part in today's class.

And it could be different for me. So just let them do the peak pose and not correct too much. We have to give details and structure before. That's the most challenging part.

And perhaps as an athlete who wants to do yoga, we need this peak pose throughout the class. I think the standing sequence is an exercise that really connects the upper part of the body with the lower part of the body. Right. So everything is achieved just with pose and through making the body.

I know you like natural metaphors and make it that you can remember it. Grounding. The tree pushes the root. And the tree pushes the root.

So that's the first thing. And the second thing is the third thing. And the fourth thing is the fifth thing. And the sixth thing.

Grounding. The tree pushes the roots down so it can rise up. This has been said a million times by different yoga teachers. So it's a cliche, but it's still extremely true.

Root down to rise up. It's a perfect way to put it. Boom. I'm a tree.

Grounded, rising, spreading. In every pose. You're not pushing the energy down. You're pushing down from above.

Boom. Even down here. Like Thomas. I'm Thomas now.

I'm pushing out. I'm rising up. I'm pulling together. I'm rising up.

Posture is another way of saying rise. Elongate your spine is a dumb thing to say to someone who doesn't know what it means. Find other ways to say elongate your spine. You can say it, but explain what it means.

That's what you do. How does it feel to do that? What does it mean? This is your job to figure out how to get people to get...

Aha! One hand on the head, maybe. Push into my hand. Do you feel the difference here?

Your job is to say the same thing a million different ways. But rooting down to rising up, becoming stable, strong and integrated. That's the starting sequence. Gustav, you have almost zero yoga experience.

How did it feel to do the class today for you? This was like your fourth or fifth class ever. It felt good, but it was tough. I realized kind of late that I had to connect everything to find the balance.

It's me, me, everything has to be... That's a fucking good insight on class five. That usually takes five years for people to realize. So the class was tough, but you made it tough because you are tough too.

That's the main thing that I take from that. Well, you're done. You don't need to do more yoga because now you get it. Level complete.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you get it. Don't worry, 500 more classes and you're going to get there. Olexi, what do you think of today's class?

Not what do you think? Did you like my class? No, that's not what I'm saying. How did you experience the class?

It was tough. After hundreds of... I was sweating a lot. And one of the times when I was sweating again, I was thinking that it's perfect.

This class is perfect. The moves are perfect. We all think about ourselves like we are exclusive. And exclusive ones.

And it's perfect when you do such things in such kind of timing, dynamic and sequence. It's perfect like taking away that exclusivity. You know, like bleeding from your ego, from your like starting, you know, look much deeper than what you can see. Just what you can think about yourself just in a coordinated way.

Say all this again in a different way because I think it's really important and I really want to understand what you mean. It's these moves, this class, today's class is taking away what is not necessary on the personality, on the personal side of us. For example? For example, ego.

Like, okay, today, for example, like I woke up, I slept maybe for 30 minutes more and said, okay, I survived the last days. I will definitely survive today. So I came already like I was like preparing myself for like something that I knew before and can like think that might happen. Now when I start to move, everything I was thinking about just completely, I just need to be taken away.

I need to start not even think and start more feel. And this was, I was going deep, deep, deep to my body, to my thoughts. Well, then I have a counter question. Was this to your credit or was it to the class credit or both?

Because what you just said sounds like you are a great student of yoga. This is not something I expect for almost anybody. Only you guys here can maybe be expected, not even you, expected to have that attitude. Most people don't have that attitude.

So how much of that did you find during the class from the class itself and how much did you come prepared, you think? I can only do so much teaching the class and you can only do so much yourself. It's like the whole. I shouldn't expect anything.

That's I think the point. No, but you do. You shouldn't, but you always expect. You came with expectations.

You know, expectations and then can lead you to disappointment. I don't want this. Yeah, because it's all stocks. Yeah, of course, class was the knowledge experience, the how I was like how my family was treated when they came here.

Yeah. Yeah, but the point of you teaching a yoga class in the future is you want to you want to help people with what you just said to have a ego release. You know, you want to tone down the ego and open up, open up the mind. That's the point of it.

How much of that can I do with the class, the sign, the structure, the pacing, the queuing? That's a that's a very one of the most important questions to ask. How much of that can I influence you when you come to my class? If you have shit attitude, I can't do anything, maybe a little bit.

So it is on the student to show up in class with the right attitude. And it's up to me to help them find that in themselves. The pep talk, the reminders, the humbleness, the caring that don't give people an exit, but slap them hard in the ass and say, let's go. All of that is part to help you find that fire in yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Bianca? You're thinking when we're talking, I know.

I was just listening. Yeah. In regards to the class or to this? No, no, what he just said.

Yeah, I think that maybe maybe maybe a little bit more from the teacher side, I think, because people come to the class. They don't know this is what this is our role to teach them. And maybe this is not possible in one class. But this is why this is where the consistency comes in.

But it's also it's a case of reminding themself about the ego, maybe like encourage them to close the eyes to go inwards. All of these little techniques to like teach them how to bring themselves closer to themselves. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the first. More our responsibility. What you just said is the difference between a mobility class and a yoga class. And a yoga class isn't better than a mobility class, but the focus is different, even if we're doing mobility.

Yeah. All right. We've been talking for some time. We are done with the bridge, the warm up, the sun salutations, the standing and balancing.

Core and arm balance. Core trunk muscles. We talked about activating the core is not very helpful and sometimes even counterproductive because the core should learn to relax just as much as it needs to activate. Relax your core, activate your core.

This is something that you can say, but it happens naturally when you do a transition like standing twist. To twist and half moon. Can I do it without an active core? Now I'm going to have a non active core.

It activates where it has to activate and it relaxes where it has to relax completely by itself. So when I'm doing this, can you do it with a passive core? No, it's impossible. You don't need really to talk about activating your core.

Okay, if I stand here, I can do this in a very non integrated way and hurt a little bit. Pull your navel to your spine. It's still shit. I'm still not integrated because I don't understand that the leg has to reach back.

The arm has to reach forward. I need to lift away from the floor. If you ask people to do a little bit of cat and cow here, they can figure out how to activate the core the way they need to do it. So instead of saying what you want them to do, force them to do it with exercise.

The reason we have core and arm balance together, you do a lot of core when you do planks, rolling waves, vinyasa, sun salutations. You are activating the core automatically. But it's nice to come down on the back and do some core work. Whatever that is, crow on the back or reaching the legs back.

I call this one reverse sit ups. And this is a normal sit up. You're definitely activating the core in two different ways. When you do this, both to half both.

I am learning to activate and relax the core from the exercise itself. This one is horrible. Keep the core active, engage the navel to the spine is completely irrelevant to say. You don't need to say it happens automatically.

If people are always rounded over, you ask them to posture up. If they're defaulting to being in posture, you ask them to also do it with the spine rounded because everyone is the same. You and him are the same. You experience the exercise more or less the same.

So you're allowed to generalize, but you don't need to micromanage their muscles. So core added in, don't talk so much about it, just let it happen and practice it a lot yourself. Don't skip it yourself and then force people to do it. Understand the exercise and how it feels and what you need to do to make it good.

And then use that to justify all that hard work that they had to do because people are not going to enjoy doing the core. Most of them, then you justify and say now with that active core that you have, use that in the arm balance because arm balances are super cool. Yeah, I'm super challenging. So we have the next the next part of the class is called core and arm balance.

You add in some core work and you add in some arm balance. It can be elephant trunk pose. The core activation happens automatically. So if we were doing this, we would definitely have added this one in the warm up, right?

Lifting your ass off the ground is a good setup to this one. And of course, some hip openers. So maybe in the warm up, we did half happy baby. Maybe we did some squats with the elbow down, sequencing up to this one.

And if you had an advanced class, maybe this would lead into something like this. Who knows? But core and arm balance is part of the structure of the vanilla class. Yeah, the crow.

We did it today. The crow. And I showed you exactly how we would teach it to beginners. So but I wouldn't set the expectation that they should be able to.

When you have beginners, you have a different kind of different level of rules where the most important thing for the beginners is not to feel like idiots in your class because they do unless you specifically address it and manage their expectations and remind them that, hey, we can play with this. We can play with this. But the expectations is not that people have gone through school. People are traumatized by expectations from school.

And this is not school. This is different. But other example is the arm balance. How many are there?

There aren't so many. Crow. And the one I just did in the elephant trunk. Everybody can do this.

Because. Crow and elephant trunk are step one. Stina, are there any other beginner arm balances other than crow and elephant trunk? Did I miss one?

Bathing suit notes. Yeah. Thank you. Headstand is.

Maybe crow is flexible. Yeah. If it's about third gear, it's lower. You need some flexibility.

Yeah. Getting the elbows down to the ground from here can be extremely challenging for some. Side crow with the support. Side crow with the support.

Where is your head? What's the support? This is side crow. This is without support?

Yes. And the support is here. Try it, everybody. Crow, elephant trunk, crow, elephant trunk, baby crow and supported side crow.

Half a link. Half a link. Half a link. Half a link.

Half a link. Half a link I guess. Okay. Crow, elephant trunk, baby crow and supported psycho.

Half ailing? Half ailing, yeah exactly, that's like the elephant, we call it the elephant trunk. What about dolphin? Dolphin?

Is it prepared for that? Yeah, yeah of course, absolutely, do the dolphin here. I have something called the dolphin walk. Oh show me, please.

It's just a front plank. Forearm plank. So you can get to like perhaps, working with it a little bit to feel the strength in your shoulders. Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, please do it again. I just thought about today, if you have people that need a challenge, yeah do that a couple of times. And now go feet a little bit back and together. One leg out, bend your knee, roll the knee to your nose.

And again, rolling knee in dolphin is something I never did, but it makes a lot of sense and it definitely prepares for arm balances as well. But this is definitely something that you reverse engineer from the peak or the arm balance. If you want to have the arm balance as the peak, you make sure to sequence it with this stuff. Inversions and play time.

The problem with a yoga class is that it's a monologue. It's infinitely harder to teach a yoga class than a jiu-jitsu class. You need some jiu-jitsu skills to teach a jiu-jitsu class. But teaching the class is really simple.

Hey guys, hokey guy. Brazilians can teach it, which means that everybody can know. Let's not go there, but you can basically be a horrible teacher and still teach a pretty good jiu-jitsu class. Because you can say, hokey guys, let's have a look on the other side.

Just put the pressure guys want to clap. And then you can go around and help people one on one for as long as you want. And then people roll and you just, hey, good job guys. It's pretty simple.

Teaching a yoga class requires infinitely more preparation, presence, monologue in front of a group. But the problem with a monologue with a group and public speaking is it's fucking exhausting. And it's a little bit, you know, if you're not new to yoga and you haven't gotten used to that, just listening for one person babbling for 90 minutes, the play time breaks all that. It breaks the pattern.

Okay, enough talking. How did you feel today when we were finished with the sequence and you started the play time? How did that shift the sensation of the class? What do you feel accomplishment because you've gone through this kind of the sequence?

Yeah. And then you're like, okay, whatever I have left now, I'm going to put as much effort as I can in at my own pace and have my own kind of internal listening to exactly what the last you're saying. Yeah. A little more exploration and a little more just using your own self to kind of.

Right. And then some freedom and creativity and some choice. It was perfectly prepared until the play time. So I felt that when I had the play time, I was ready for it.

Yes. Yes. And then it was perfect that I had the time to get to play around and to get to know that I don't I don't have to follow your your structure. No.

No. And perhaps there I can get the self confidence for the next class and I know I will get to this point again. I had time to play around with it. I know now from where I started, I worked up perhaps I can trigger a little bit more.

And you get to and you get to ask questions. You can't stop the class and ask questions. But you're like, hey, they hurt like hell in my knee when we did Warrior 2. We addressed the problems in the play time.

So it's basically like a private lesson with them with all your students. Hey, remind me your name again. Thomas. Nice.

Very nice. You want to try the handstand again? And then we have connection instead of correcting people in the class and telling them what they're doing wrong. Connect with them in the one on one.

And then you have then you're building relationships and stuff and high five. Don't forget high fives like not literal high fives, maybe sometimes. But just hey, awesome job. Really well done.

You look like you were going to die the first 10 minutes, but you're still here. Awesome job. So play time and inversions gets people hooked. It makes them feel more relaxed.

And like this is an environment where I'm actually welcome to feel free to explore and get better. And it's nice for you to have a break too, because you've been talking nonstop for four to five minutes. It's nice to be able to. Yeah.

Yeah. Was it? Yes, the number six. Yeah.

And after play time is backbends. Because backbends needs you to be completely warm, completely prepared. 100 percent worked through. And backbend is like the in many ways the ultimate challenge for yoga poses.

Even if you're flexible, handstand and wheel are very challenging for most beginners and people in general. So there is some fear. And the more fear there is, the more challenge, the more accomplishment and empowering they feel after they accomplish it. Let's look at how to teach wheel pose to someone who can't do wheel pose at all.

Just pretend that you suck at wheel pose. The build up to wheel pose is always doing backbends in the actual class. You should always have focus on opening the chest and engaging the back and the legs. And bridge should always preface the wheel pose.

You always have people coming to bridge. Robot arms, elbows come in, push the triceps into the ground. Yeah, robot arms like this. Nice.

This is a very nice way to help people come up, because the challenge for most guys is that their arms don't go. They're going to have their hands together. Like put your hands next to your head. Fingers inwards a little bit.

And now try to do wheel pose slowly. That's the challenge that people have. We're going to help that. Grab my ankles.

Yeah, and I make sure that he doesn't grab too high and that the thumbs are holding on to my joints. And then I make them pretty wide. And then I can hold on. I can do something like this.

But if I squat down, lift up to the top of your head. Nice. And then I'm holding his shoulder blades. And then I say inhale.

And on the exhale, lift as high as you can. Very good. And maybe if it wasn't very good, I still say very good. Maybe if it's shit, I'm still going to say very good.

I have to lie here, because this is fucking hard for someone who can't really do it. Come down again to the top of the head weight. Don't collapse. And now down to the back.

Nice. Are you alive? Good. Glad to hear it.

Thank you. Gustav, have you done wheel pose before? No? Today is the day.

Huge round of applause. On your back, please. Do a bridge pose first. Lift your hips.

Elbows in the ground. Yeah. Push the elbows down hard. Fire up this baby.

Relaxing the glutes in wheel pose is one of the few very incorrect cues that we learned. You cannot extend the hips forward without activating the glutes. Try. Push your hips forward and relax your butt.

Physically impossible. So activate these babies. Fire those up. Grab my ankles.

Come up to the top of your head. Stay here. Activate your core. Now inhale.

Exhale, stretch your arms. Very good. Actually, very good. Stay here.

Straight arms. Yes. Relax your neck. Don't look up into my groin.

Nice. Very nice. Relax. Yes.

Fucking awesome. And then come down to your back. And this guy is a filthy liar. He's doing this every day, I can tell.

Yeah, relax. And when people have done deep back bends, usually they feel like my lower back. This is nice. You push the knees together and push them into his sacrum because then his back is going to be in the air.

And then his lower back goes. Feels good? Another lower back release you can do is this one, but a little bit higher. Yeah.

Yeah, that was more like here. But you can also like actually lift up and drop him down too. But not necessarily. He can do it himself too.

And here is one thing that you can do after back bends. After you did two or three rounds of this, grab one knee. Not both. Just grab one knee with two hands.

Pull it in. Stretch this leg out. And then lift your head a little bit. And do some light core work.

Core is a very nice way to reset the trunk after deep back bends. Because you have to relax your front in order to back bend deeply. You can't contract because that takes you out of the back bend. There is some activation, but you need to let go of the front in order to back bend.

So it's nice to reactivate the front. Switch the legs. Just do a few from side to side. Boom.

Yes. So some light core activation after back bends is nice. Or between rounds. You do one round of wheel and then you do that.

Yeah. And grabbing the ankles is a nice cheat. I can use Leon. Thank you.

It's a nice cheat for people who really can't. But you want them to get the idea that one day they might be able to do this themselves. But if the shoulders are stiff and if the wrists hurt, wheel pose is very challenging. Top of the head.

Yep. Stay there. Inhale. Exhale.

Lift as high as you want. Beautiful. This can hurt your own lower back a little bit. So you need to be active here.

Very nice. And come down. Very nice. I have a question.

Yes. I think I know the answer. But yeah. Yep.

I know you always say as the client feels, don't correct too much. Is it okay for him like this? Yeah. Is it important to give them the cue to stay with straight feet and press them inside so they have more connection?

Maybe. Matti Esrati, rest in peace. The founder of YogaWorks, one of the most acknowledged yoga teachers of our time. She had an article in Yoga Journal and I counted the number of cues for Pinsha Mahirasana.

The feather pose. 136. 137 cues. And all of these cues were correct for some people, for others not.

I think she was not making a mistake in general. She just said all of these things are things that are going on in the body. And probably it doesn't stop at 136. You probably have 600 different things happening in the body to be able to stay in a pose like that.

Does it mean that you should say 136 cues in every pose? Obviously not. You have to choose and prioritize. Is the feet important in wheel pose?

Yes. Is it more important than everything else? Maybe. Maybe not.

But the default that most teachers go to is talking too much and saying everything is important. If everything is important, nothing is. You have to choose. And you should only choose one thing that's important because people are going to forget the rest.

So what's the most important thing in wheel pose? I ain't going to say because I don't know. It depends on the person and depends on the preparation up there. Should you tell them to rotate the feet so that they're parallel?

No. Unless that makes the pose better. Yeah, that's what I want to say. If you can correct the pose and help, then I should mention it.

Yeah. But who is the judge? If it gives him a better feeling. Is he going to be honest all the time with you when you ask?

But perhaps he can push a little bit better. Maybe. Maybe sometimes. I will give you so many questions before I will say something.

Don't ask me. How the fuck should I know? I'm just a guy. And so are you.

And so is the person in front of you. Figure it the fuck out with them. Don't come there with your sacred knowledge that you got in Portugal and some teacher training years ago. That's not going to help at all.

This is just a driver license and now you have to pay attention and figure it out with that person. Wheel pose. It's perhaps a tip, but he will figure it out if it helps. Give him the confidence to figure it out himself and you're going to save yourself a lot of trouble.

Okay. So come up into wheel pose. Do whatever you want. Feet parallel.

Squeeze the inner thighs. Imagine you have a big ball between your knees. These are things I've said for years. Squeeze the legs.

Yeah, activate the legs more. Lift your toes. Engage the legs. Do you feel happy and better after I said all those things?

Quiet. Yeah. So mainly this. Yeah.

Okay. So this is another way to do what I just said. Come up to the top of your head and pretend you're doing the wheel pose. Yeah.

Yeah, push. Mission accomplished. Right? It was short, effective.

Because I saw that your legs were a bit wonky. As soon as I gave the pressure, push into my legs, can you do it? You can't do it wrong. Yeah.

Stand up. Do warrior two. Arms look like shit. Yeah, put your arms so that they look absolutely like shit.

Push into my hand. Nice. Fixed it. Occam's razor.

The shortest, easiest explanation. The shortest, easiest explanation is probably the right one. Right? Is that correct?

Occam's razor? Yeah. Yeah. The fastest way to get there is usually the best.

And when you have a chance to touch your students, better than talking about it. Talking can make you look knowledgeable, but you're not fooling me. Just because you know all the names and you can say it in so many eloquent ways. We are Jiu Jitsu people.

We are practical people. If you get tapped out, you probably are not as good as you think. Moving on. Back bends.

Yeah. Core is a way to reset after back bends. So is twists. It doesn't have to be a passive twist, especially if you're not going to do more back bends.

You can do the retired person twist. This one, a few times. You can do seated twists. You can do standing twists.

A twist is a nice way to reset the back bends. Forward folds as well. But one of the warnings of most yoga teachers is don't go from deep back bends into deep forward folds. Because one day that's probably going to hurt.

What happened there? I don't know, but it's going to hurt for a year. Maybe. I don't know.

Never happened to me. But yoga teachers are usually very careful about it. And it makes sense. Going from a super deep back bend to a super deep forward fold.

And some people are just type A personalities and they always go like... So it's nice to do a little bit of core, a little bit of twist, a little bit of forward fold after back bends. It feels really good. Do you twist in between?

It depends on how much time you have. But try it in your own practice. The base of your teaching should be your own practice. You don't always have to practice what you preach.

But if you teach stuff that you don't really understand, it's going to be pretty transparent. And you're going to feel awkward and they're going to not understand what you mean. So if you always do it, you can say, I always do this, you can try it.