The Inspiration Behind Yoga Poses in My Yoga Classes

If you love yoga as much as I do, every time you go to a yoga class, you are so excited to be on your mat and move. Whatever it is that keeps you coming back from week to week, whether it be moving, mindfulness, breathing, sweating, doing complicated poses or sequencing, we all have our hook.

I am sure you can also relate to that feeling when the teacher says: “today, we are going to work on {insert least favourite pose here}” and your heart simply sinks to the bottom of your belly. That spot where they always ask you to breath into and even though you are trying, you still have that slight panicked feeling about the next 60, 75 or even (gasp) 90-minute class. I have had this feeling more times than I can count. Which I will elaborate on more later.

Choosing Poses for Yoga Classes

This brings me to the burning question: “do yoga teachers have favourite poses?” I know students certainly have favourite poses. When I’m attending a yoga class in Cape Town or wherever, I still get excited when I realise we are working on or leading up to particular poses. And to answer the question above as a yoga teacher: we definitely have favourite poses too. I find that my favourite poses to practice are naturally my favourite poses to teach.

I have whole list of my favourite poses which I will quickly go through and will also share why I like them.

Adho Mukha Svanasana / Downward facing dog

I love it, because depending on your intention, this pose can be used to stretch calves, open, for lack of a better word, the shoulders, it can be a strength builder poses when you first start yoga or if you load it. It can be a great pose to practice breathing in when holding for a period (why do we only focus on breath when sitting or lying down?). It can also be a great heat builder for newer students, and it can be a more restful pose for students who have been practicing for longer. And, of course, I love that it is a partial inversion.

Adho mukha virasana / Balasana / Childs pose and all variations

Again based on your intention this pose can be a good warm up pose, open up into shoulder especially if you add blocks, stretch lats, and for me is a restful, soft pose.

Virabhadrasana 3 / Warrior 3

I love that flat shape in my spine, figuring out proprioceptively what my hips are doing and what I need to try and do with them to catch that balance, when my arms are lifted. I love the fact that, depending on what is going on in my hips, the pose always changes. I love that as you change your arms the pose changes, and the movement of arms creates different levers. And whilst it can be frustrating, I get such good feedback from this pose. I know when I have nailed it and I know when it is not making the perfect picture I want it to, and then I maybe need to maybe bend a knee, drop a hip, a shoulder – it is a bit like working on a body puzzle.

Trikonasana / Triangle

I just love the openness of this pose, the side stretch, the front hip flexion, the length in the side body. It feels delicious.

Parivrtta Trikonasana / Revolved Triangle

There is just something about that twisted, crunched up feeling and trying to find length in the side waists while trying to stack the shoulders. The one hip dropping down / the freedom in the back leg’s hip (that’s how I teach and practice it) – again it feels delicious to me. In fact, I really like twists in general, all of them. Not because they are “detoxing” me, just because they feel good in my body.

Ardha Chandrasana / Half-moon Balance

Like triangle, the openness of this pose and then the little bit of lightness as you balance here, it makes me feel a little like I am soaring.

Adho Mukha Vkrsasana / Handstand and generally all inversions

I love being upside down. I find it challenging and invigorating. I really have to focus hard on what my body is doing and which limb is where. I love the skill work involved in inversions even though it is hard work and a little frustrating sometimes. I love the strength work also and seeing how prepping for this pose has made me stronger. There is one inversion I do not love, which I will come back to later.

Private and Group Yoga Classes in Cape Town

What is interesting because I love these poses, I will often teach them. And I am aware that how I feel about them is not how all my students will feel about them. In fact, one of my biggest shock moments as a teacher was having a student who hated child’s pose. I mean seriously, child’s pose? But yes, I very soon realized that for her the extreme hip flexion required in child’s pose did not feel restful for her, but painful. Understanding this as a yoga teacher, teaching private and group yoga classes in Cape Town, means that my classes are available to people from all walks of life. For this reason, I now know that variety is important when it comes to which yoga poses I teach in my classes.

The Yoga Student Experience

Back to my horror of once walking into a class only to realize that the next 90 minutes were all about backbends. Backbends are super hard for me. I have very, for lack of a better word, “tight” shoulders, less than normal range of shoulder flexion and limited movement in my upper spine. My spine does not make an even arc when I backbend, I always feel it in my lower back. The funny thing was, this was when I used to practice yoga 6 times a week. If I remember clearly, 4 different teachers all taught backbend classes that week. By the 4th class I was ready to cry. I honestly did not feel like I could ever do another back bend. Have you ever had that feeling at the beginning of class, “sherbet, can I quickly excuse myself?”

So of course, yoga teachers have poses they hate. And yes, the poses that I hate the most will not be taught often in my yoga classes.

My Least Favourite Yoga Poses and Why

Backbends

Well, most of them except the baby ones. My worst are full Cobra and Urdhva Dhanurasana / Full Wheel - for the reasons above and because I find them painful to do. A caveat: as I have improved my shoulder flexion range these poses are getting a bit easier for me to do, and I do dislike them less than I used to. I have also learned now, 10 years after that week of back bend classes, to modify, adjust and just not let my ego get in the way.

Parivrtta ardha chandrasana / Revolved half-moon

Even though all you are doing is lifting the back leg in Parivrtta Trikonasana, this action makes it super hard for me to maintain the twist and I do not love how it feels in my top arm. It feels awkward and like very hard work and I am not entirely sure why. I can’t help but ask myself what the reward benefit ratio is, especially for an awkward pose we come into for a very short time and often only once in a class.

Shoulder stand

Here is an inversion I do not like. I am sure you have heard the saying that headstand is the king of inversions and shoulder stand is the queen of inversions. I sometimes wonder if this is perhaps not a little sexist. The so-called “easier” inversion is the queen? My feminist side does not like this. But this is not why I dislike it. I know there are other reasons why these poses are referred to as such, and I may be missing a whole subtle nuanced aspect here, but in truth my scientific mind does not agree with the literature out there on this topic.

Weirdly, I still cannot get it out of my head that this yoga pose is bad for you. I was taught that due to the extreme neck flexion this pose if very dangerous for you. Whilst I know this is not true, I still sometimes cannot get that out of my mind. An important aspect to note that even sometimes when we know something is not true we can still be illogical on our thought processes on this topic. And especially cause I am happy to practise halasana, where you are in neck flexion with added load, makess no sense right?!  In fact, when I teach this pose, I still prefer to use all the Iyengar props for it. I do have students that prefer it without the props,  I am okay with this now, as long as they have the required range of neck flexion.  I think because my C7 bone protrudes quite a bit might be the reason I love props for this pose, it gives my bones “space”. Okay so what is it about this pose that makes me not like it? Frankly, I find it a little boring. Gasp! But I do! You’re kind of upside with your arms and hands in a weird position, it is often held for very long, “to get the true benefits of the pose” – and whilst we are here I get a little distracted and bored, I know I am supposed to be mindful in the pose and breath, but personally, I would rather do legs up the wall pose.

Teaching What You Know in Yoga Classes

Why do I not teach the poses that I hate? You may be thinking it’s because I cannot do them and therefore cannot teach them. To the contrary, I feel especially well equipped to teach these poses. I know what is needed in your body to achieve these poses. And after all, I do teach them, but you won’t come across them very often in my class. Except maybe parivrtta ardha chandrasana, this one is in many twisting classes as I know many students love It.

It’s more because I feel when there are so many other poses we can be focusing on why focus on the ones I like the least?

If often hear the poses you like the least are the ones you need the most. In some ways I agree with this, but maybe it is the action of what is needed for the pose that I need the most, and not the actual pose. What I mean is yes, I have needed to work on my shoulder flexion to get better at back bends. But do I have to do back bends to get better shoulder flexion. I can work on better shoulder flexion through other mechanisms. In fact, I have done this by working on shoulder flexion for handstands which was much more fun, less painful, focused a lot on skill and strength and indirectly this has improved my backbends. What a win for me.

I bet many of you are thinking that philosophically I am missing the point, the poses you hate the most are the poses you mentally or emotionally need the most. Well, I don’t believe in this as I do not believe our tissues store emotions or trauma that can only be released through certain poses. Yes, this is definitely a blog topic for another time, or even better, I would rather refer you to my evidence based gurus, Jenni Rawlings and Travis Pollen for more on this. Jenni Rawlings has two fantastic podcasts you can listen to if you want to understand more on these topics. Pigeon pose friend or foe, her and Travis Pollen discuss more about this pose, the psoas muscle and whether or not our hips store emotion and trauma. Interoception, pain,  emotions and yoga - a little more of a technical understanding of pain science which help us grasp the concept of interception and how emotions are perceived or felt in the body. 

All About Yoga – In Studio and Online Yoga Classes in Cape Town

Understanding what we love and what we hate is not only an important part of knowing ourselves but also crucial when teaching a yoga class. I don’t believe that yoga should be painful or boring. Therefore, I make sure that when I offer a yoga class, I incorporate the poses that I enjoy doing the most, while balancing this with poses I know my students will enjoy the most too.

There is always time and space for a challenge and if my students want to go there, then we will go there. We come together in my private yoga studio in Cape Town to move our bodies in ways that we enjoy so we can leave feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. That’s the most important part to me.

I offer beginner yoga classes in Cape Town as well as online yoga classes, group yoga, and private yoga. Contact me to find out more or sign up for my 7-week pre-recorded yoga class package.