First classes at MAC were slow and careful. My goal is to increase understanding of yoga without risk of injury. It may not be obvious but yoga stretches are highly leverage techniques and the risk of injury is real. I have known students and even teachers to injure themselves and others.
The Tuesday and Thursday classes are similar and the notes are on some poses we did. The sequence is: warm ups, then standing poses, then backbends, twists forward bends and lastly shoulderstand. Ending with a few minutes of mindful breathing.
We’ll add flow and movement (vinyāsa) to our practice, but first I want you to be very familiar with the poses. I am a fan of the Ashtanga Yoga program and I use a lot of their techniques in my classes. However, my teacher was  BKS.Iyengar and his focus was alignment.
The images I post are mostly either myself or Mr Iyengar. His pictures are from the 1960’s. The pictures often show the full pose. In class, I’ll suggest accessible versions.

1: Sit comfortably on the floor and take your attention within for a moment then stretch up and twist to both sides.

2: Wake your feet up. There are 26 bones in each foot and they are all important and have some independent movement. On Tuesday we gave the feet an actual massage, on Thursday we just tried to spread the toes while standing.

3: Standing poses (Warrior 1, parsvottanasana, triangle (trikonasana), warrior 2)

Warrior pose I – upper body facing forward – both hip joints turning inwards -keep face calm – hold a belt if you can’t bring your hands together – don’t forget to breathe

Parsvottanasana – (literally side extended pose). Correct alignment is heel of front foot in line with arch of back foot. Notice how active the feet are in the photos! We used blocks to put the hands on instead of putting the hands on the back.

Those first two poses are internal rotations of both hip joints. The next two are external rotations of both hip joints.

In triangle pose (trikoṇāsana), we need the downward hand to be firmly on a support. Use a firm block! If the hand is not firm, you will not be able to correctly move the abdomen.

The muscles used to turn the hips outward are:

The piriformis is the largest and is very involved in the external rotation these two poses require.

On Tuesday we did downward dog. We’ll do this pose a lot and use it to connect other poses together.

4: Supine hip and leg stretches. We did several variations of this using a belt. I always suggest using a belt until you are flexible.

5: Backbends

We also looked at a few backbend variations.

Backbends strengthen the thigh muscles and stretch and strengthen the inner abdominal muscles (Psoas).

6: Twist. I do this with the back hand firmly on the floor. Catching the hands is too difficult.

7 forward bends. Again, use a belt!

8: shoulderstand Be careful not to twist your neck. Keep your head still and your face calm. Breathe!

9: Breath work. Viloma (sanskrit for “against the grain”) is the first prāṇāyāma technique I teach. The theory behind this is that at the start, there is not much awareness or control of the breath and by consciously pausing we can refine our control and increase awareness. The first step is to pause during the inhalation. Start with 2 steps inhaling with a pause between them. The steps and pauses should be the same length. I like to count heartbeats so I’ll inhale for 3 beats, then pause for 3 beats and so on. Let the exhalation take care of itself. Step 2 is the opposite. Pause during the exhalation and let the inhalation take care of itself. Then step 3 is to both inhale and exhale with pauses. There are of course more advanced steps where we hold the breath in and also hold the breath out but we’ll look at them later. It takes a lot of time to master this and it’s best learned lying on bolsters to passively open the chest. I encourage you to play with this until you have a practice that works for you. Add more steps and pauses but always avoid tension. The process should be perfectly smooth. No stress. When learning this technique, stop occasionally and do a body sweep to identify areas where tension creeps in.

Yogic breathing (prāṇāyāma) is not just automatic, habitual breathing, it is intentional, mindful breathing. Practicing prāṇāyāma increases lung capacity and oxygenates the tissues. It reduces stress and anxiety.
It works because lungs can be controlled consciously in a way that most internal organs cannot. You can’t consciously control your kidneys but you can consciously control your lungs.