Sun B Salutation: 22-Min Heat-Building Vinyasa Flow Class

Inhale half lift, now they should have been doing this so many times that they're doing it correctly. Exhale stepping back through Avinyasa, plank inhale, exhale lower down, inhale back bend, exhale pushing back up to plank, meeting dog. Lift your right leg as high as you can, bend the knee and inhale, lift your heel, exhale roll the knee to your face and place the right foot between the hands. A little help I usually do here, do that again, roll the knee forward, grab the right ankle with your right hand, so move into the left hand and help the foot forward.

People can be strong in the shoulders but inflexible in the back so just leaning into the hand is a really nice exercise. This is much better than doing it like this, okay so if people can't get the foot forward you need to give them some option to get the foot all the way forward. From here crescent pose, high lunge, arms raising up, give them a moment because finding the balance can take a breath or two so you don't just ask people, even if we're flowing you don't want to stress people so it should be flowing but we should also let people do the pose correctly so good posture, straight back leg, very good. No, not straight?

No, that's only me, I'm body biased there. Yeah when you straighten the back leg you sway the lower back, that's right, it's better to keep a little bend in the left knee, your experience trumps mine. So tall posture, good breath, even balance in front and back foot. From here arms out behind you lean forward balancing on your right leg and talking about warrior three in yoga we could be talking for six weeks about this pose we don't have time for that so what we say is basically this is the skydiver we did earlier basically a cobra on one leg so lift your chest keep everything engaged.

So here you can also have a small bend in the knee because if people lock their knee they tend to lean like this. That's true. So it's better to be engaged in the butt and the thigh. Keep your standing leg engaged, a little bend in the standing leg, straighten everything out, hold here for one breath they actually held it for three four breaths but you say one breath because you were talking a little bit and then hands down standing split on your fingertips lift your left leg and then moving on because this is this is gruesome for for some people I say moving on almost immediately on the first round.

I just want to add again for most people it's better to bend the bottom leg and straighten the back leg than to have this leg straight and this leg bent. This is the this is welcome to the world of trying to teach yoga it's really simple but people they they change your words in their head and they do the opposite. Yes they always bend the top leg and straighten the other one and round up their spine really bad so keep encouraging the bending of the standing leg it's still stretching it's still really good for engagement but you need to repeat yourself over and over unless you find a magical way to get everybody to do what you want please give us an email and a video description how to do it we would love to know how to do that. Yes yes yes and then stepping back to are we on the which leg are we on then?

We're on the right leg. Yep. Standing slip. So we do the inhale leg up, exhale leg down.

Oh you meant like that yes yes so instead of just like I suggested just stepping straight back from it and avoiding the pose you could add in some dynamic movements here just two or three is enough for people to get a really nice stretch and move with the breath. But from here step the left foot back plank pose inhale exhale move through your vinyasa they did it five times already so shut up and let them meet back in dog. Do a vinyasa let's meet in dog. Same thing every time we're repeating I always say repeating or same thing but on the second side left leg up bend and open inhale exhale roll the knee as far forward as you can maybe all the way between your hands give your foot a little help if needed.

High lunge arms up inhale stay here for a couple of moments finding a good posture stacking your upper body onto your lower body is something I would say just to restate the double the double reframe that I'm talking about later in one of the videos is about saying what people are already doing because you always have some lagging patterns who are not really following along they're thinking about something else always saying it two times just so they know what's going on what they're supposed to be doing. Arms back leaning forward leaning into your right left leg keep your posture straight this is a skydiver on one leg keep a little bend that's also true keep a little bend in the left knee for balance and keep your leg engaged. So one cue that I use when I see the room wobbling is shift your weight slightly into the ball of your left foot because when the weight is more over here there is more work for the leg but the balance becomes better especially on jiu jitsu mats that are soft people will struggle with the balance. Standing splits hands down lift the leg lower the leg inhale lift stretch the back exhale fold inhale lift exhale fold stepping back to a plank inhale to prep exhale move through your vinyasa meet in dog.

This was the first round but in order to reset the sun salutation be bend your knees look forward inhale exhale step or jump forward to the hands people are so warm now they did yoga for 25-30 minutes so they want to they want to be active they want to float and if you if people have been coming to your warm up classes they know about the float already they know about the pike they already have options to jump forward. Inhale half lift exhale fold notice how easy it is to cue when you did it correctly before now I just say half lift and she did it perfectly inhale roll all the way up exhale reset in standing the reason I say reset is so that people know we're not doing anything new now we're just doing the same thing again. Bend in your knees gracing the floor with your hands chair pose inhale exhale forward fold half lift inhale stepping back through a vinyasa on your own so that people know that they're on their own. Meeting in dog taking a breath because now I am really efficient in the way I talk to it's always nice to stop a little bit and take one breath so that people get to catch up some laggards are a bit behind take one breath another round right leg again inhale stretch right leg up.

Open hips open the hips bend the knee lift your heel exhale roll the knee forward foot between the hands lift your arms into crescent from here keep your legs where they are twist the right arm back and left arm forward nice lift your arms inhale stretch both legs exhale roll the knee forward. Exhale same thing again twist a little bit deeper inhale arms up exhale one more twist and stay here maybe even look back nice I always give an option like to make it more difficult if someone is a little bit cocky I want them to struggle a little bit. Now you could talk a lot about placing the right hand on your left thigh lifting your left arm doing a side stretch on the back and that's too much it's much easier to just say reverse inhale and you show the reverse you can't talk about everything because then the class would be six hours long so just doing a really nice show you show you or say. Okay so we are we're here and then reversing inhale left hand down keep your right arm up so this is this is something they didn't do before in class and that that's why I'm showing it while I'm saying it I'm also making it very simple by just saying left hand down right arm up as simple as that.

They've been here before we're moving back into side plank stacking the feet lifting the hips take a big inhale exhale plank pose move through your vinyasa meeting dog. Same thing second side left leg up bend and open inhale exhale roll the knee to your face let's meet in crescent now I talked about the feet and everything before. I don't have to repeat myself with details like this arms up inhale twisting towards the left every time I twist to the other side I say twist left so that people know where they should be looking look left and twist inhale arms up stretch the leg exhale twist if people forget to straighten the leg that's not important details so if people are always in crescent the world is not ending so I just add that. If there is time and I haven't babbled too much twist and hold very nice when people are doing it correctly not falling over and doing backflips I say very nice good job good job well done reversing inhale right hand to the floor exhale keep your left arm up keeping the balance because I know people will fall I say keep the balance stacking your feet into a circle.

So this is a nice way to do this arms stacking your feet into a high side plank strong side plank beautiful side plank whatever I feel like saying exhale plank move through your vinyasa meet in dog. How easy it is to cue something like this this is really advanced queuing unless you haven't done a really good work up to this the first half of the class to warm up we did the details of almost all of this so it's very easy to queue. Last round bend your knees in dog inhale to prep exhale jump or step forward inhale halfway half lift exhale fold inhale all the way up exhale standing last round I always say when it's the last round touch the floor inhale chair now we did it so many times I only have to say one thing in each pose exhale fold. Half lift inhale exhale stepping back on your own through your vinyasa.

And here is the moment where it's tempting to start too much focused on detail and then you destroy their yoga practice you've been building up to their yoga practice and this is their yoga practice you should not be intervening by talking too much down dog. Down dog yeah to be when you ask people to stretch your leg out just be clear if you want neutral or open hips okay yes so I'll show you what's in between you don't want in between you want either neutral or open fair enough. So neutral hips would be completely square leg up the leg will not get as high if you bend the knee and you open the hips then the legs comes a lot higher I really enjoy this one because if you lift up on your toes as well you can get so much strengthening down on the back side as well as opening on the front side and people tend to enjoy it more if they can get a good stretch at this point in class when they open their hips. So they are warm if you don't if you're not accurate on what you want here it will be something in between like this that's very true I always put a lot of emphasis on pulling the heel into the butt lifting the knee coming up as high as you can lift a little bit even more because here is a position where people tend to be very lazy and if they don't know the details they will do it incorrectly so either square hips or open hips I always teach open hips because it's a good challenge.

When people do it correctly it tends to be really enjoyable last wrong need to face crescent pose keep your arms up for this one because we did a lot of things with the arms and I just keep the arms lean forward and kick the left leg forward and as high as you can try to keep both legs straight I say that because this is usually what happens people are really weak in the hip flexors and tighten the hamstrings so they bend this knee and lean back so that they can lift more. That's actually really impressive it's hard to do that. So keep both legs straight good posture keep lifting the left leg and here the sadistic yoga teachers comes and does this yes a little bit higher a little bit higher a little bit higher a little bit higher. Okay so be a sadist for one breath from here moving not into but through warrior three arms forward left leg back hold for a moment have people struggle a little bit standing splits jump your right leg back try to have the foot between the hands.

Steiner can sometimes do a handstand from here but it's one of the hardest transitions ever don't even try it's better to just jump the leg back to give people a little bit of space if you jump the foot too far back it's too far away to do a controlled handstand so you want to ask people to jump a little bit back use the left leg as a pendulum and not swing kick or jump into handstand you ask them to to leave the take the right foot off the floor lift your right leg up and then you can do a handstand. Okay so now lean into the hand and do some small jumps yes yes and what you will do is you're going to ask people do a few handstands and you expect it to look like this but this is what it will look like and people will actually fall over they will fall over and land on their back and complete chaos. So this is another one of the big challenges it's really simple what we want them to do is this because it's the standing split and handstands has so many benefits that we're not going to talk about right now but your challenge will be for people to do less they do a lot you want them to just do this but they will do all kinds of crazy shit and that's one of the biggest challenges in your new career is having people not do everything that you haven't asked of them and people turn into we have a two year old that is at home and he is crazy and people will turn into two year olds when they as soon as they go upside down people will kick both legs up and try to nail the handstand with both legs up at the same time complete chaos and people can injure each other by like a 200 pound guy falling on top of someone else that's not what you want you need to take charge and tell people what the hell to do when they do handstands. After that after five of these you do a vinyasa on your own last round second side left leg up inhale exhale roll the knee forward.

Okay left leg up bend the knee open the hips on your toes on your exhale roll the knee to your face crescent pose arms up keep the arms up take a breath. Right leg forward kick as high as you can keep both legs straight balance and posture and breath nice right leg behind you stretch as tall as you can stay here for three two one both hands down standing splits. Move your left leg back so that you have space do some controlled handstand jumps not both legs just one leg nice yep and then you have to stop everybody in the room who is crazy last vinyasa plank on your own meet in down dog. So this was three rounds of the sun salutation be quick recap we were we're starting in standing doing a chair pose touching the floor moving through a half salutation into the vinyasa into dog.

Right leg forward crescent pose arms back warrior three standing splits with some up and down movements vinyasa same thing on the left leg imagine we just did that second round right leg out and forward crescent pose. Three rounds of crescent twist one two three reversing and then into a twisting lunge into side plank vinyasa same thing on the second side last round. Crescent pose arms up kicking your left leg forward into warrior three into standing split five handstands vinyasa same thing on the second side done and since we did this with flow and breath and we added some handstands in there and a lot of vinyasa's now people are sweating if people are not sweating either they are cheating or they are incredibly fit or you talk too much and they didn't flow so much. So either one they should be sweat in everybody's forehead at this point of class if not someone did a mistake you or them.

Anything adding. Some things but yes not for now not for now that this now this is just to flow get the heat have some fun and there are plenty of more details on everything but not for now. Yes the more you the more you know the harder it is to choose what to say so you want people in your class to feel like they get it and it's just as important for you to know I get it this is what I should focus on not the rest of the list that I saved that for blue purple and black boat level.