How I Organize My Yoga Music Library (Mini Series Episode 2/3)

In this episode of Yoga Insider, we’re talking about how to organize your yoga playlists in a way that supports long-term sustainable teaching. If you’re spending hours creating playlists from scratch every single week… there’s a better way!

I’ll walk you through how I organize my music library, categorize music by energy instead of genre, and refine playlists over time.

This episode offers quick, practical ideas to help you streamline your prep process and build a playlist library that works really well for you (especially if you need a great playlist and don't have time to make a new one!)

Instagram: @alexandria.waycott

YouTube: @yogainsiderpodcast

Website: www.alexandriawaycottyoga.com

Send me an email! alexandriawaycottyoga@gmail.com

Music & Production by Kyler Pierce

Photography featured in cover art by Colton Muma

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back to Yoga Insider Podcast. I'm your host, Alex Wakecott. If you're new here, I've been teaching yoga for over 14 years and I've built a completely independent yoga business that doesn't rely on studio classes. I offer pre-registered yoga series in my community as well as continuing education for yoga teachers who want to refine their skills. Over the years, I've learned a lot about what it takes to build a yoga business that's actually sustainable. And part of my mission is to have real conversations with yoga teachers around the world about what it's actually like to work in the modern yoga industry. That is exactly what Yoga Insider Podcast is here for. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and let's dive into this week's episode. Now, this week I am sharing part two of a three-part podcast mini-series all about using music more intentionally in your yoga classes. Last week we discussed how to create music playlists using the same structure that you use to sequence a class. We looked at how creating a playlist that builds gradually and follows the natural arc of your sequence can feel really cohesive for you and for your students. This week I want to talk about how to organize your music playlists into a more sustainable library or system. Now, I think a lot of teachers, myself included, sometimes spend maybe a little bit too much time like recreating or building playlists from scratch every single week. And I feel like it can be really easy to get caught in the cycle of doing that, especially if you really like music and you really like making playlists. Like there's this element of it that is super creative and fun, and it can feel like it's a really important part of your class, but it can also be really time consuming. And I found myself um spending too much time and like putting too much pressure on myself to create the perfect, interesting, amazing, brand new playlist every single week. And so um, you know, I used to do this a lot, and I would spend a lot of time like searching for songs and rearranging my playlists and like just trying to make everything feel like it was new. And I mean, just like with everything in teaching, you often reach a point where you realize that certain things are not sustainable, especially if you're teaching a lot of classes per week. So now when I create new yoga playlists, and I do this on a pretty regular basis, I like to think about how they can fit into my existing library of playlists. And because I've built a whole library of playlists and a lot of them are organized in a way where I can find them really easily, I'm able to reuse my playlists. Um I'm able to go back to old playlists and like refine them or make little changes. Um, I also go back and like delete playlists that just weren't great and didn't go the way that I hoped. Um, and I feel like it definitely saves me time and saves me energy to be able to do this. Um, and it really comes down to like the way that I organize my playlists so that it's easy for me to find them. And so I really think that it's important to stop treating playlists like they are one-time use. So we don't want to have to create a brand new playlist every single time we teach a class. Um, and this kind of brings me back to what I often say about creating class sequences as well. So, again, just like in last week's episode, there are a lot of parallels between like sequencing classes and then the way we create playlists and the way we use or reuse yoga playlists. So you can repeat, you can reuse, you can cycle through, you know, sequences throughout the month or throughout the year, and that same principle applies to the way that you use your music playlists as well. So, especially if you have a few specific playlists that you really enjoy or you feel like they work really well for the types of classes that you teach, like those are the kinds of playlists that you really want to like hold on to and reuse. I think it's important as well to remember that your students are not going to remember every single song that you play on your playlist. Um, and that if you are stuck in that loop of trying to create constant novelty for your students, you are on the fast track to burnout. So remember that refining an existing playlist is often a really good alternative to like creating a new playlist from scratch altogether. And I feel like as we become more experienced teachers, or maybe as we, you know, find ourselves having more classes on our schedule during certain seasons of our teaching, having a few really simple systems behind the scenes to support us can definitely make us more efficient when it comes to class planning. So that you're not, you know, spending a couple hours on a fresh sequence and spending a couple hours on creating the perfect playlist to go with it every single week, multiple times a week. I feel like that just adds up to a lot of time. So name your playlist depending on like where you're saving your playlist. I personally use Spotify. Um, I know that not everybody is a fan of Spotify, but part of why I keep using it is because it has like such a library of playlists that I've been creating for years and years and years, and it's so handy to be able to go back and you know see the playlist that I've made and find old playlists. So name your playlists and organize them based on energy. And I feel like if you can identify the energy or the feeling of your playlist rather than just like the musical genre, that this can actually be super useful when you're teaching yoga. So maybe you organize your playlists into categories like grounding, spacious, fiery, morning energy, restorative, yin, moody, evening flow. Like I know it can sound a little bit weird, but you know, think beyond the surface. Like, what's the the feeling that this kind of playlist creates? Um, and I feel like if you start to name your playlists based on these types of categories, it can be really helpful if you're trying to find a playlist in a pinch. So maybe I had a really busy week. Maybe I was able to prioritize planning and creating a class sequence, but I just didn't have time to make a fresh playlist to go along with it. Um, so if I'm able to locate my playlist really quickly just based on the name or like the feeling of the playlist, that is definitely gonna make things easier for me if I'm short on time. Now, in addition to organizing playlists into categories based on mood or based on like the energy of the music, I will often add in brackets the class style that the playlist works really well for, or that the playlist I feel is ideal for, as well as sometimes the length of the playlist. So this can look like you know, making a name for the playlist based on the energy, and then in brackets, writing vinyasa, slow flow, yin and acupuncture workshop. And then I might even add the length of the class as well. So like vinyasa 90, yin 60, yin and acupuncture workshop, two hours. And the reason that I really like this is that whenever I'm teaching a similar class in the future, I can pull up a playlist really easily, or even type into my search bar in um like my Spotify library something just like vinyasa or yin. And then all of my saved playlists that I've created that are like under that category are going to pop up, and it's just like so much easier and so much faster to find a playlist that I know works that I know I've already used before, and it's just like such a big time saver. Now, you might also create playlists based on themes that you find yourself returning to. So, for example, almost every year I cycle through a few familiar themes, and it doesn't mean that there aren't other themes that I sprinkle in, but I specifically love teaching classes themed around the natural elements, like kind of from an Ayurvedic perspective. I love classes that are themed around the chakra system, and so I might name my playlists based on some of these themes. Okay, so Muladar, Svaristan, Manipura. And then when I inevitably come back to these themes in the future, I know that I have a playlist ready to go that represents the mood that I'm trying to create. Now, lastly, I would take a look at what you consider, and this is very personal, your most successful playlists. And I really want you to pay attention to what stands out to you about those playlists. So you probably have a few personal favorite playlists that you've created that you like to teach with. And for me, like because I have my playlists made public and they're available on Spotify for anybody to look at or anybody to use, I can see the ones that have been saved a lot. And I always find that that information is really interesting. Like when I have one particular playlist that a bunch of people have saved, um, that tells me that there's something about it that people resonate with. So when you're looking through your own playlists, you might ask yourself, like, which playlists consistently feel like they land really well? Which playlists do I go back to over and over again and like replay over and over because I just love how they sound? Um, do I have any playlists that just feel like they're really cohesive or playlists that feel like they are supporting a specific mood or a specific feeling? Now, I personally love creating new playlists, but if you don't love creating playlists, or you feel like it's a bit of a chore, or you just like you don't know what music to choose, um, I just want you to know that the same as when it comes to sequencing, you don't need hundreds of yoga playlists. I feel like you can have just a handful of like really strong, thoughtful playlists that you can go back to and you can reuse. So try to look at your playlist library as part of your overall teaching library. So when you look at the big picture, like you're creating kind of like a longer-term resource that you can use and that you can go back to. So if you like to bank your sequences, for example, and reuse them, you might even write a little note at the top of some of your sequences and note like the playlist that you feel goes really well with those sequences. I think that, you know, a really big mindset shift for yoga teachers is realizing that being sustainable and creating sustainable systems for ourselves as teachers matters on a creative level too. Um you don't need to constantly reinvent yourself in order to be a good teacher. You don't need to start from scratch every single week. Like really trust that you probably have a lot of good stuff already that you can work with and pull from. And maybe it just means you make some little tweaks here and there. But if the way that you have your playlists organized, or if like they're not organized at all, and that feels totally chaotic to you, um, maybe this little episode is your sign this week to slow down and start organizing your music a little bit more intentionally. So try to build yourself a library, see if you can start to revisit some of your favorite playlists that you know work really well, and then see if you can devote a little bit of time to going into your music and like naming and categorizing your playlists in a way that makes sense to you so that they are really easy to find and easy to reuse. I am all about making like these little small changes that can make teaching feel more sustainable long term. And I feel like that even comes down to the way that we think about organizing our music. Like I it can feel like such an afterthought and something that you know just doesn't matter. But again, if you're teaching a lot of classes, if you're teaching consistently, it's one of those little things that can actually add up to saving you a ton of time in the long run. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Yoga Insider. Next week I will be sharing part three of this three-part mini podcast series all about integrating music more skillfully into your yoga classes. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with another yoga teacher and leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. I'll see you next week.