It’s Sunday night. You know you need to plan your yoga classes for the week. But you’re stuck between two equally exhausting options: spending three to four hours crafting the “perfect” sequence, or showing up Monday morning and completely winging it.
I’ve got good news: there’s a third option. And it takes 15 minutes or less.
The secret? Repeat the same lesson plan you taught last week.
I know what you’re thinking: “But won’t my students get bored?”
Here’s what 23 years of teaching has taught me: your class is never the same twice, even when you repeat the exact sequence. And the teacher who embraces repetition? That’s the teacher who finally has the mental bandwidth to actually see their students and adapt in the moment.
The Real Problem with Constant Novelty
When I got to the end of my 200-hour yoga teacher training 23 years ago, I felt like I had more questions than answers. I knew a lot more about yoga than when I started, but I wasn’t sure I knew that much more about teaching yoga.
So I did what many new yoga teachers do: I tried to prove my worth by being creative. Every single week, I planned brand new sequences. I chased novelty. I scrolled Instagram for inspiration and built classes backward from impressive poses.
And you know what? It was exhausting. Not just for me—for my students too.
Because here’s the truth: your students are not thinking about you as much as you think they are. They’re thinking about which side is left, where their quadriceps are, whether they answered that email, and what’s for dinner later. They’re not mentally cataloging whether you said the same cue last week.
In fact, your students are processing maybe 15 to 20 percent of what you tell them. They need to hear things seven or eight times before they really land.
The Four-Chunk Framework for Efficient Planning
The solution isn’t to wing it or spend hours planning. It’s to think in chunks instead of individual poses.
Every yoga class—whether it’s 45 minutes or 90 minutes—can be broken into four quarters:
Quarter 1: Centering and Warmup (First 15 Minutes)
This includes your welcome, centering, breath awareness, and gentle warmup movements. Maybe some intention setting. This is where you help students transition from their day into their practice.
Quarter 2: Standing Sequence (Active Portion)
If you teach standing poses, this is where they go—along with any balance work and sun salutations, if that’s your thing. If you teach a more floor-based or chair-based class, this is simply the more active portion after your warmup.
Quarter 3: Mat Work (Core and Hip Focus)
By the time you come down to the mat, you’re focusing on core work, hip work, or both. The spine and shoulders come along for the ride. This is the hearty, nourishing part of the practice.
Quarter 4: Finishing (Final Relaxation)
Any finishing poses, final relaxation, meditation, breath work, and closing. This is where you help students integrate everything.
Here’s the game-changer: Once you start seeing your class in these four chunks, you can create a “capsule wardrobe” of sequences—maybe six to ten of each chunk—and mix and match them like getting dressed in the morning.
Why Repetition Is Actually Better Teaching
Think of it like a restaurant menu. You don’t go to your favorite restaurant and expect them to have created an entirely new menu since your last visit. You go because you know what to expect, and that consistency is comforting.
Your students are the same way. When you teach the same lesson plan for an entire month (yes, a whole month), several things happen:
1. Your students actually learn. Repetition is the key to learning. When they see the same sequence week after week, they stop living in their thinking brain and drop into their body. That’s when the real yoga happens.
2. You become a better teacher. When you’re not scrambling to remember what comes next in your brand-new sequence, you have the mental bandwidth to see your students. You notice who needs an adjustment, who’s struggling, who’s ready for more.
3. Variety emerges naturally. Even if you don’t change a single thing in your sequence, the class will be different every time. Where you stand, who’s present, everyone’s energy level, the season—all of this creates natural variety.
You never step in the same river twice. Same with your yoga class.
The Middle Path Between Type A and Type B
If you’re the type of teacher who rigidly plans everything and tries to control every variable, you need to hear this: your students don’t need perfection. They need your presence.
If you’re the type of teacher who wings it every time, you need to hear this: having a reliable structure doesn’t limit your creativity. It creates the container for you to be truly responsive.
The middle path is where the magic happens. That’s where you’re repeating mostly over time with just a little bit of intentional variety.
From Peak Poses to Balanced Movement
Here’s another mindset shift that will save you hours of planning time: let go of peak pose sequencing.
If you go onto Instagram when it’s time to plan your class and see some impressive pose or transition and think, “I’m going to work back from there,” you’re creating unnecessary stress. You’re also sending a message to your students that what matters is building toward some aesthetic accomplishment.
But the goal isn’t to get your foot behind your head. The goal is liberation. Connection. Union.
Instead of building toward a peak pose, offer your students a balanced movement diet. Make sure you’re covering all six moves of the spine (forward, back, side to side, round and round), all four lines of the legs (front, back, inside, outside), and both core modes (stabilization and articulation).
That’s the 6-4-2 framework that underlies all the sequences I share in my book The Art of Yoga Sequencing and in my movement library at The Prep Station.
Your Action Steps
If you want to start planning your classes in 15 minutes or less, here’s what to do:
1. Do a brain dump. Open a fresh document right now and list all the sequences you already know. You’ll be surprised how much is already in your head.
2. Organize them into the four quarters. Which sequences work well as warmups? Which ones are standing sequences? Mat sequences? Finishing sequences?
3. Pick one complete lesson plan and commit to teaching it for at least four weeks in a row. Don’t change anything. Just teach it. Watch what happens.
4. After four weeks, you can either keep going or swap out just one quarter. Change no more than 25 percent at a time.
That’s it. That’s how you plan your class in 15 minutes or less.
Watch the Full Workshop
I recently led a free workshop walking through this entire approach in detail, including live demonstrations of the four-quarter framework and my “Greatest Hits Lesson Plan”—a back-pocket sequence you can teach as-is.
In the workshop, you’ll learn:
- Three powerful analogies for thinking about modular sequencing (capsule wardrobe, restaurant menu, and perforated flip books)
- Why your students actually prefer consistency over novelty
- How to create your own sequence “recipe box”
- The difference between working toward a peak pose versus offering balanced movement
- Specific examples of how to vary a sequence while keeping it fundamentally the same
Free Resource: The Greatest Hits Lesson Plan
Want to try this approach right away? Download my Greatest Hits Lesson Plan—a complete, balanced sequence you can teach this week. It features a side-bending tree pose that appears in different orientations throughout the class (on the back, standing, from hands and knees, and belly down).
It’s the “mom’s spaghetti” meal of yoga classes—you just know all the bases are covered.
Ready to Build Your Sequence Library?
If you want a complete library of ready-to-teach sequences (140+ and counting), check out The Yoga Class Prep Station. It’s $39 per month and includes:
- Follow-along videos for every sequence (so you can practice them in your own body first)
- A custom GPT assistant trained on my sequencing methods
- Monthly Snack + Chat calls where we practice together and connect as teachers
- A fresh sequence idea every month
- Theme seeds and teaching tips
- 3 CEUs per month (36 per year)
It’s like having a teaching sous chef—all the prep work is done so you can focus on connecting with your students.
The Bottom Line
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel every week. You need proven frameworks and the permission to repeat.
Stop burning out on class planning. Start teaching with confidence.
Because it shouldn’t take longer to plan your yoga class than to teach it.
