After finishing my 200 Hour Yoga Teacher training, I reached out to the studio and volunteered to update their teacher training manual. The studio happily accepted and offered some insights on what they were looking for.
There were two things that caught my eye over the training: The Stick Figures & Page Layout. I personally wanted to update the stick figure illustrations from hand-drawn ones to vector graphics to clean them up. As a graduate of the training, I hoped the drawings can help the students to understand the purpose of the asanas (poses) and find their own alignments and lines of energy. The studio also asked for gender neutral stick figure so the manual is designed for all students.
I also wanted to change the page layout to create more space for notes. As you can see in the shared image below, there is a lot you can gather and learn on a single pose, such as the Sanskrit meaning of the pose, anatomy and variations of the pose. The studio did an amazing job of breaking down the information and I wanted to help them to utilize the page space fully so students can write and organize all of the given data.
Before drawing each pose, I reviewed my notes and videos from the training and also practiced the pose to understand and physically feel the pose. The challenge was how to indicate left/right and capturing the twisting lines and curves of the body correctly, while keeping the proportions consistent. A great example of this came from the Half Moon Pose and the Revolved Half Moon Pose.
I decided to draw the body with two lines, or sides, rather than with one line. I believe it was just simple and yet more detailed than the previous version to capture the shape of the body. And like most poses, I had an easy time illustrating the Half Moon Pose. The brain can trick itself to see either the right leg or the left leg as the standing leg, and following the same line will connect to the arm on the same side. For example, as shown on the left, if you believe the standing leg to be right leg, you will naturally see the entire line as the right side of the body and vice versa.
The problem was when the pose involved twists, it was hard to indicate which direction the body is facing and where the twist happens. Using a helix did not make sense visually and using colors seemed complicated for a simple stick figure drawing. Through trial and error, I found the best way was to indicate limbs crossing center line of the body. For example, as shown on the right, the side of the body that is crossing the center line is not visible, highlighting the illusion of space: foreground/background. In this particular drawing, the right leg is the standing leg and the left arm would be reaching or touching the floor, illustrating a twist. It was a constant edits and iterations based on feedback to get the poses looking right.
After completing all the illustrations, I made minor tweaks on the page layout. Over the training, we first learned the basic anatomy of the body and what the body does to achieve each pose. Then, we focused on how to get others into the shape with verbal cues and how to make each pose available for everyone by using props and learning the variations of the pose. There was a lot to learn and a lot to write down; and the original manual did not have the best format to organize all the given information.
I organized the sections similarly spaced out so each topic gets equal amount of space for notes. Also, the top half will mainly focus on the physical aspects of the pose; while the bottom half of the page will focus on teaching the pose. I thought it'd be smart to keep related topics closer to each other, such as, keeping cues, contraindications and modifications together on one side.
This small project was for my own creative itch. I wanted to give back to the community and the studio that I learned so much from; and also take the opportunity to apply my design skills into something I learned and am passionate for. I am hoping to see the manual being used more in the community and looking forward to receiving feedback and more chance like this.
Comments