This week’s Open Doors yoga class sequence was inspired by my grandmother’s summer garden.
For all my yoga class sequences, I use a six stage strategy for planning. If you’re not familiar with it, you might find the following blog posts helpful:
In this post, I’ll be sharing the posture sequence for the Open Doors yoga class focused on doors and/or gateways.
📓 You can find additional resources for class planning inside the Yoga Sequencing Society. With a library of centering and closing scripts, quotes, and templates, putting together transformative yoga classes has never been easier. Learn more about the Yoga Sequencing Society.
Prefer videos? Practice the open doors sequence with me.
using this week's theme
This week’s yoga class it suitable for all levels and originally planned for a slow flow or gentle style class. If you’d like to increase the effort, you can substitute more challenging postures or add in Sun Salutations.
👉 The italicized paragraphs denote where you can customize and bring in your own story or lesson.
For a long time, my grandmother kept a garden. She had a fence that wound around it, and rickety wooden gate you had to step through to get inside. The creak as the gate opened let me know I was stepping into another world, a magical one, where plants and vegetables grew in abundance.
A lot of doorways are like that, if we only have the courage to step through.
Download the free Open Doors posture sequence PDF.
introduction + centering
Start in: LYING RELEASE
During the breath phase focus on deep belly breathing.
Doors, gates, portals. They all take you from one space to another. The quote I chose is from JRR Tolkien who wrote The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I’ve watched the movies and appreciate the bravery it took for Frodo to leave the comfort of The Shire to deliver the ring to Mordor.
Another favorite magical journey series is Outlander where Claire goes through a standing stone and lands 200 years in the past.
We don’t have Shires and magical standing stones, but we have physical, mental, and metaphorical doors that once we step through forever change us.
You can choose a different quote if it prompts a meaningful story or lesson for you. Or if you prefer, you can share the quotes throughout the class without a specific personal story. You can find more quotes about doors and gateways in the Yoga Sequencing Society.
OPEN DOORS warm up
I’m using GATE as the inspiration asana. Many of the postures I’ve selected in the six different stages will build up to gate or mirror certain elements like stretching your side body and inner thighs.
👉 If you’re uncertain of a posture or how I’ve sequenced it together, be sure to watch the video.
- Continue from Lying Release
- (R) Knee to chest, ½ Happy Baby
- Knee open to side, reclined twist
- Repeat on (L) side
- Both knees to chest, roll to sitting
- Butterfly, ½ butterfly, side stretch
- Fold over
- Seated twist
OPEN DOORS WORKING ASANAS
Inspiration Asana: GATE
Just like a door or gate leads to another space, GATE opens your entire side body, allowing for a side stretch from your IT band all the way up and out through your fingertips.
As we work through this set of asanas you’ll be reaching up and out. When you do, visualize yourself reaching for the handle, the last step before opening it and changing everything.
Section A: Standing
- Table/Cow/Cat
- Thread the needle
- GATE (R)
- Side plank on knee
- Foldover, leg out
- Repeat on opposite side
Section B: Plank/Downdog
- Table
- Cross leg behind
- Balancing table
- Tiger’s tail
- Repeat on opposite side
Section C: Standing Balance
- Table, downdog
- Forward bend
- Knee to chest (R)
- Knee out to side
- Warrior 3
- Repeat from forward bend on (L)
OPEN DOORS deep stretch/floor asanas
Inspiration asana: GATE
👉 If you’re uncertain of a posture or how I’ve sequenced it together, be sure to watch the video.
- Garland
- Butterfly (repeated element from Warmup)
- Pigeon (R)
- Firelog (R)
- Repeat Pigeon, Firelog (L)
- Roll down to reclined
OPEN DOORS COOL-DOWN
Inspiration asana: GATE
- Bridge
- Reclined bound angle
- Happy baby
- Waterfall
- Reclined spinal twist (L, R)
final relaxation
Final relaxation, also known as SAVASANA, allows your body’s processes to return to normal, induces deep relaxation, and prepares you for meditation. So please never skip it.
The easiest and simplest method for a final relaxation is to repeat the centering with a few tweaks. I call this “book ending” because the start and end of class mirror each other.
For the Open Doors theme, you could:
- Bring in different quotes.
- Read a poem or passage about doors, gates, gateways, portals, etc.
- Wrap up your story or lesson about gates.
- Provide a guided relaxation about doors or openings.
- Honor silence, that moment before you step through a door.
- Then bring participants out of savasana and end class.
LOOKING FOR MORE TIPS ON PLANNING YOGA CLASSES?
- If you’re a DIYer on a tight budget, check out my Pinterest boards on sequencing yoga classes and yoga class playlists.
- For the DIYers who like designing classes but hate the constant hamster wheel of research, you’ll love The Yoga Teacher’s Ultimate Class Planner filled with hundreds of theme ideas, intentions, and quotes.
- Still nervous or burned out trying to put meaningful classes together? Then the Yoga Sequencing Society is for you. Never feel unprepared or overwhelmed again with our library of done-for-you sequences and scripts.
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