It’s 6:00 on a Tuesday. Twelve people are settling onto their mats, the sequence in your head is one you trust, and you still don’t know what you’re going to say first.
That gap—between a class that works and a class that feels like yours—is what a theme closes. Closing it takes about five minutes once you have a method, and less than that if somebody hands you the theme already built.
So here are 36 of them, grouped six ways, each one distilled to the single sentence you could open with. Under every group you’ll find how the thread gets woven through an hour: where it goes in, where you pick it back up, where you tie it off. The method for building your own is at the bottom, along with the reason most yoga teachers who own a book of themes still freeze at the top of class.
These come out of Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses and its second volume, the two books I wrote with Alexandra DeSiato. There are 108 themes across the two of them. The 36 below are a cross-section: the plainest ones, the philosophical ones, the ones hiding inside an alignment cue, and the ones for a week when your students walk in carrying something.
what a theme actually is
A theme is not a topic sentence for a philosophy essay. It’s a through-line.
The word sutra means thread, the same root as suture. You pick the thread up in centering, touch it during a cue or two, weave it into a transition, and tie it off in closing. Four touchpoints, one idea that stays present the whole way through, and no requirement anywhere that the idea be profound.
If sequencing is the meal, theming is the wine pairing. The meal stands on its own; a good pairing makes you taste it differently. A theme also does something practical that nobody mentions: it makes your cueing easier. Instead of hunting for something to say during a long hold, you go back to the thread, which means you spend that silence returning to an idea rather than performing your way through it.
the 36 themes
Each theme carries its distilled intention, the short sentence you could say out loud. Start there. If one doesn’t speak to you today, skip it, because a theme you don’t believe won’t survive first contact with actual students.
start simple
The plainest themes are the ones that land. You don’t need a Sanskrit term or a perfect quote, and you never did!
- Be here now—This is it.
- Presence—This is what’s happening now.
- Attention—Attention is power. Choose where to place it.
- A space for myself—This is your space to drop into yourself.
- Less is more—Hold the practice with an open hand. You don’t have to work so hard.
- Quiet class: room for your mind—Notice the silence as room for your mind.
That last one is the theme for the days you have no theme, and Alexandra and I both admit in the book that we don’t theme every class. You tell students at the top that today will be quieter than usual, that you’ll say less on purpose, and that the silence is theirs to fill. Then you keep your promise, which is the hard part, since silence is exactly where a nervous yoga teacher starts talking. Silence is one of the most powerful tools you have, and most of us use it by accident instead of on purpose.
How to thread it: Take less is more. Open by saying that today you’re going to try just hard enough, which is harder than trying hard. During movement: “See if you can take five percent out of this. What’s still here?” In a long hold: “Nothing to add. Just stay.” At the close: “You didn’t have to work so hard. See whether that’s also true somewhere else this week.”
the yamas and niyamas, without the lecture
The ethical precepts make the best themes in yoga, and they’re the ones yoga teachers avoid hardest, because teaching them feels like it requires credentials. What it requires is one honest sentence about what the idea costs you.
- Ahimsa (nonharming)—Move with love.
- Satya (truth)—What is your personal truth? Listen deeply: what do you hear?
- Asteya (nonstealing)—Don’t take things—including poses—that aren’t rightfully yours.
- Aparigraha (nonhoarding)—Where are you holding back? Move with abundance.
- Santosha (contentment)—Accept, don’t resist. See the good here.
- Svadhyaya (self-study)—You’re here to learn something about yourself.
Start with the one you’re currently failing at. There’s nothing humble about that advice; it’s the shortest route to something true. If santosha is hard for you this month, you’ll say something honest about santosha, and honest is the entire bar.
How to thread it: Asteya works best when you give students the version they don’t expect, which is that we can steal a pose, taking a shape our body hasn’t earned on this particular day. Set that up in centering, then let it do its work as a question in the middle of class—“Is this pose yours right now, or are you borrowing it from a day you felt better?”—and again as a permission in a transition, where taking the version that belongs to you is the whole instruction. Close by pointing it off the mat, since every student in the room already has a situation in mind.
effort and ease
Six themes about the oldest question in the room: how hard should I be working?
- Sthira and sukha: effort and ease—Find the place between effort and ease.
- Abhyasa and vairagya: making and letting (diligent practice and nonattachment)—Learn where it’s worth making things happen, and where to let things happen.
- Tapas (discipline, heat)—Have the courage to change what you can.
- The pose begins when you want to leave it—Stay. See what happens.
- Stress and rest—Moderation in all things.
- No challenge, no change—If you want to dance, you’ve got to pay the piper.
Stress and rest is the one with the deepest roots for me, because it comes straight out of a decade of coaching endurance athletes: stress isn’t the enemy, it’s the tool for adaptation. Without stress we’d never grow, and without recovery we’d never absorb the growing. That’s the argument, and it lands as easily in a restorative class as in a strong one.
How to thread it: The pose begins when you want to leave it is the rare theme you shouldn’t announce. Open with the promise instead—“we’re going to hold a few things longer than is comfortable today, and I’ll tell you why at the end”—and then wait. On the third breath of a long hold: “There it is. That’s the moment. Stay.” At the close, say it out loud: “The pose began when you wanted to leave it. So does most of the rest of it.”
themes the body hands you
Alignment cues are themes in disguise. You’re already saying these words; give them somewhere to go.
- Root to rise—Trust the ground.
- Your two sides are different—Meet each side where it is.
- Relax your shoulders—Let go and open up.
- Move into the pose prepared—Are you ready?
- Inhale what you need; exhale what you don’t—Take what you need; leave what you don’t.
- Movement optimism—Your body is strong, resilient, and able. Why not?
We’ve spent years telling students what not to do, and a class built on the opposite premise feels different to be in. Bodies are capable, resilient, and changeable, and students who have just been told so move differently for the next fifty minutes.
How to thread it: Your two sides are different starts with a fact that surprises people, which is that we’re looking for balance rather than symmetry, and nobody’s body is symmetrical. Bring it back on the second side—“this side is a different animal, so don’t make it match; meet it where it is”—and let that be most of the work. At the close: “You gave each side what it needed instead of what the other one got. That’s a skill, and it’s rarer than you’d think.”
themes for a hard week
Some weeks your students walk in carrying something. These are for those weeks, and they’re the ones I’d most want a newer yoga teacher to have in her pocket.
- Unnecessary suffering is . . . unnecessary—What suffering can you opt out of?
- Pratipaksha bhavana (cultivating the opposite)—Can you see this a different way?
- Change is the natural state—I’m OK in the face of change.
- Happiness and the harder emotions—Wherever your emotions are today, happiness is somewhere on your path.
- Protect your boundaries—Not today.
- Choose what to bomb—Something has to give.
Choose what to bomb came to us from a participant in one of Alexandra’s Yoga for Motherhood retreats, and it may be the most useful thing in either book. When everything is too much, you don’t rise to meet all of it. You pick what gets less of you this week, on purpose, and that turns a failure into a decision.
How to thread it: Open honestly: some weeks all of it can’t be done well, and choosing what gets less is a skill rather than a surrender. Put it to work in a balance exploration, where students will fall out of some of these and get to pick which ones they’re willing to lose. At the close: “Something has to give. You get to say what. That’s different from having it taken.”
joy and gratitude
These have more teeth than the category usually gets credit for, and not one of them asks anybody to pretend.
- Practice gratitude—Thank you so much.
- Happiness is a practice (mudita)—The first practice of happiness is noticing your own joy.
- Loving kindness (metta)—May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be whole.
- Unexpected joy—Look for the unexpected joy.
- Yes, thanks—Yes, thanks. I accept the now.
- Be joyful though you have considered all the facts—Be joyful.
That last one is a line from Wendell Berry, and it’s the antidote to everything soft in this category. It doesn’t ask anyone to look away. It asks them to know exactly how things are and choose joy anyway, which is a much harder and much more interesting request to make of a person on a mat.
How to thread it: Unexpected joy works by accumulation rather than repetition, so ask for it once at the start—notice one thing today you didn’t plan to enjoy—and then leave it alone through the middle of class. Near the end, come back: “Did anything surprise you? Anything at all?” At the close: “Once you start looking for the unexpected joys, you find them everywhere. That’s attention, and attention is trainable.”
how to build your own, in about five minutes
The 36 above are a starting library, not a ceiling. Once you see how a theme is built you can make one in the time it takes to fill a water bottle. Three ways in.
Observation. Before you plan, take sixty seconds and ask yourself what you’ve been noticing lately. Write down the first thing. Don’t edit it, don’t judge it, and don’t upgrade it into something more profound than it is.
Say the word that comes up is patience. You now have a theme, and here’s the class it makes:
- Centering: “Today I invite you to explore patience—not the gritting-your-teeth kind, but the kind that comes from trusting the process.”
- A long hold: “This is where patience lives, right here, in the staying. Not pushing, not escaping.”
- A transition: “As we move from this shape to the next, see if you can carry that patience with you.”
- Closing: “We practiced patience today, on the mat. What you practice on the mat, you take with you.”
Four touchpoints, one word, five minutes of planning. No perfect quote, no sutra reference. You noticed something true and let it be the thread.
Inquiry. Start with a question instead of a word. What are your students grappling with? What would you love them to explore? The question becomes the thing you return to, and not answering it is the point.
Borrowed wisdom. Take something you read, heard, or lived through. Every theme above is borrowed wisdom with a template attached: a concept, language for centering, cues to weave through, a closing reflection. They’re recipes, and once you understand the recipe you start cooking.
If you want a structure to hang any of this on, what? so what? now what? does most of the work. What is the idea. So what is why it matters here, in this body, today. Now what is what they carry out the door.
the craft of restraint
Theming too much is the common error: returning to the thread so often that students have nowhere to put their own thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, a theme you mention once and abandon isn’t a theme, it’s a nice sentence you said at the beginning. But four touchpoints is plenty, and three will often do.
Saying less so your students can feel more is its own craft, and it takes longer to learn than the theming does. A theme is an offering rather than an argument. Some of your students will take it and some won’t, and the ones who need it will find it without your help.
where the other 72 live
Everything on this page is real and usable, and it’s also the smaller half. Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses holds 54 themes built on the yamas and niyamas, the kleshas, the koshas and the chakras, the solstices and equinoxes, and quotes strong enough to carry a class on their own. Volume 2 adds 54 more, with an evolved template, themes drawn from yoga philosophy and Hindu mythology and ordinary life, a takeaway section for every theme so students leave holding something, and a collection of themes on social justice and yoga.
Both books give you the full template for each theme, which matters more than the theme itself: language for opening, for movement, for pauses, for closing, plus a blank version so you can build your own the same way. Start with Volume 1 for the foundations, or go straight to Volume 2 if you already own the first.
Knowing 108 themes is not what makes theming feel natural. I’ve watched yoga teachers buy the book, love the book, mark it up, and still go blank at the top of class. What moves it is repetition: teaching the same theme more than once, hearing how it lands, changing three words, and teaching it again next week. That’s practice with feedback over time, which is a different animal from information, and no book can hand it to you.
If you’d like that rhythm built into your week, the Prep Station at Comfort Zone Yoga sends one theme seed every week alongside a library of 200+ sequences you can plan from, so the theme and the movement arrive together and you’re choosing rather than inventing. Have a look at the Prep Station if that sounds like the missing piece. Having the themes and having one ready on Tuesday morning are different problems, and the second one lives on a calendar.
pick one and teach it twice
You already notice things. You already care how your students feel walking out. Those are the raw materials, and the rest is craft you can practice on purpose.
So pick one theme from this page—the one that made you think oh, that one—and teach it this week. Then teach it again next week, to a different group, and listen for what changed. The second time is where it starts being yours!
🎙️ Alexandra and I talk through how we each build a theme from scratch on Yoga Teacher Confidential. Come listen.
