Tips On Designing A Yoga Lesson Plan For Beginners

By Faye Martins

Yoga is a discipline that can quickly become a passion for people of any age. As a practice that promotes physical and mental health, more and more people are choosing to attend yoga classes to build strength, increase flexibility, lose weight, tone the muscles or to get rid of stress. Unfortunately, many of the class lesson plans are not designed for beginners who are trying the discipline out for the first time. If you are in the process of targeting beginners for your class, here are some very valuable design tips for instructors designing a yoga lesson plan catering to students who have no yoga experience.

Choosing the Appropriate Poses 

When you are selecting poses to teach your class, you should choose poses that are going to strengthen core muscles first. Choosing poses that will help beginners improve their posture as they coordinate strength to support their body weight will help them gain the flexibility and strength that they will need to successfully do other poses later down the line. Standing poses that use the large muscles in the thighs and back will strengthen weak backs as they increase circulation and elongate the spine. By focusing on standing poses that promote good structural alignment and strengthening, you can give your students the pay-off they want and the tools that they need to advance into more difficult poses later on. 

Keep the Sequencing As Consistent As Possible 

When you are designing a yoga lesson plan, the sequencing of the poses should be consistent from class to class. This is especially true when you are teaching beginners who have not had the opportunity to teach their body the ropes. Consistency is important because the students will learn from repetition. As they become familiar with the sequencing, their bodies will be easier to train and the postures will be easier to remember. It will become second nature for your students to get into the right posture, allowing your beginner students to experience the meditative feeling of yoga that many beginner students do not.

Ask Your Students and Modify When Necessary 

Not all teachers design a perfect beginner lesson plan the first time around. You should learn from trial and error and ask your students if they feel like the class is too challenging or too easy. Newer students face common challenges when they are learning yoga. At the end of a new lesson that you have recently designed, ask the students which poses are most challenging, which feel most comfortable and if they have any recommendations. Ask them if anything is sore or tight, and then decide whether or not adding or removing a pose is necessary. The best yoga instructors are instructors who can help students improve but who are flexible with their lesson planning when their lessons are not working.

As a yoga instructor who earns a living teaching people to be healthy and passionate about yoga, it is very important to be encouraging. Make sure that you are adding instruction when you notice that your students are struggling or sensitive to a specific pose. By doing this, you can keep your students happy and keep them coming to your class. After a few weeks or months, you will see a lot of improvement and may need to begin designing a new lesson that is a bit more challenging.

Faye Martins, is a Yoga teacher and a graduate of the Yoga teacher training program at: Aura Wellness Center in, Attleboro, MA.