Karin's Yoganotes: Getting fluent in yoga sketching and planning classes visually
In this series I introduce you to Yogi(ni)s from around the world who started sketching their yoga practice with yoga stick figures after discovering the Yoganotes book.
Karin's yoga journey
Karin is a yoga teacher from Switzerland who runs her own little studio called ‘Bring it OM’ in Zurich.
Karin first discovered yoga two years ago when she was going through a stressful time in her life. Her doctor recommended to find a means to reduce the stress and Karin started taking yoga classes two times a week. She found a studio with teachers who motivated her to continue and deepen her practice.
When her teacher asked her if she wanted to take a yoga teacher training course last summer, she took the plunge and enrolled. Shortly after she had the opportunity to rent a small room to teach classes there and decided to open up her own studio, where she offers yoga and pilates classes supported by a group of additional teachers. For now, she runs her studio as a side hustle.
Through her studio Karin wants to pass on the support and motivation she received from her own teachers. She wants to create a positive space where every student gets challenged and can progress in a safe manner. An important focus in her teaching is the correct alignment in the asanas so that her students can enjoy practicing yoga for a long time and without the risk of injury.
Karin's Yoganotes
Karin uses the Yoganotes book to prepare her classes in a visual way. She enjoys developing well structured classes that properly warm-up the body and prepare the muscles step by step for deeper and more challenging asanas. She usually starts by choosing a peak pose and then builds up a sequence of postures around it that first prepare the body and then integrate the practice after the peak pose.
The little stick figures help her to visualise the class before and also serve as a little cheat sheet she takes to class in case she forgets a part of the sequence.
“Before discovering the Yoganotes book, I just wrote down a list of asana names to prepare a class. The problem was that I would sometimes forget what the asana actually looks like. And some variations of postures don’t really have precise names, so it would be difficult to describe exactly what I mean in words.”
When Karin started using yoga stick figures, she practiced by copying the different asanas from the book. Now she is almost ‘fluent’ in sketching the postures and only needs to take a little peek into the book every now and then.
“At the beginning it took a long time and I had to think about every stroke, but now I am really fast. Once you understand the system, you can also sketch new postures and variations that are not shown in the book.”
Karin describes herself as a visual learner and creative person who enjoys drawing and doodling in general. In her every day life she doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to use sketching, so she enjoys that she can combine her creative side with her yoga practice through planning her classes visually.
You can find Karin on Instagram @bringitom_yoga where she regularly shares her sketched flows and in her studio ‘Bring it OM’ in Zurich.
Do you want to learn to sketch yoga stick figures, too?
The Yoganotes book teaches you a easy-to-learn system for sketching simple yoga stick figures that express any asana clearly with a few strokes. It contains step-by-step sketching instructions for over 80 asanas and their variations and shows you how to combine them into full sequences.