Are you recognizing your students’ needs shifting as the temperatures drop? Are you looking for unique ways to help meet these needs? Winter places new demands on the body - more energy needed to keep the body warm, and more rest needed because of that.
At the same time, some offering of active practice can help lift spirits and energies. Like with yoga instruction in general, it’s all about balancing sometimes contrasting ingredients in a way that creates something cohesive and appealing.
First consider the class environment. With temperature, it’ll feel very nice to students to enter a warm studio. Yet avoid “blasting" the heat, so to speak, as a drastic change in temperature (going from outside to inside) can shock their bodies. Music, if used, is most effective when calming and grounding, yet with an uplifting element to it.
There are plenty of ways to explore different types of movement- varying dynamics, planes, levels, et cetera, to keep your students stimulated and engaged through this - to the point where they might not even realize they’re still “warming up”! Getting creative in these ways can help build heat in the body, balancing the abundance of Kapha in this season with Pitta.
On the other hand, winter makes us tense and tight. We scrunch up our shoulders and facial muscles, and the body’s skeletal muscle increases its resting tone in service of keeping warm. So we do need good stretching this time of year, after gentle movement to warm the body and begin that process of loosening tense musculature.
Try cueing a swing of an arm through a full range of motion in any standing pose, and then into a half bind - movement to warm and loosen, deeper stretching to further release the muscle. Certainly include deeper stretching poses in your winter classes - Pyramid Pose, other forward folds, and the like - but perhaps not until the latter third of class. As an even further precautionary measure, ask your students if they feel warm before cueing something like Paschimottanasana or Janu Sirsasana.
Do your best with class timing to allow for a nice long Savasana, and a slow, gentle exit back to full consciousness. Yoga can help us find a healthy, enjoyable balance between calm and activity at any time of the year, but particularly in the winter months when the environment challenges our physical systems. Those detailed here, and countless others, are methods for that. Best of luck and Om Shanti!