279 - Gait is a Sequencing Game Changer: Creative Sequencing and Flow School

Sequencing with purpose transforms the yoga practice and our teaching. Today we're going deep on gait, a pillar of my Flow School method, and its application in creating more intuitive, sustainable sequences.

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The music for this episode is Threads by The Light Meeting.
Produced by: Grey Tanner

Transcript

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (00:01.452)
my gosh, I am so excited to be here with you today because I am going to give you one of the things that is most transformative that I teach teachers. And of course I am thinking about sequencing because that is my focus with how to help teachers really sequence and sequence with purpose.

and sequence in scalable, meaning accessible, meaning you can grow with the practice from the least objectively demanding to the most objectively demanding, because objectives and subjective are different. And one of the pillars of flow school is thinking about gait. So I'm going to give this to you here. I mean, hopefully this...

persuades you to even just join flow school. But even if not, learning how to implement this in your own sequencing is going to be a game changer. It is also going to be maybe rather difficult to implement. When you sequence with gait in mind, it might feel really difficult. Your students might be resistant.

and you're gonna have to rewire your brain as a teacher to sequence and teach in a way that you were not taught to do. But you are going to find sequencing that feels more natural in the body, that feels more grounded, that feels more expansive, and ultimately leads your students to feel more powerful. And I speak to power as this combination of strength,

I will define that in my classes for people. I think defining what power means to you as a teacher and if you're teaching a quote unquote power yoga class, what does that mean? What does that mean? Because it can mean so many things. So to me, power means strength plus grace and that does not require a certain speed or a temperature. It is very much about the way that the flow is put together. Now of course, I love teaching

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (02:20.866)
but that's also not necessary for people to find power, meaning strength plus grace. So as a pillar in flow school, gait, on the first one I'll talk about it, is gait is the way that you're gonna walk. And if you were to go to physical therapy and say something's off my hip or my knee or my shoulder or like spine, or I mean literally any part of your body.

then odds are fairly high that a physical therapist will sit on one side of the room and say, come over here by me and I'm going to sit here and I want to watch you walk. And you're going to walk across the room and you're going to walk back to them. And then, you know, you're probably going to walk funky. And I was, because when people are watching us, then we often walk different. We're being really focused on it. Am I walking right? I want to do it well. And so I went to this physical therapist who said, I

want to watch you walk but I want you to count out loud by threes and count up to a hundred and I want you to walk back and forth to me to the wall opposite of me and I just want to watch you walk but then my brain had to count by three so I'm going like three six nine twelve fifteen so I'm counting by threes and I'm having to walk so my brain now no longer has the capacity to

think about the way I'm walking and am I doing it right so I can show the quote unquote teacher that I know how to walk, right? Because we do that in our head. So then she just got to watch me and to see where I might be shifting in interesting ways or I might be favoring one side over another in different, like depending on capacity of my body. So then looking at your gait is really helpful for then figuring out.

what is needed. So I take that same concept and I bring it to creative sequencing. Now I do it in a different sort of way and I'm not watching people walk. We are not walking. But if you were to stand up right now, a walk, or if you are, maybe you're driving a car as you're listening and you see somebody walking out on the sidewalk or somebody running, right? I want you to watch them. And when you walk,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (04:44.458)
you will swing your arms opposite than your legs are walking. So if your left leg is walking forward, your right arm is swinging forward and then vice versa. So we are alternating our arms at the same time as we are alternating our legs. We have been walking for a second, right? If I'm 41 and if I learned to walk when I was one, I have been walking for 40 years, y'all. That was a long time to be walking.

So it is pretty ingrained in me in the way to walk. And the way to walk, we alternate our arms with our legs. Left, right arm forward, right leg forward, left arm forward. And we alternate and we don't even think about it. It's part of our natural movement. It's intuitive in us. It's not something we think about. It's not like you don't think about breathing in and breathing out, but then you come to a class where you're really talking about pranayama and breath work.

and all of a sudden your entire brain is then being asked to focus on how you are breathing. So you get this other experience with your body and how you use it. This is what we can use gait for in our physical asana practice. This is how we can use gait and moving our body in a way that is unconscious to us while we're walking left, right, right, left, right.

and bring that into class where we're gonna have to rewire our brain a little bit in what sequencing means and what the order of postures in means. Because it's different than what has been passed down in a lot of traditions of the asana practice. But how do we retrain our brain as teachers to sequence in a way that is actually intuitive, that's actually part of the natural flow in us?

Very much like when we walk, it is intuitive for us to have left leg forward, right hand forward. And then right leg forward, left hand forward. We don't even think about that. Now when we bring that into a yoga sequencing class and we bring that same concept, all of a sudden our brains are like, wait a second, that's not how you sequence yoga. Wait a second, this is different.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (07:01.07)
Wait a second, this is hard. Both as teachers who are new to coming to Flow School and moving with me and the students who might then if you go and take this and teach it to them or when I've taught students, they're like, wait a second, we're doing this now? Because it's something different. But the coolest part is once students understand it, the things that they will say to you about the way it felt in their body, this is why people will say it feels like a yoga dance.

dancing, really when you're in dancing, you're using your natural body. You're using these lefts and rights. You're having this alternation. So that's why it feels like that. And that's why people come out of it being like, that felt so good. That felt so intuitive in my body. Now, a couple of things. From two different flow school teachers, one of them recently commented in the flow school membership. So flow school membership.

It's a month long membership or it's a month to month membership is 65 bucks a month. You get two live classes with me a month and all of the recorded videos for flow school. Now that is a giant library, but this is something that somebody has said about this. You get the library, the instruction of like the what, the how, the breakdowns, you get the flow prompts, you get whole circle flows with PDF flow plans so you can take them and run like this. But I had a teacher who commented recently on the gate class says this is, and she said,

This is the biggest thing I noticed missing when I take teachers flows now. Once you feel the purposeful gate changes, it changes that includes in your yoga sequence, there's no going back. And then another person, another teacher that has also taken flow school has said recently that people often are feeling resistant to their flow, but then once they let go,

and feel the natural feeling of it, then they love it. Because it's like, wait a second, this is new. And we don't like to be bad at things. And especially there's some teachers who are like, I'm gonna teach really traditionally and in the way that like this is how you sequence, this is what a warrior flow looks like. That is totally fine. I am like so okay with all of the ways that yoga can show up and shapes with our bodies because it...

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (09:23.052)
changes like when we make different shapes our body it changes how we're feeling on the inside. So there's so many ways to be right but I'm totally cool with that. And if you are interested in sequencing in a way that feels intuitive with the body then you have to do something different. So this is part of what I teach in flow school and I'm part of the big takeaway for teachers who have come and learned with me. So I'm give it to you here. We're gonna think about gait. If you were to look up a

video of a camel. There's different speeds that a camel will run at. And when a camel is full force running, they will go the left, right. They're, they're oppositeing, right? And as animals was that run on four legs, is same thing as dogs and cats and tigers and all the other things, right? there's, they alternate their legs and that's front and back. And so one was forward and the other one is back. And anyway, so they, they alternate those things, right? Were.

to walk across the room, okay, so they do that. Camels also run, I'm gonna talk more about camels, but if camels are running fast, they also do that. Now let's go back to humans. If you were to walk across the room just naturally, not even thinking about it, you're gonna have opposite limbs forward, right? You're gonna have your left leg forward and your right hand forward and your arms are gonna be swinging. And actually when you're running, if you swing your arms faster, it makes your legs go faster.

It's harder to make your legs sometimes go faster when you're tired, but if you make your arms go faster, sometimes you can trick your body to make your legs go faster, because your body wants to meet that gait pattern, right? So if you were to walk across the room, now you're gonna have to think about this, but try this out. And when you step your left leg forward, if you lift your left arm up, and then step your right leg forward and pick your right arm up,

And so you do left side altogether and then right side altogether and left side altogether. You're going to feel like a robot. So left, left arm up and then switch it right arm, right leg, left arm, left leg is going to feel weird. Now let's jump back to camels. If you were to look at a camel, kind of just a slow jog of a camel. can't remember the name of it. Is it camel trot and the camel gallop or I should, I should know this, but when the camel is running slow, that is what they do.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (11:42.242)
They do both left legs down and both right legs up and then they alternate. Like it's so awkward looking. It's so awkward looking. So Google that, go look at camels. That is not what we're trying to do. We're not trying to do left side, left side, right side, right side. We're doing a left, right and a right, left, left, right and a right, left. Yoga is so much about learning lefts and rights and that is part of the brain games.

and approaching the way that we approach this. Now, y'all, if you are stepping into learning this and wanting to learn more with me, you're gonna learn a lot about not just the language of cueing. Huge piece of this, because if we change up our sequence, we get to learn how to actually lead it in a way that's successful in the order of operations and really doing less better. Not only that though, we have to bring humor to the practice. You have to bring a sense of humanness and humor, both.

Or you say like, okay, this is brain games. And the tone of voice that you use and the way you acknowledge how it might be difficult and bring a sense of play, humor as in play to the practice. It can help people approach it more lightly. We can be serious here. We can be serious though in the play and about the play. So bringing humor to it, say like, this is brain games, right? Let's step into it.

So rights and laughs, and what does this look like and what does this mean? And how is this different than what is already being done or has been taught? So a lot of where this shows up is alternating and alternating the bend and alternating your hips and alternating your hands and alternating ups and downs and forwards and backs and lefts and rights. So,

I'm using the term gait. I'm kind of co-opting it because we're not just walking and gait really means walking. But the unconscious thing that's happening when you're walking is you're having opposite limbs go forward and back. So we're using that concept and we're bringing it to creative sequencing. And the way we're doing that is thinking about we have a bent front leg and a straight back leg. How in the next pose can we have a straight front leg and a bent back leg? And the next pose, switch it again.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (14:03.532)
How many poses then with that in mind, do you often experience in a row as a teacher in your own sequencing or as a student as you go to class where one leg stays bent for either the front or the back leg, it's like, but how often do you have many poses in a row where the leg bend is not changing, where it's staying bent and it's staying bent?

and it's staying bent and you're like five postures in and it's staying bent. Or you're on a single leg and you have five postures in a row on a single leg with your hips square. And you're like, wow, I need something else. And things are burning. And so I think sometimes like your ankle's burning or your quad is burning and you're like, my gosh, I'm so uncomfortable. And it started to become part of the practice to bring discomfort.

because you're holding something so long and there's like a phrase of like, feel the inner fire, right? To feel the burn. And I like to push on that a little bit and say, that is a way. That is a way. And if the front leg is staying bent the whole time, right? If your hips are square and your front leg is bent, now depending on the movement you have, if your back knee is up, it might not be an isometric hold, right? Where you're just holding it and you're not moving it. Now, isometric hold, if you're not,

that straightening your leg and then bending it, straightening it and then bending it. And you're just having it be held as an isometric movement, right? In one position. That is a great type of practice to give people a not flow. Like this is a little bit more held, longer postures. That can be really great for people who are healing from injury and who are also like a little bit nervous about trusting their body and it can build some resiliency, right? And awareness there.

So that is actually really a great practice. And it is not the only way to practice. So isometrics, isotonics, that is moving through a range of motion. That's like standing all the way up, squatting back down, standing back up, squatting back down. That's using movement. So if we think about helping students feel the burn, the burn means that we're making them hold something and they're hating chair pose because you're holding it for the count of 10.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (16:27.544)
which really is like the count of 20 and they're like, right? And they're feeling like it's hard. That's one way you can teach class. And another way is how can you let chair be just a spot in the flow that then you're moving to something else where you're redefining what hard means. Hard doesn't mean holding, hard means using it to flow. Hard means how do you use that chair to help the flow move forward in a way that feels natural.

where chair isn't something you hate, but it's something that you're like, this actually feels really good to have chair here after what I've just done, rather than saying, damn, we're going to chair again. Can I even do this? And of course there can be a mixture there in between, but I guess I like to challenge this idea that it has to be hard to feel like you did shit. Like it has to be hard to feel like you're powerful. Like it has to be hard in like the holding.

You have to hold it long enough and that's what hard means and that's when you know you're successful because I don't know you but I have been in flow classes and felt that movement of continuous movement where you're going up and down and side to side and backward and forward and it feels so dynamic in me. I feel so alive and it can be hard.

and it doesn't have to be held to fill this inner fire for yourself and in a strength and an understanding of what you're capable of. Like I want people to walk out of the room and be like, damn, I like feel good. That felt good in my body and hard, but also I can't believe I did that. I wouldn't have guessed that I would have been able to do that had I seen it before.

because you walk with them in a way that you're scaling that class from the ground up. You're making it accessible to many levels in the room at the same time. And the way that you teach in the repetition, which is so important in this, these are a whole other topics though, okay? So when we're thinking about gait, how does it look different? I want you to think about not only the alternating the bend of the front leg. So if the front leg is bent,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (18:45.964)
and then it goes straight and then it goes bent and then it goes straight. Now keep in mind there is a back leg too. So if I were to do warrior two, right, and my front leg is bent and my back leg is straight and I do triangle, now both legs are straight. Now I do it extended side angle, now my front leg is bent and my back leg is straight. And now I do half moon pose and both of my legs are straight.

Now you would think like, okay, well I alternated the bend. My front leg went bent straight, bent straight, bent straight, What was happening to the back leg?

Nothing. It was straight the entire time. Okay. What about your hips? What's happening to your hips? They are in an open position, meaning that front leg is externally rotated the whole time. So there is no alternating of the hips either. Right. And we're not moving backwards. There's like can be a little bit of, it depends on like if you were to do a reverse triangle versus a triangle where you're staying down, that's a little bit different. There's a little bit of lateral movement.

Your arms can have a little bit of movement here again is going to depend on, it's going to depend on if you were to do a reverse triangle, you're going have a little bit more arm movement than if you were to do warrior two triangle, extended side angle, half moon. So you're going to have to know these postures as I talk about them to have a little visual in your head. But we're staying basically in the same place on the mat. There are back leg is having no alternation.

And our body doesn't have this flow of finding a twist and a squaring of the hip, which also is part of this gait movement. Now, this flow going from warrior to let's go reverse triangle, extended side angle, half moon. That one I like better than if I were to do high lunge.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (20:53.984)
Revolve high lunge, that means you're twisting towards that front leg. Warrior II, reverse Warrior II, extended side angle, chair, chair you're reaching forward, Chair you're twisting sideways. Okay, so right now I've just listed seven postures. The front legs stayed bent the entire time. So I like option number one more, because we're having alternating the bend at least.

That works really nicely as well for leading with breath and where then the next flow I just gave you was like seven poses in a row where the front leg is staying bent. So that's a different sort of berm. I'm gonna ask people to find some repetition in their flow. And the longer that you hold something, the harder it's gonna be, right? There's a little bit of relief as we straighten the leg and then we come back down into it. So a little bit of relief in that, which is nice because the more tired somebody gets,

the less good their form can be. And if we're trying to help people feel powerful in their bodies, then giving them some space to breathe in between is actually really great. And as somebody who loves to lift weights and I love to lift heavy weights, if I, like, you know you're lifting heavy enough if you do the set and you need to take a break. Not that you're ready to go right away again. If you do your 10 reps of something or eight,

You're somewhere in there eight to 12 reps and you've dead lifted the bar and you're ready to go immediately afterwards. You add some more weight. You like work a little bit harder, right? You're ready. And so that is kind of like the nice thing to think about for going to flow is that you almost give people the break so they can go back into the work. You're like, okay, let's be here. Okay, come back out. So when I go back into dead lifting and I've done my set and I like take the break,

that I'm refreshed so I can really do it again and I can hold my body strongly and I can finish that next set and then I need to take a break again because I'm breathing hard. I need to like be back in myself and go back into it. So it's like this, right? To give people this opportunity to drop into it and pull back out. Now with flow, there's a softer landing than deadlifting. So gait then is not just the front.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (23:20.302)
leg in this particular flow of warrior two, reverse triangle, extended side angle, half moon, right? We did have alternating of the front leg, but the back leg has to be part of that. And so often when I work with teachers in flow school, it's like we've forgotten about the back leg. Like the back leg doesn't even exist. And it does, but like it only exists once it steps up to the front of the mat in chair.

It only exists once you're standing in one leg and then kicking the other leg forward or you're in tree, then that other leg exists. But it often doesn't exist when you're on the mat in a wide stance position, or it only exists if you go to wide leg forward folder goddess. So learning to use that back leg and alternate not just the front leg, but the back leg. So alternating the bend, this is part of gait. So if I'm to straighten one leg and bend the other one, when I switched to the next pose, one or both has to change.

Now, if the same leg, let's go with warrior two. So my front leg is bent and my back leg is straight. And now let's go reverse triangle. Now both legs are straight. Now one or both of them needs to change. mean, one can go bent and one can go straight or they could both go bent from our reverse trunk because both legs are bent. Now I know

that my front leg was just bent and my back leg was just straight. So if I keep my back leg straight, that's three in a row. So can you make it so that you don't have more than two in a row of the same shape? Meaning they stay bent or they stay straight. So what could I do here? Warrior two, reverse triangle. Instead of going to bend the back or instead of bending the front leg again, bend the back leg. This is why I scan Dasana in so...

many of my flows. Bend your back leg. also lateral movement gets you moving side to side. So Skandhasana means you're bending your back leg and you're dropping towards the back of the mat. Now a note here for Skandhasana. I do Skandhasana a different sort of way and most people they do Skandhasana they're dropping their ass to grass all the way down towards the mat. They're often popping their heels so they're just bouncing on their toe. That is a version of Skandhasana. Now listen to this. Is it warrior two?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (25:44.084)
If your feet are two feet apart from each other and your front leg is just barely bent, is it warrior two just for you? Like if you were to put your stand your feet up two feet apart and do warrior two, is that warrior two? Take your arms out to the sides, right? Now let's move to three feet apart. Now let's take your feet four feet apart from each other. How about five feet apart from each other? Can you move your feet six feet apart from each other and do warrior two? And you're bending your front knee more and more and more.

the bigger the distance is between your feet. Which one counts as warrior two? All of them. So the same thing Dasana. Oftentimes people think that Skandhasana then is your ass is all the way down. You're in a deep knee bend on that back leg. What does that require? Especially because Skandhasana is often meaning that it is a open hip on the front leg that is a straight hip. So if I have Skandhasana and my back leg was my...

left leg that was bent, my right leg is straight and is externally rotated with my toes up towards the ceiling most often. That is requiring a lot of flexibility in my hamstrings, my inner thigh of that straight leg. That is asking a lot. So dropping down is gonna be really difficult. Now, if you were to drop down and keep your heel down, you have a huge amount of flexion in your ankle, in your knee and in your hip that you're asking for people to do. That also is rather difficult. And depending on the size of your body around

where you carry your weight in your body, the size of your chest, the size of your belly, the size of people's thighs, like that can be really tricky also to drop down. And then like up is hella hard. That does not mean I don't like doing that. Y'alls, I will go out in the garage in my gym and I will grab a kettlebell and I'll drop all the way down and sit on my ass and stand back up. So this is not me saying I don't do that shit and I don't love it. This is me saying how do we make flow

have scalable levels for many people in the room. And I think if we teach Skandhasana different and expand, what I mean is really if we take Skandhasana and expand on what that means, I think it's gonna meet more people in the room and be more successful and people will actually teach it then and students will actually do it. So with Skandhasana, instead of dropping your ass to grass, keep your back heel grounded.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (28:05.238)
and just bend into your back knee. It's often helpful to point your toes just a little bit. So for more your two stance, if your pinky toe side of your left foot is kind of parallel with the back edge of the mat, it's nice to point your toes out just a little bit. Your knee's moving out back of the room, right? So bend your leg. You're thinking more your thigh stays not even quite parallel to the ground or more parallel to the ground. Your arms.

can come to your heart center in prayer, right? Like prayer hands, they can reach forward, they can reach backwards. I often find that when I take my arms and do the swoosh backwards, like I'm sweeping them to reach towards the back of the room between my chest and my knee that's bent, it also prohibits me from dropping my ass all the way down, which is great because that helps the flow move.

When my hips are higher off the ground as Khandasana, there is more options for me to navigate movement than if I drop my hips all the way down. It also makes it so it's less difficult objectively, right? Objectively means like in general, not specific to person to person. It makes it like easier to move from there to where I'm going, which is helpful because I'm trying to find fluidity in the flow.

I'm trying to give people options in the subsequent repetitions of this because we're not just doing it once. We're gonna teach repetition so that people can personalize their practice. I can let them go all the way down, as to grass, right? I can show them how to do that if that's something they wanna do. But how do I make it more accessible from the beginning? How do I explore other options to say, well, warrior two is warrior two even if your feet are three feet apart or six feet apart.

So Skandhasana could be Skandhasana if your hips are higher or if you're balancing on a toe or on a heel and your ass is all the way close to the ground. Both are Skandhasana. Just different height off the floor. So that was a note on Skandhasana. Side track. But we have bent our back leg now. So now where do we go? Now what if we took extended side angle from here? So we want warrior two, reverse triangle.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (30:20.096)
scan dasana to the back of mat and now glide forward extended side angle. Okay, so that's interesting. What I think would actually be extra interesting is if now we need to bring in our hips because the gait is not just keeping our hips like using gait in the way that we're using it to sequence. It's not just about altering our legs, it's about alternating everything. It's about looking at how our arms move with our legs as

There can be some pretty standard positions that our arms are in in traditional yoga sequencing. Our arms are both up, our arms are both back, our arms are at prayer, our arms are out to the side. Then you have some bind things where you're like twisting, right? So we might have reaching, we have some binds, but then really playing with how our arms are part of the flow because there are many postures where your arms are reaching straight up and sequencing them very often has been done where

Your arms are up and your arms are up and your arms are up over and over. So maybe your legs are moving, but your arms are not moving. So gait is also bringing some attention to your arms moving just as much as your legs. So front leg is bent, your back leg is straight. Where are your arms? Now both legs are straight. Where are your arms? Now your back leg is bent, your front arm, front leg is straight. So now we're altering our legs. Where are your arms? So if we have warrior two and our arms are out to the side, we have reverse warrior and we're reaching up and back.

Where are we gonna reach our hands for Skandhasana? What if I take my top arm from reverse warrior and sweep it all the way forward and then reach both of my hands out to the side towards the long edge of the mat that I'm facing in Skandhasana. So now my arms have been side to side, they have been reaching up and over into a side lean and now they're reaching straight forward. Now extended side angle, I can sweep the bottom one and then reach the top one up. So my arms get to move just as much as my legs.

We're trying to bring them in to be part of the story. Now we have to think about our hips. One thing I think about this flow is warrior two, reverse triangle. Extended side angle half moon and then if we put scandals in there, we're still facing that long side. We're still open to the side of the room the whole time. Now this kind of sequencing is very common. So part of the way that we are changing

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (32:42.902)
some of the sequencing rules and I use rules really kind of lightly here in flow school is to say, okay, like that's fine. And how do we do it different? And how do we bring alternation into everything? So not just legs and not just arms, but into hips. Because it's very common for us to have open hip, open hip, open hip, open hip, open hip. So all of these were open hips in a row. We're all facing the long side all over and over and over and over, right?

And of course we can face the long side of the mat and have a square hip. Square hip means no, nothing's externally rotated. Our toes are forward, right? And external rotation, open hip, one foot. As your toes reach in one way, your knee is pointing like, like to the side. Now we can have a double open hip, something like goddess pose, sure. But most commonly we do not have double hip at the same time. Yes, it's possible. So we want to bring this alternation.

into our hips. So how does this look? Instead of staying open to the side where you're going warrior two, triangle, extended side angle, half moon, where you're staying open the whole time, play with a square hip and an open hip and a square hip and an open hip and alternate your hips as well. So we're using gait. Remember, gait is this, the way that we walk and the unconscious pattern

of moving our left arm forward as our right leg moves forward, right? And then switching and becomes unconsciousness that going from one thing to the next and one thing to the next and one thing to the next. So this is going to be a different way to sequence because we're used to staying just open, open, open, open and just the front leg is moving, just the front leg is moving, just front leg or we're holding. So we're changing this and saying, let's go warrior two and reverse triangle.

and skandhasana. So now we've done an alternate the bend of both the front and back legs and we're to do the arms of warrior two arms left and right in T shape. Reverse your triangle. Arm is reaching up and back, right? Skandhasana. We're going to sweep both arms and reach them straight forward out from our chest. Now let's square our hip because we've had a lot of open hip in a row, but we've had some lateral movement with the skandhasana, which is great. What happens if we go skandhasana now?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (35:11.054)
and reach all the way forward, maybe let's do a low lunge twist. I'm keep my back knee off the ground, but from Skandhasana, I'm gonna sweep my hands forward, my right hand forward. I'm gonna put my left hand on the ground and reach my right hand up. So I'm in a twisted position. My right foot is at the front of the mat, my left hand is at the front of the mat, and I'm twisting my right hand open to the ceiling. So now I have squared my hips.

Okay, so I'm not just alternating my legs, I'm alternating my arms. Now I can take this position of the low lunge twist and I can stand all the way up on a single leg. I could go take it down, like I could take it down towards the ground. So I have some places I could play this here. So I'm gonna go open hip, open hip, square hip. And I've already.

has some standing postures on two legs. So at this point, it feels like this transition moment with my hand down that I could step to the top of the mat as well.

So bringing in the alternating things is how we are using gait in flow school and how we're thinking about using gait and alternating lefts and rights together in a way that is atypical, the normal sequencing or traditional sequencing per se, and bringing it with some intention and attention. When I lead flow school, my hope is for

for teachers to really build something like a 10 pose flow. That is truly the entire class is focused on helping people learn 10 poses in a row. It's not just 10 poses, it is the transitions in between. And it feels like, it can feel like not very much like just 10 poses, but once you do it and you're doing it because these 10 poses, you're alternating the bend of your legs. You're paying attention to your arms. You are playing with a square hip and an open hip.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (37:14.518)
and you're moving forward and back, up and down. You're twisting, moving side to side. And you're getting all of those movements in, in a 10-pose flow. And you're using the concept of gait where you're alternating and you're going lefts and rights and lefts and rights. Then it changes the game. It changed like the game in like to play, right? We're like, we're playing. This is a movement puzzle. It's really exciting.

Okay, let's keep going with this, let's flow. And you're gonna have to do a lot of visualizing this. Well, you're two. Reverse your triangle. Skandhasana, reach forward. And then low lunge twist. Bring your left hand down to the top of the mat, your right hand is high. Okay? So from here, we have switched the bend in our legs and we have squared our hips. Now we've had open hip a couple of times, so it will be nice to have our hips stay square for a moment. And we could stay on two feet.

I would be cool doing a diagonal lunge from here. And a diagonal lunge is something that is often not taught. I could talk. Maybe I won't even talk about that in this moment. This is a lot of real love concepts. It could be a low lunge twist to a Shiva. So I could step my back leg in to my back knee to my front leg. And with that, I would probably option, maybe reach both of my hands backwards.

So Shiva often has a prayer hands at heart. So prayer hands is a common place for our hands and an option. But from this low lunge twist, pull your back leg in, reach both arms back. So we're in Shiva, we're in a single leg squat. Now we're still hips square, but I've released my arms. My arms are in a different position. I went from a bent front leg to a straight back leg to double bent in the front. Now I need to straighten one.

They're both bent. Which one makes most sense to be straightened? The one at the front, the one I'm balancing on, I've just been on it two times bent. So it'd be really great actually to stand all the way up. Take a standing twist, stand up then on my front leg, twist open towards my lifted leg, Lift that knee up, take a single leg Tadasana twist the other way. So now I have had multiple, I've had two,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (39:37.826)
Well, three square hips in a row. I've had my little lunge twist, my Shiva, and now a standing single leg balance. So now we know that I'm altering the legs. I'm playing with my arms. And we're like, okay, we know that we've had square hips. Sometimes there's this really like, honestly, just build awareness of the ratio of how many square hips and how many open hips you have and how much you have them in a row.

And can you change between them? As much as you're finding a bent leg and a straight leg, can you go square hip and open hip and square hip and open hip? It can be your own flow prompt to say, I wanna create a flow where I go square hip, open hip the whole time. And I'm gonna try to alternate the bend of my legs in between and being awareness to that and how I'm using my arms and let that be your flow prompt of just thinking about that, right? So this is the play and thinking just about arms. That's the play.

because it helps you get out of sequencing being one thing. And a lot of teachers who come to me in flow school and who want to be mentored by me have had sequence being taught as like, this is how you sequence and you can't do this and then do that. And it's so not true. You can do a whole lot of things altogether, but there's not a lot of room in a 200 hour training program. It's like so little to actually deep dive into all of these as its own concept.

and moving the body moves all the other parts of us. It helps us find ourselves in it because when you realize that your body is strong enough to stay in it, that your body can learn, which really is your brain is learning and then helps your body, right? Because not one system just works solely by itself. We're very integrated beings. Knowing that all of that plays together is huge. So this is the concept of gait.

and gait combined with creative sequencing. Creative sequencing, and I call it creative because it is something different and you are creating it. You are creating the sequencing and we're doing it on these principles of alternating and of the way that gait is unconscious as you are walking. We are bringing that into our flow and into classrooms where you're moving forward and back and left and right. Your arms are sweeping this way and that way.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (41:56.79)
where it feels like you're falling forward. And one of my favorite compliments that I ever received in class was a student, this is years ago, but after class he came up to me, he's like, you know what was really cool in class today is that we were in one pose. I don't remember what poses they were. He's like, we were in one pose and I fell out of it and I fell into the next posture. I love that. I love that because

That means that the sequencing that I gave was already paired with the natural movement of the body. We don't have to work against the body in our sequencing. We can work with the body. So what is the unconscious movement pattern that we just know how to move with when we walk and run and can we bring that within our sequencing? So it feels like when we fall, we're following for falling forward in the flow, right?

Like that's hella cool. Like, oh, that's the place that the body already wants to go. And so we have to do this interesting thing in our brains as teachers and say, but this is the way you do it. And this is how yoga feels. And all of a sudden with this concept, it's like, wait a second, how does it feel? Does this feel natural in me? What feels natural? And how can I bring a natural body movement and then pair it with this tradition that we've been given and these that we have.

and say, okay, cool, let's be aware of movement science and what are the directional movements that we wanna put in, right? So we're thinking our planes of motion, we're moving forward, back, up, down, side side and we're twisting, okay, cool. So we want these movement science planes in here and we're gonna use these postures like warrior two and chair pose and right, we're going uttkatasana and ferebhadrasana two and like how are we bringing these in? Okay, cool. And now how does it feel?

Does this feel, and this is the dance part, does it feel like a dance? Does it feel like it breathes? Does it feel like the posture and the flow breathes in me? Like I get to breathe it. Does it feel like that?

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (44:06.964)
and in design in the flow. It's this combination as teachers where we're using our brain and our body and our breath. And it is a new way to look at sequencing that requires something different. But if you want something different, you gotta do something different. So this is so much what flow school is. And it takes a while to integrate. That's why I have created the flow school membership because

I have loved, loved, loved rolling through cohorts of six to eight weeks with flow school teachers over the last almost five years. And people return and they return again and they return again. I've had people come back three times even to flow school. And so because of that, I know that it takes a while to integrate this. I've been working with teachers over years who I still am in contact with and them talking about more and more implementing.

the things they've taught in flow school and how successful it is for both them and their students. How their students feel more powerful, more connected to themselves, more graceful and strong in themselves, more at ease while also feeling like they have more trust, more capacity and how we know that when we stand up in our bodies and we're like, damn, I can do that.

And my body that you knowing you can do that and do something hard and learn something translates directly to the other parts of you that when there's things that are hard to do in your life, but you did something physically that was hard and you learned a new pattern in your body that you didn't know you were capable of, that shit matters. And as teachers, takes a while to implement these things. So the full school membership is part of that, right?

And because I have implemented like two live classes a month over Zoom, then you get to come and hang with me and put it on the calendar and make it a, like, if you want to do it different, then come do it different with me. And it, cause it takes a minute and it's something new and you get to practice with me there. But as always, if you have questions about this, send them my way.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (46:29.79)
And if this totally makes sense to you and you're like, my gosh, I'm going to try this right now. I just gave you so many different ideas for ways to sequence or to play with some flows. And I would love to hear about them. If you take this podcast and go do some cool shit with it, let me know. Let me know. Shout it out in the Gram. Send me an email. Like, message me. I would love to hear about it. And also stay tuned. There is more in-person opportunities.

As this is being released, I'm about to head to Vancouver, BC for in-person flow school. And I'm coming to London. Actually, just London in Twyford. I'm coming to the UK July 7th through the 11th as I am recording this. So if you are across the pond, right? If you're over closer to the UK, I'm coming to you. This is a good opportunity to come and learn with me for five days or in Portland, Oregon in November.

So come here in November. For next year, 2026 for in-person, I think I might be switching it up. I'm definitely gonna be doing some in-person things, but perhaps shorter time and really utilizing our time in the membership to help set the stage for our time together in person, because I know the five days is sometimes a little bit tricky. So stay tuned for 2026 for in-person and come find me in the membership.

Shout me out, drop me an email. I am here for all this conversation. I freaking love this. And GATE truly, again, is a game changer. This concept.

so impacts the way that flow fills and it really is an order of operations. Like what happens if you change the order? And maybe you haven't even thought that that was a thing. And there's a lot of teachers I've worked with that are like, haven't even thought of that. And some people who do things like this already in sequence and it's been fun because some people are like,

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (48:31.246)
This is similar to how I'm doing it. I just didn't have the words for it. So if this also is giving you words for what you're already doing, I love that too. I would love to hear from you. Go keep doing cool shit and lighten up the world. It matters. Your voice matters. I'm here to help you own the hell out of your voice. Let's talk soon.