Forrest Sequencing: Very General Observations
Well, due to a variety of reasons, my turn as an assistant at Back Bay looks to be complete. I mourned last night and today am focusing on moving on; resetting my schedule a bit and working on setting up a volunteer gig. Hopefully there will be more on that soon!
Also taking the time now to give some general guidelines for how a Forrest class gets put together. These are pretty top-level, basic things & I hope to give a more nuanced discussion later since I get toset the groundwork today.
Generally speaking, a Forrest class runs like this:
1) Centering/theme/intention/grounding
2) Pranayama
3) Warm up pose or two, like a side bend, gentle twist, neck stretch, hip or shoulder opener
4) More warming/strengthening stuff. For example, a Dolphin/Dog variation follwed by Abs, then Bridge. Or maybe Abs, then Bridge (to stretch abs out & lengthen low back as well as backbend prep) followed by Dolphin/Dogs.
5) Maybe more Ab work in the form of standing Uddiyana/Agni Sara/Nauli. Maybe it’s wall time.
6) Moving into the “Hot Zone.” Can start with Classical Suns. Or go into B Series with 2-3 Standing pose variations put in. Or a Standing Serie (5-15 standing poses done in a row on each side; no vinyasas)
7) Perhaps wall work if not already done. Can put wall work in lots of places. Personally, I love it after the first warm up stuff or after doing Suns, before the meat of the Hot Zone cuz folks aren’t too tired yet. But if the Apex pose is at the wall, it would go after everyone is nice and hot.
8 ) Apex pose. The class ideally has been working up to this all along, warming up, getting technique & alignment set. Depending on the class, this might be something as simple as a pigeon variation or deeper backbend, ranging on up to Scorpion or some other funky arm balance or perhaps a lotus entanglement.
9) Warm down. Depending on the apex pose, warming down might include more abs (great for warming down! really!), even standing poses in a simpler series (also great! really!), that wall work, or it could be more “traditional” warm downs like slow hip openers, forward bends, shoulderstand & variations, twists etc.
10) Savasana, then seated closing. Yummmm.
That’s the jist/outline of a Forrest practice. It gets more complicated, of course, and has lots of variations but that’s a start!
Today’s practice has me off to Back Bay for Nicoline’s morning class & hopefully Kate’s nooner as well. Got a good feeling about it. 
Tags: Assisting, Back Bay Yoga, Daily Yoga Practice, Forrest Yoga, Sequencing