Jen Tech Yoga: Journey Into Power

Journey Into Power

Showing posts with label Journey Into Power. Show all posts

I created this 9 minute video to give you the information you need to lead a powerful power yoga class. These are the essential items which seem too simple to be real, but believe me - simple is best and simple is often challenging to put into practice.

If you've been following along, you'll know that my yoga studio will be holding our first yoga teacher training in March of 2023. As part of the process of becoming a registered yoga school recognized by Yoga Alliance, I purchased a teacher training manual template from a mutual friend. I spent six months rewriting, reorganizing, redesigning and collaborating with our YTT team to create a document meeting the current Yoga Alliance curriculum requirements and reflecting the training we will be delivering.

All Y'All Yoga's Yoga Alliance registration process is now work in progress.

With that process started and that manual "completed", I set to work on this template which aligns to the Yoga Alliance 2023 curriculum guidelines and encompasses Baptiste Power Yoga teaching methodology, ready for anyone to edit to reflect the mission and ethos of their studio.

This template is ready for you to edit, reorganize or rewrite to meet your yoga teacher training goals. I have reformatted this document into four different file types:

Adobe InDesign
Microsoft Word
Google Documents
Canva Template

The images used within this template were created by me or taken from Wikimedia and used under Creative Commons Share Alike Attribution. The document color palette was designed to be readable when printed in black and white or color and the yoga postures are represented by gender neutral stick figures.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of this YTT Template, please reach out to me.

JenTechYoga 2023 YTT Template Inquiry

Here are thumbnails of the pages and the table of contents and sections in the manual. Click to see them full size (readable).

I'm the kind of person who has to actually see the 'big picture' before I can break things down into a logical arrangement according to a calendar based time line. This is a long way of saying I have to write down all the things that are required before I can figure out how to convey the requirements.

Starting in August of 2020, All Y'All Yoga started on the path to becoming a Registered Yoga School. This starts with becoming familiar with the Yoga Alliance Requirements, the Lead Trainer requirements, and the documentation required when applying to become an RYS.

TRAINING MANUAL
DAILY SCHEDULE
POLICIES (6 IN TOTAL)
LETTER OF INTENT
SAMPLE CERTIFICATE
BACKGROUND/EXPERIENCE FOR LEAD TRAINERS AND FACILITY
TRAINEE SELECTION PROCESS
TRAINER:TRAINEE RATIO
CURRICULUM & HOURS ALLOCATION
ASSESSMENT METHODS

I achieved the Yoga Alliance YAECP® credential in August 2022 after completing Fit To Lead with the Baptiste Institute and clocking 1000 hours teaching, after becoming registered with Yoga Alliance in November of 2015. Having this step completed, I embarked on digesting all the content Yoga Alliance requires as part of a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training program. I wrote it all down on my home office whiteboard so I could look at it every day and slowly begin to formulate a process for turning these topics into a daily schedule, training manual, curriculum & hours allocation and assessment methods.

After many months of attempting to transform topics into a timeline, I came upon a formula for slicing the buckets of hours YA assigns to each major topic. I took the hours tied to each major topic and divided them into what I felt might be an appropriate distribution of time for each topic, weighting the topics and sub topics according to my perceived importance and complexity.

Our yoga studio will include training in Yin and Yoga Nidra as well as Baptiste Power Yoga, therefore the YA major topic of "Techniques, Training, Practice" got further divided into sub topics: Asana (Baptiste Power Yoga), Pranayama & Subtle Body, Meditation, Yin/Restorative and Yoga Nidra.

Color coding the major topics and sub topics helped me see how the topics link to one another while I was working out how to distribute these major topics and sub topics over the course of the 200 RYT program.

Working within the constraints of when the studio has classes already on the schedule, and when we could have the studio space available to lead the RYT curriculum within an agreeable frame of time, we reached this scheduling conclusion. This schedule would allow us to deliver the YA content over the course of 7 weekends in 2023. Creating a YTT schedule where the days of training are long but not egregious was the goal.

Working with graph paper, I arbitrarily picked a small "bucket of time" to be represented by a single square in the graph paper notebook I was working in. This single bucket of time ended up being a 15 minute block of time, since 15 minutes is easy to work with in the context of hours of training and breaking up training vs teaching vs assessing over the course of a day.

Working through the major topics and required sub topics with colored pencils and graph paper allowed me to see how many "buckets" of time each day of training would have available through the 7 weeks. Once I had the major topics laid out in color, I began to lay out the sub-topics such as Skeletal System, Physiology, Bio-mechanics, History, Philosophy, Ethics and so on. Using Friday Evenings for the sub-topics that lend themselves well to lecture-based teaching seemed an ideal path. Once I'd set the Friday night schedules, the Saturday & Sunday schedules began to become clearer.

I'd created a bulleted list of topics, sorted by importance, which I want to impart to our trainees regarding how to lead Baptiste Power Yoga. Using this bulleted list, I began to divvy up the large time buckets of Teaching Methodology and Practicum into smaller slots of time. Doing this will allow me to teach a concept, have the students practice the concept and then we can discuss how the practice went and receive feedback. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Looking at the bulleted list of prioritized topics in a spreadsheet format allowed me to build the Leader's Daily Agenda documents which we will use to keep us on time while delivering the training. Topic documentation, prioritization, and daily scheduling was also used to define the portions of the YTT dedicated to Yin/Restorative and Yoga Nidra.

I bought a copy of a YTT manual from a fellow Baptiste Power Yoga Studio owner to use as a template for the All Y'All Yoga YTT manual. I've edited, rearranged, removed and adding content to it since August and I have learned a lot about working with Adobe InDesign to create CharacterStyles, ParagraphStyles, Color Swatches, edit Anchor Options to keep images anchored to text fields. Working from an actual YTT manual gave me a foundation to start from, the confidence to strip away and add in content currently required by Yoga Alliance, as well as the content specific to All Y'All Yoga.

If you are also on the path to becoming a Registered Yoga School, perhaps this post will be helpful for you to organize your YTT weekends to meet the content requirements of Yoga Alliance. I know it is unlikely that your weekend start/stop times will be the same as those at All Y'All, but the concepts I've laid out for a way to organize the major topics, sub-topics and then divvy them up into a timeline will possibly be of use to you.

This Google Sheet will help you formulate your responses to the Yoga Alliance Application. Once you've completed the "Explanation for your RYS" for each of the core competencies, you'll be ready to copy and paste this content into the Yoga Alliance website when you are completing your Yoga School Registration application.

YA RYS Application Template 2023

I created an offline template which can be used to pre-fill out your Daily Scheduler data. The Yoga Alliance website for creating the Daily Schedule doesn't allow for submitting this data and saving your progress. It's entered all at once. The spreadsheet I made will help you organize your data in such a way that you can enter your data into the YA website and know that you will be uploading your complete schedule content. This document is an Excel spreadsheet and not a Google spreadsheet, as I couldn't figure out how to create dependent drop down lists in a Google spreadsheet.

YogaAllianceDailySchedulerSpreadsheet.xlsx

If you found any of this useful and you feel called to contribute, here is my PayPal account information. (click below)

Photo - Breath and Body Yoga Austin TX

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) serves as the largest sports medicine and exercise science organization in the world. "With more than 16,000 members and 34,000 certified professionals worldwide, ACSM remains dedicated to advancing and integrating scientific research to provide educational and practical applications of exercise science and sports medicine." ACSM makes the guidelines for what energy cost physical activity needs to meet in order for it to qualify as moderate physical activity.

Dr. Sally Sherman Ph.D. and her team led the scientific study of the physical fitness aspects of Baptiste Power Yoga and have published the paper "ENERGY EXPENDITURE IN YOGA VERSUS OTHER FORMS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY". She gathered 40 yoga participants and connected them to laboratory equipment that would measure their oxygen intake as well as their heart rate. The participants performed Journey Into Power in a non-heated room, with a pace of five breaths per pose. Each breath was a two-count for the inhale and a two-count for the exhale. The data shows that Journey Into Power meets the metabolic criteria to be categorized as moderate-intensity physical activity. The physical activity guidelines for Americans were published In 2020 and now it includes vinyasa yoga as a viable way to meet the guidelines. This was not the case in the previous guidelines so that was big news.

Dr. Sherman has also worked to publish another study titled "Feasibility of Integration of Yoga in a Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention: A Randomized Trial" which concluded that yoga was good for weight loss and participants preferred 20 to 40 minute classes over longer (60 minute) classes.

This is all very good news that power yoga or vinyasa style yoga is becoming more integrated into the popular mindset of what is physical exercise. The physical aspect of a yoga practice is just one of the beneficial parts, but having more people become aware of the physical benefits of yoga will ultimately lead to more people doing yoga and reaping the mental and spiritual benefits of a yoga practice over time.

Post settings Labels Baptiste Power Vinyasa, Journey Into Power Published on 4/27/22 3:52 PM Permalink https://www.jentechyoga.com/2022/04/baptiste-power-yoga-recognized-by.html Location Search Description Options

A masterfully themed yoga class is a beautiful thing to behold and to experience. I recently had that experience in a class led by Leandra Antonutti where she wove the concept of a lizard losing or shedding its tail into the class theme. She linked a lizard losing its tail into our practice by having us do lots of lizard-based poses but she also spoke to where a lizard doesn't make losing its tail right or wrong and it doesn't try to fix it. She then spoke to how people often get caught up in experiencing a loss of some kind and we go into trying to fix it rather than seeing the loss as an opportunity to regenerate, rebirth and begin again. I had the experience of "HOW DID SHE DO THAT?" while I was practicing.

I like to break things down and try to figure them out, so once her website went live, I took the time to dive into the pacing of what she said, when she said it, how often she gave us silence and when she spoke to the physical cues of the yoga practice of Journey Into Power.

I know this is WAY overboard behavior. I was hoping to find a magical pattern in her lovingly themed classes so I compared the theme in "Give Up The Small Fights" with "Shed Your Tail", but I did not find an obvious A+B+C=D pattern. What I did find gave me enough of a structure to play with creating themes for my classes.

First there's the theme - clearly stated - "The theme of today's class is X". For this I called it the concept. Where I saw a clear link to Baptiste Methodology, I simply called that methodology. Any phrases that supported the action tied to the concept, I called those action/access. Anytime a phrase was used to describe something counter to the action/access, I called those constraints.

From here I started color coding and underlining the types of phrases throughout the class. I made notes on when she was speaking to anything OTHER than the physical yoga practice. Making notes with timestamps of when she was speaking, when she was quiet and what pose we were in when this was happening. I then used the Journey Into Power outline (which she didn't teach strictly from) and color coded the sections where she spoke to THEME, METHODOLOGY, ACTION/ACCESS or CONSTRAINT. I was looking for a pattern, but none was obvious even after comparing the lizard class with the small fights class.

Luca Richards is holding a Grow Tips Live - How to Deliver an Impactful Theme In Your Classes on September 9th. I'm excited to learn about how Luca themes classes, now that I've dissected two of Leandra's powerfully themed classes and come up with a hypothesis of sorts.

Until then, I used the CONCEPT, METHODOLOGY, ACTION/ACCESS, CONSTRAINT quadrant to theme two classes so far. The feedback I received on the first class was that I should not use the word 'maybe' when offering modifications for poses as the word 'maybe' is disempowering, and that I should speak to my experiences around the theme of the class. Here is the worksheet I used for the second class I themed with the quadrant method so you can see my thought processes.

With time and practice, it will get easier to speak to themes, action/access concepts and constraints without needing notes. For now while we're teaching from a standing desk in the yoga studio, I don't think that having notes with me is such a terrible thing while I'm trying on this new way of teaching.

Leave me a message about how you theme classes? I'm curious!

These are the days of choice. Choosing to get on your mat, choosing to show up for yourself, for your community.

There are many studios or teachers who are offering free or donation based live Zoom yoga classes online any given day of the week. This list is by no means complete and will certainly change from week to week, but this is a pin in the bulletin board of now.

These studios and teachers teach from the Baptiste methodology and the practice may resemble the Journey Into Power sequence (or maybe not!).

All Y'All Yoga
Sat 12-1:30 EST Donation/Beginners

Leandra Antonutti - Free
Fri 9-9:30a EST
Sun 11-12p EST
Mon 11:30-12p EST
Thur 5-5:30 EST

Bethany Lyons - Donation Based/Free LYONS DEN NYC
M-F 5-6p EST
Sun 12-1:30p EST

Baptiste Power Yoga with Austin Kapetanakis - Donation Based/Free
Tues. 8:00 PM EST - 30 Min Meditation Session
Wed 12:00 PM EST - 45 Min Power Flow
Thur 7:15 PM EST - 75 Min Power Flow
Fri 9:00 AM EST - 60 Min Power Flow

Brandon Sommers - Free
Daily 10:30a EST (zoom link) 30 min

Alisa Van Cleef - Free
Tues & Thur 2pm EST (zoom link) 30 min

Warrior One - Orlando - Free Zoom classes
So many daily free options! Check the schedule

Power Yoga Canada - Free
Sun 11-12p EST - Kinndli McCollum

Baptiste Power Yoga Indianapolis - Donation Based
Sun 9:30-10:45a EST - Donation Power + Meditation 75

Baptiste Power Yoga Capitol District
Sat 4-5p EST - Free

Baptiste Power Yoga St. Louis - Free
Thur 11:30a EST (starts June 25th)

NYC Yoga Project - Donation Based
Several classes a day, 7 days a week

5 Boro Power Yoga - Free
Mon 7-8:30pm EST Beginners
Tues 5:30-6:30p EST
Thur 5:30-6:30p EST
Sat 7:15-8:15p EST Yoga for Recovery
Sun 9-10a EST

Anjali Power Yoga Philly - Free
Sun 12-1pm EST

I'm putting the classes I'm taking on my Jen Tech Yoga calendar & you can see them in the calendar widget at the top of every page. Look for [TAKING] in big letters. See you on the mat! <3 p="">

^^ These are all engaged, attentive, powerful Baptiste Yoga teachers! ^^

What makes an extraordinary Zoom yoga experience for your yoga students?

I've been taking LOTS of yoga classes over Zoom since the US went into Coronavirus quarantine. My first Zoom class was with Austin Kapetenakis, and I'd basically been waiting years to be able to take his class (since we met at Level One in 2016).

The most powerful Zoom classes I've taken are the ones where the teacher has seen me and spoken to me by name during the practice. If I can see the teacher's face and they look engaged, happy or interested - I'm engaged more as a student. If I can see them looking off screen at something else, that is a way for me to check out (the teacher isn't interested). My least powerful classes have been the ones where the teacher is doing all the yoga and is not engaging with us students in any meaningful or specific way. If I wanted to watch a fitness video to do yoga, I would do that. I want the engagement that comes from a live yoga class. I want to know that the instructor can SEE me and is holding space for me for my practice. I want to know that the instructor is OUT HERE with us the students and not in their head or their body because they're doing the yoga. I want to be called out, encouraged, supported and this happens by being seen and by being acknowledged by the instructor.

First off, I know that it is hard as crap to lead a Journey Into Power when you're doing the asana. You can't breathe when you are cueing breath. You can't see your students when you teach from the mat and the most powerful thing that rises from leading Journey Into Power is seeing your students and letting your students see you. This fact hasn't changed just because we are using Zoom and aren't in a physical yoga studio.

I wrote about my experience and takaways from the Baptiste Power Yoga Instructor's Course I took (led by Luca Richards) and all these things STILL APPLY even in virtual yoga classes.

Foundational Elements to Leading a Extraordinary Baptiste Power Yoga Class:

Look, listen and give tools
Speak into each and every
Look for what's needed in the moment
Have a clear purpose for playing music if you do play music
Build in active rest and recovery into a beginners class
Keep beginner students in the vinyasa, allow them to have their experience (whatever that is)
Use essential language. Movement > body part > direction
Teach to the middle-strongest students and up. Their energy will empower newer students in the room.
Offer a challenge to your students by giving them space to take themselves to their edge (whatever that looks like for them from moment to moment)
Teach from Journey Into Power as written
During Integration, get the students moving
Be with the students in the room and keep the energy moving forward.
Allow for flow in Awakening by removing obstructions to movement
Reestablish drishti, ujjayi and foundation in the Grounding sequence
Establish trust with your students by giving them a clear measure of how many repetitions or breaths will occur for each pose.
Count sequentially with the end number first, then count up 1, 2, 3, 4.
Switch sides on the second to last number as the transition between sides
Keep your delivery strong through Opening sequence
Leave people in the experience of themselves

What is different and needed when teaching virtual yoga with Zoom

Have good lighting on your face so the students can see YOU as they might look up at their screen during their practice.
If you are leading class from a position close to your laptop microphone, the laptop microphone will be sufficient for your speaking audio.
Do. Not. Multitask.

No texting
No typing
Turn on do not disturb if you use a Mac laptop, mute system sounds if you're using a Windows laptop. This will keep students from hearing your message or email notifications through your laptop microphone

If you demonstrate the poses while you're teaching

Use Bluetooth earbuds with built-in microphones so your speaking will be audible when you are far away from your laptop.
Make sure your body is well lit if you are demonstrating for your students

If you know you have beginners in your class, work with one of your more experienced students in class and "Spotlight" them in Zoom so the newer students can learn by creating shapes with their bodies.

I've seen Bright Heart Yoga (Cupertino, CA), Flux Power Yoga (Bellingham, WA), Soul Fire Power Yoga (St. Catharine's ON) and Cycle Fusion (Morgantown, WV) utilize other teachers or students as the spotlit student.

It is not necessary or required for YOU to do the yoga with your students simply because you are teaching from a video platform like Zoom.

See your students as they are practicing.
Speak to your students by name and speak to what is needed.

When sealing the practice, unmute all participants, acknowledge your students after the three OMs are complete and all the students' eyes are open.

This is an opportunity for connectedness, acknowledge them and make eye contact and have their microphones ON so they can contribute to the closing of class.

Zoom meeting settings best practices

Mute participants upon entry ON - Automatically mute all participants when they join the meeting. The host controls whether participants can unmute themselves.
Participants video ON - Start meetings with participant video on. Participants can change this during the meeting.
Join before host ON - Allow participants to join the meeting before the host arrives
Screen sharing - Host Only
Annotation - OFF
Whiteboard - OFF
Remote Control - OFF
Enable waiting room - optional

If the waiting room feature is enabled, attendees will see a customizable "Please standby" sort of message, letting them know class will begin soon. The meeting owner admits each participant into the meeting one at a time.

Teaching with music over Zoom

Screen Sharing to share audio over Zoom

I've had a couple classes where the instructor was using screen sharing and I've found that the bluetooth earbuds/mic audio gets compromised in favor of the clarity of the music at my end of the Zoom call. The teacher's audio was a little "tinny" and "thin" sounding but the music was clear. The exception to this has been when the teacher is wearing a wireless mic headset for their speaking audio. I believe this is because the wireless headset mic is not bluetooth audio.
The instructors who teach with this style of wireless mic headset are Bethany Lyons (Lyon's Den NYC), Paige Elenson (Healthy Happy Hour Nairobi Kenya) and the instructors at Indigo Yoga Studio (Fort Worth TX). Go take a class with one or all of them so you can hear the difference in the wireless mic audio compared to laptop audio or bluetooth earbuds.

I dropped into a Zoom yoga class recently to check out a teacher I'd been curious about (not a Baptiste yoga teacher) and came to find that the first 10 minutes of the Zoom call was filled with the participants doing the following:

trying to tell everyone else to mute themselves
trying to tell the instructor they couldn't hear her (she wasn't using a mic and was very far away from the video and mic source)
trying to tell the instructor they couldn't see her because she was so far away and not well lit
trying to tell the other participants to stop sharing their screens

The teacher never saw any of these chat messages because once she started the Zoom call, she walked away to the front of the room and got on her mat and started talking (although nobody could hear her). Once everyone finally muted themselves, she was still hard to hear. It was a follow-along-and-watch-the-instructor-do-the-yoga yoga class which means that as a student, you had to constantly be looking over at your screen to see what was being done by the teacher. This became potentially dangerous (IMO) as the teacher moved her body into a shoulder stand. I could see other students on the screen try to mimic her shape, while twisting their necks around to see their screens. Several other students were sitting on camera, texting on their phones, not engaged in the class at all.

The class was an excellent example of how sideways a Zoom yoga class can go when simple guidelines like muting all participants on entry, disabling screen sharing, using a microphone and good lighting aren't followed.

In conclusion: when I take a Baptiste Yoga class online, I expect a similar experience to being in a Baptiste yoga studio - having the instructor see me and teach from the methodology. If the teacher is teaching from the yoga mat, doing the practice, they can't see me or anyone else and I might as well be working out to a YouTube video.

In October of 2019, I attended the Baptiste Power Yoga Instructor Credential Course held at Practice Yoga in Naples, Florida. I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with 31 other Baptiste yogis as we learned how to create an extraordinary (yoga) classroom experience.

Luca Richards was our program facilitator and this is my takeaway from the weekend program. I'm phrasing my writing in the terms of "I" rather than "you".

The degree to which I will be able to connect with my students is proportional to my ability to stay out of my head and come from the awareness that all humans are intrinsically connected and have the same basic needs. Connecting to other people does not come from my thinking. It comes from being present to the other person and listening to understand. Connecting happens outside of me. It happens out there, where the other people are. My awareness of the relatedness I have with people is happening wherever I am, not just when I'm in a yoga studio. Each interaction I have is an opportunity to connect, cultivate a relationship or observe our relatedness.

The concept of "bridges and pathways" was discussed. The example of a bridge was that if I can get my students to understand that the body alignment of heels up and over toes is applicable in crescent lunge, fish, high plank, low plank then I have accomplished something very powerful. A pathway is a new future, not built on the past or my expectations or how I showed up or how other people showed up. A pathway could be workshopping a pose in a new way with props that allows for play and space for what is possible.

As part of this program, I've been asked to teach all 11 sequences and all of the poses inside those sequences. It was explained to us that something gets created and generated by me teaching the sequence and my level of commitment to leading Journey Into Power as it is written. In each of the 11 sequences, each pose has a peak and is made of a beginning, middle and end. The sequence also represents a whole range of motion for the body. The practice of Journey Into Power can be scaled up or down as needed. The scaling is done by adding or subtracting intensity, range of motion or the length of time for practice.

Instructing an effective class begins by me bringing the practice alive in peoples bodies and minds. The level of power I have in the classroom is dictated by how much time it takes me to transform intention into reality in the student's experience in real time. When the intention of each sequence of Journey Into Power is realized, the yogi is left in a renewed experience of power, vitality and freedom.

Class begins by me acknowledging the participants for being there¹, who they are for me², who I am for them³ and what we will be up to on the mat today⁴. An example of this could look like: "Thank you all for making time for yourselves and coming to your mat today¹. You are an inspiration to me by simply showing up². I will be your accountability partner today³ as we focus on core engagement throughout this next 60 minutes of Journey Into Power⁴."

Timing of the Journey Into Power sequence was discussed as we worked through each of the 11 sequences. The key for the Integration sequence was for me to get the students moving. Once I get the physicalness of the practice implanted, what starts to happen is that I'm allowing for the students to have the experience of their practice, an experience of their self. This is an important point so I will restate it another way. The student's experience on their mat is of their self, not of me. Their most powerful experience will be in their body in their practice, not in what I say, who I quote or what song I might play.

For reference, here is the chart showing the timing for a 60, 75 and 90 minute Journey Into Power class. I also blogged about this timing and a chart that several other yoga teachers have used to guide their teaching.

Journey Into Power Timing	60	75	90
INTEGRATION	2	2	2
AWAKENING	8	10	12
VITALITY	5	8	10
EQUANIMITY	5	5	8
GROUNDING	5	8	8
IGNITING	8	8	10
STABILITY	3	5	5
OPENING	8	8	10
RELEASE	5	5	5
REJUVENATION	5	8	10
DEEP REST	6	8	10

Right away I saw how I'd been been leading less effective classes by putting my focus onto what I was saying that I hoped was powerful or insightful. I'd been spending too much time speaking during Integration. By trying to have a unique file name when I uploaded the class recording, (I often record my classes and post them online) I was putting the focus on me and what I wanted from the class. I now number each Journey Into Power class sequentially (rather than have an preconceived idea for a class title before class starts). This frees me up to teach from the Baptiste methodology and speak to what is happening in the room in real time.

I made a list of guidelines from this program in the form of do instead of do not and in my own words.

Effective Instruction of the Journey Into Power in a Baptiste Power Yoga Class

Have a clear purpose for playing music if you do play music
Build in active rest and recovery into a beginners class
Keep beginner students in the vinyasa, allow them to have their experience (whatever that is)
Use essential language. Movement > body part > direction
Teach to the middle-strongest students and up. Their energy will empower newer students in the room.
Offer a challenge to your students by giving them space to take themselves to their edge (whatever that looks like for them from moment to moment)
Teach from Journey Into Power as written
During Integration, get the students moving
Be with the students in the room and keep the energy moving forward.
Allow for flow in Awakening by removing obstructions to movement
Organize the students mats with the more experienced students at the front of the room (newer students learn by creating shapes with their bodies)
Maintain safe practice space between students mats front to back (a minimum spacing of 12 inches)
Reestablish drishti, ujjayi and foundation in the Grounding sequence
Establish trust with your students by giving them a clear measure of how many repetitions or breaths will occur for each pose.
Count sequentially with the end number first, then count up 1, 2, 3, 4.
Switch sides on the second to last number as the transition between sides
Room lights are on and delivery strong through Opening sequence
Leave people in the experience of themselves
In a 75 minute class there is time for one alignment demonstration
In a 90 minute class there is time for introducing 2 alignment demonstrations (two minutes max)
When sealing the practice, acknowledge your students after the three OMs are complete and all the students' eyes are open. This is an opportunity for connectedness, acknowledge them and make eye contact.

Feedback

Ask if a teacher is open to receiving feedback

Make your feedback winnable (something concrete that can be modified)
Avoid the keep / stop / start style of feedback and focus on "Is it winnable?"

Scaling Journey Into Power

INTEGRATION

Get the students moving

AWAKENING

No holds of poses in Sun Salutations in a 60 min JIP

Always allow 5 breaths in downward facing dog in each Sun A and between each Sun B

VITALITY

Scale up/down lengths of holds and breaths in twists

In 90 min JIP possible alignment demonstration here

EQUANIMITY