Katharina's Yoganotes: Planning yoga classes and remembering sequences
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.
Katharina's yoga journey
Katharina from Switzerland discovered yoga in 2009 when she suffered from back pain during her exchange year at university. She mainly practices Hatha Yoga with some occasional Vinyasa and Flow classes mixed in.
Three years ago she embarked on a 4-year-long teacher training course where she studies, asana, anatomy, yoga philosophy, meditation and pranayama. She also started teaching a couple of regular classes each week to apply what she is learning in the course.
Katharina's Yoganotes
Even though Katharina usually doesn’t draw, she enjoys drawing yoga stick figures to create her sequences. The visual overviews helps her to create a balanced sequence and estimate if the flow will fit into her 60 minute class. She also finds it easier to remember a sequence after sketching it out.
Before discovering Yoganotes, Katharina tried different methods plan her classes. For a while she used an online tool where you can select various images and put them together into a flow. It was OK, but ultimately it was quite tedious to find the right posture in the big catalogue and quite often, certain postures or specific variations were missing
“It’s also not the same to work on a computer. It feels quite technical and sterile. I prefer sitting down with pen and paper and making notes by hand.”
When Katharina plans her classes, she finds inspiration in her every day life.
“Usually, there is a topic present in my life right now that I can use as a starting point for a sequence. When there’s a lack of inspiration, I browse through books or yoga magazines or I use a yoga card deck to play around with a sequence.”
Besides teaching her weekly class, Katharina also shares her yoga knowledge with friends and family: She recently put together a series of asanas for her father who suffers from a hip condition. At first her dad was sceptical if yoga could really help him, but after practicing the sequence together with his daughter and feeling the benefits, he now uses the sketched summary sheet Katharina made for him to exercise for 30 mins every day.
Katharina writes a blog on yoga (in German and French) and you can find her on Instagram under the name of @yogarina_.
Do you want to learn to sketch yoga stick figures, too?
The Yoganotes book teaches you a 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.