Beginner Yoga Class Plan: A Filled-In Example You Can Teach This Week

Planning a beginner class is mostly a matter of restraint. New students need fewer poses than you think, held a little longer than you might expect, and repeated week after week until the shapes feel familiar. Below is a complete 60-minute beginner yoga class plan built around the warrior poses, taken from the “Meet the Warriors” plan in my book The Art of Yoga Sequencing, with timing, cues, and a balance check you can run before you teach it. If you’d like the blank version to fill in yourself, my yoga class plan template has it, row by row.

How a beginner class differs

Three dials shape any class: how often a pose shows up (frequency), how long students stay (duration), and how hard they work (intensity). In a beginner class, each one gets a specific setting.

Keep frequency low to medium within a single class, because brand-new students may not yet have the conditioning to repeat a pose many times. Over the weeks, though, frequency should be high: teach the same plan again and again, with less variety from week to week than you’d offer experienced students. Repetition is how beginners learn.

Hold poses for a medium duration, somewhere between five and twenty breaths. That’s long enough for students to feel what a pose is doing, and not so long that they start to resent it. Because there’s so much you’ll want to say about each pose, try demonstrating first while students watch, then leading them into the shape with a few simple cues. Students who like to move to learn can block it out right along with you.

Leave intensity entirely up to the students. At the start, less is more, and you can invite them to explore their edges as their bodies and confidence adapt. Tell them at the beginning of class, and again before anything challenging, that every pose is an invitation and an option, and that a break is always welcome!

The theme: meet the warriors

The warrior poses are some of the first shapes people picture when they think of yoga, and they show up in nearly every style, so beginners will meet them again in other classes. They’re also a natural platform for a theme around confidence, determination, or intention. Offer one simple line at the start, such as “Notice where you feel steady today,” and come back to it once at the end.

Opening (5 minutes)

Start students in a comfortable position, on their backs or seated on a blanket or block, and guide a few minutes of breath awareness. Introduce your theme in a sentence. Use the same opening every week, so students settle faster each time. For more on those first few minutes, here’s how to start your yoga class with confidence.

Warm-up: six moves of the spine, prone, with leg swings (10 minutes)

This warm-up touches every part of the 6–4–2 on its own, which makes it a lovely way to start beginners.

1. Table. Come to hands and knees, wrists under shoulders and knees under hips.
2. Calf stretch. Roll over the toes of the right foot and pulse back to stretch the calf, a few times, then hold.
3. Cat-cow with a leg swing. Inhale to cow and lift the right leg behind you; exhale to cat and draw the right knee toward the chest. Repeat several rounds, keeping both hands on the mat.
4. Tail wag. Inhale and extend the right leg back; exhale and tap the right toes toward the left side of the mat, like a wagging tail. Repeat a few rounds, then hold the side bend.
5. Mountain climbers. Extend the right leg back again and turn it out so the knee and toes face right. Inhale here; exhale and bring the right knee wide toward the right elbow. Repeat several rounds.
6. Outrigger twist. Drop the right toes out to the right, like the outrigger on a canoe, and twist toward the extended leg, staying on the left palm.
7. Repeat on the left side.

For more variations, see my post on the six moves of the spine.

Standing work, part 1: Warrior I flow (12 minutes)

This flow, inspired by a sequence Leslie Kaminoff teaches, works the front and back lines of the legs. Start at the back edge of the mat.

1. Home base: mountain pose at the back of the mat.
2. Warrior I prep. Step the left foot forward, keeping the left leg straight. (Beginners can keep the back heel lifted, for a crescent lunge, if that’s more comfortable.)
3. Flow. Inhale, lift the arms. Exhale, bend the front knee into a lunge. Inhale, straighten the front leg. Exhale, lower the hands to your sides. Repeat for several rounds.
4. Hold warrior I for five to ten breaths, with the arms overhead or the hands on the hips.
5. Return to mountain pose and repeat on the other side.

Standing work, part 2: Warrior II flow (12 minutes)

Turn to face the long edge of the mat for the second warrior.

1. Home base: a wide stance.
2. Warrior II. Turn the feet for warrior II. Inhale, extend the arms; exhale, bend the front knee into warrior II. Repeat a few times, then hold.
3. Exalted warrior. Inhale, reach the front arm up and back.
4. Side angle. Exhale, rest the front forearm on the front thigh and reach the top arm long.
5. Triangle. Inhale, straighten the front leg into triangle, with the bottom hand on the shin or a block.
6. Optional half moon. For students who’d like more challenge, soften the front knee and launch into half moon with a block under the bottom hand. Everyone else can stay in triangle or return to warrior II.
7. Return to the wide stance and repeat on the other side.

Mat work: head-to-knee flow (12 minutes)

Come to sitting for a trip around the spine, hips, and legs.

1. Home base: staff pose. Sit with legs extended, on a folded blanket if the hips are tight.
2. Head-to-knee pose. Bend the right leg and fold forward over the left. A strap around the left foot and a prop under the bent knee are always fine.
3. Revolved head-to-knee pose. Bring the left hand to the inside of the left leg, open to the right, and lean into a side bend.
4. Seated twist. Point the right knee up, with the sole of the right foot on the floor, and twist to the right, with the left palm on the right knee.
5. Repeat on the other side.

Finishing and savasana (9 minutes)

Lie down for a few minutes of savasana, with a bolster or rolled blanket under the knees if that’s more comfortable. Then talk students out of savasana with the same orderly steps every week, revisit your theme in a sentence, and close class.

Run the balance check

Before you teach the plan, run it through the 6–4–2 checklist: six moves of the spine, four lines of the legs, two core actions. Flexion and extension came from cat-cow; the side bends from the tail wag, side angle, and revolved head-to-knee; the twists from the outrigger twist and the seated twist. The front and back lines of the legs came from the calf stretch, the Warrior I flow, and head-to-knee; the inner and outer lines from Warrior II, triangle, and the seated poses. Stabilization came from table and the warrior holds, and articulation from cat-cow. Every box is checked, so the class is balanced. If the framework is new to you, here’s how the 6–4–2 framework works.

Teach it for a month

Teach this plan as written for at least four weeks. Repetition lets beginners recognize each shape and settle into it, and it lets you learn which cues help this particular group. Keep your instructions short, too: no more than three cues to set up each pose, with refinements saved for the second side, as in the 3-cue rule. If you’d like to watch a plan come together from scratch, here’s a video of me filling in the 6–4–2 worksheet in real time.

This plan is one of many in The Art of Yoga Sequencing, which you’ll find on my books page. And if you’d like a new ready-to-teach sequence each month, plus a bite-sized teaching tip every Monday, take a look at the Prep Station.