Florence's Yoganotes: Taking notes of yoga classes and sharing with friends
In this series I introduce you to Yogi(ni)s from around the world who started sketching their yoga practice with yoga stick figures after discovering the Yoganotes book.
Florence’s yoga journey
Florence is a psychology student in the second year of her master’s degree who discovered yoga about two years ago. At age 19 she suffered from a condition that kept her bedridden for almost a year, unable to walk more than 500 meters without being breathless. And even several years later during her studies, it felt like illness had never really left her body completely and she constantly felt exhausted and lacking energy.
“I sat all day to take classes, studied in the evening, and watched television before going to bed. I felt like I did not take care of my body. To tell you the truth, I felt old when I was only 23 years old.”
In the beginning, Florence committed to practicing 5 times a week because she wanted to get the most out of paying for an unlimited monthly pass at her yoga studio. Today, the money isn’t the driver anymore:
“Now I practise yoga each single day because yoga has really become a part of me. Yoga makes me proud to be able to accomplish my goals with patience, but most importantly yoga has given me back my vital energy that I thought I had lost forever, my prana.”
Besides the physical benefits, Florence also started an inner journey:
Yoga gives me the strength and the courage to undertake things I would not have been able to do before. Yoga made me realize that I have the power to change things.
She is planning to do a yoga teacher training this year because she wants to give others the same positive experience that she was offered through the yoga practice:
“Sharing is the most important thing in life and one of its biggest pleasures.”
Florence’s Yoganotes
Florence uses Yoganotes to take notes of a class that she followed so she can do them again at home. She also creates her own sequences and shares them with friends.
Although she doesn’t draw at all in other aspects of her life, (because her drawings never look like she wants them to), she enjoys sketching out her yoga sequences.
And she noticed another positive effect from drawing yoga asanas:
“Through drawing I also got better at understanding how my body is placed in space. I find it easier to visualise the different body parts and their movements in my mind.”
As Florence uses a notebook without lines, she uses an extra sheet with guidelines that she places underneath the page when she sketches. The lines shine through the paper and help her to get the proportions of her stick figures right. Great trick!
Nobody is perfect right from the start… it can be a bit tricky to get the shapes and proportions right at first, but with a bit of practice, it does get easier. Above is one of Florence’s practice sheet working on sketching Warrior 1 and 2.
You can find Florence on Instagram at @asteria.yoga.
Do you want to learn to sketch yoga stick figures, too?
The Yoganotes book teaches you an easy-to-learn system for sketching simple yoga stick figures that express any asana clearly with a few strokes. It contains step-by-step sketching instructions for over 80 asanas and their variations and shows you how to combine them into full sequences.