40 creative yoga class themes
What are your students more likely to remember after they roll up their mats: the pose sequence or how the practice made them feel?
While it’s important to be thoughtful about class structure and the pose sequence, what often gets pushed aside is the thread that holds the yoga class together. This is the theme, sometimes referred to as a dharma talk.
What if, instead of thinking of the theme last, you began with it first?
Yoga class themes get to the heart of yoga itself and go well beyond the mat. When you share what yoga really is — the science and philosophy of yoking to one’s inherent wholeness — you also honor yoga’s roots and combat the Western colonization of yoga as just a physical practice.
There’s no shortage of concepts you can explore, but sometimes – like writer’s block – they don’t flow as easily. If that’s the case, get inspired with these 40 creative yoga class themes – gathered from life, books, quotes, music and yes, yoga classes. I’m grateful to all my teachers who have inspired me to write this list.
Create an experience
Ask students to think back to their first yoga class – how every movement felt new and different. Help them relive that feeling as they move and breathe.
Explore what it feels like to feel more spaciousness by using drishti to intentionally create focus and expansion of mind. For example, instead of having students focus on a point on a distant wall, cue them to see the space halfway between them and the wall.
Imagine you have 3D vision and “see” the body from every angle, not just front and back. This is especially helpful for cueing breathing. Encourage breathing into the back because 60% of the lungs reside in the back half of the body.
Create energy and an experience that’s opposite of the day’s weather. This cultivation of the opposite is inspired by the concept of pratipaksha bhavana (Yoga Sutras 2.33). For example, is it raining? Energize the class. Sunny and hot? Cool down with restorative poses and shitali pranayama.
Encourage students to explore the mat and postures with a childlike curiosity, helping them to tap into play and wonder.
Match your pose sequences and other yoga techniques, like pranayama and meditation, to the current season.
Gratitude has been shown to be a powerful mood and health booster. Make space for moments of being grateful during the practice.
If you usually teach with music, turn it off to allow your students to focus solely on hearing themselves breathe and move. Traditional yoga practices were not taught with background music, and this can help students go beyond their senses to connect more deeply within.
If your students are able, comfortable with, and it’s an appropriate, safe environment, have them wear blindfolds to experience what yoga feels like, rather than what it looks like.
After their bodies are warmed up, inspire students’ intuition by giving them some time to choose their own posture or movements for about 6-10 breaths.
Let’s get physical
To affect the annamaya kosha, the physical sheath of the body, here are a few suggestions:
Focus on the four corners of the body – the hips and the shoulders. These two have a close relationship when it comes to posture.
Guide students to appreciate parts of the body that they may have a difficult relationship with. Encourage them to see their body through a lens of self-compassion.
Focus on core strength – the deep inner strength both physical and mental that guides us through life.
Observe the differences between one side of the body and the other.
Make every movement purposeful and deliberate. Don’t rush the breath, fall in line with it.
Keep your drishti on a specific chakra at different moments during class to emphasize the qualities of that area.
Choose a specific pose to come back to throughout class (such as chair pose) with cues to increase flexibility or increase the challenge each time.
Emphasize the feet – placement, weight distribution, how the toes spread – even when the feet aren’t touching the ground.
If possible and available, create a whole class with the deliberate use of props to steady the body and make poses more accessible.
To encourage balance and equanimity, incorporate one movement after twisting that brings the body back to balance. For example, Seated Spinal Twist followed by Seated Cow/Cat.
Inspiring quotes
“Ignorance is regarding the impermanent as permanent.” –Sutra 2.5, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda
“Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.” –Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk
“We cannot add happiness to this world; similarly, we cannot add pain to it either.” –Swami Vivekananda from The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Vol. 1
“Life is beautiful because of you.”
Think light and feel light. “Do not think of yourself as a small, compressed, suffering thing. Think of yourself as graceful and expanding, no matter how unlikely it may seem at the time.” –Light on Life by B.K.S. Iyengar
“Where you are right now is exactly where you need to be.”
“By your stumbling, the world is perfected.” –Sri Aurobindo (via Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga by Rolf Gates and Katrina Kenison)
“Transcending mind-made limitations doesn’t mean you stop being yourself. On the contrary, you become more yourself than ever before.” –Steve Ross, author of Happy Yoga: 7 Reasons Why There’s Nothing to Worry About
“The highest spiritual practice is self-observation without judgment.” –Swami Kripalu
“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” –Ray Bradbury
Feel the love
“To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say the ‘I.'” –Ayn Rand
“Some people are sent to us for quick lessons, some are sent to us for seasonal lessons and some are sent to us for a lesson we are to be taught over a lifetime.” –The Daily Love
Create an intention to love one of your traits that you wouldn’t think to immediately self love. This trait could be physical, mental or emotional. Reaffirm your love throughout your practice.
“The worst prison would be a closed heart.” –John Paul II
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” –1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV version)
Instead of envisioning what love looks like, envision what love feels like in every yoga posture and during meditation or savasana.
At the heart of all life is the heart. Henry David Thoreau said it well: “Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” Ask students to surrender to the flow of their bodies in each posture and love where they’re at – no judgment.
What’s your best side? Almost everyone seems to favor one side of their face for photos or one side of their body in certain yoga poses. Ask students to observe the differences between both their sides, the right masculine and the left feminine, and send love to both.
“Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” –Rumi
Place special emphasis on backbends and heart openers, such as reverse plank, upward facing dog, camel pose, wheel, cobra and bridge. Of course, warm your students up before dropping them right into their heart center.