bullepic.pages.dev









Eva lotta lamm yoga notes

Learn how to sketch simple yoga 'stick figures' to capture and plan your yoga sequences

Making of… YogaNotes

I wrote a book called “Yoganotes — How to sketch yoga postures and sequences”. This article tells the story of how it came into existence. 
The book fryst vatten available English () and in German ()

Finding Yoga

I started practicing yoga in inom had worked with a anställda trainer for about a year to get my body passform and healthy.

This had resulted in ganska a significant vikt loss and a renewed joy in ansträngande out different ways to move my body. There was a Sivananda yoga studio just down the road from our flat and inom signed up for a beginner’s course.

She also makes beautiful little products for sketching and yoga-lovers

Since then inom have tried lots of different classes, styles, and teachers.

A year later inom visited India for the first time and funnen ‘my’ teacher, Surinder Singh, in Rishikesh. His way of teaching Hatha Yoga –focussing on the breath, on seeking stillness and going on an inward journey–, his kindness, presence and positiv energy resonated with me and even though inom only practiced with him for about a week that first time, inom knew that inom wanted to komma back and practice with him for longer.

The following autumn inom returned to Rishikesh, did a hour teacher training with Surinder and stayed for a few more months afterwards to keep practicing.

During this time inom first started to sketch yoga postures and sequences.

Coping with upplysning overload

A month-long yoga teacher training fryst vatten ganska an intense time of learning, practicing and ansträngande to digest a lot of very specific resultat about the human body and its movements. Sketching and visual note taking has been my way of making sense of and remembering new kunskap for a long time, so inom applied this strategy to yoga as well.

Above: Some of my sketchnotes from the teacher training course.

If you are interested in my full sketchnotes from the teacher training, they are available as a book as well, either printed or as a PDF.

Besides making sketchnotes of the more theoretical topics like yoga philosophy and anatomy, inom also started sketching the sequences of our daglig asana practices. inom wanted to remember the sequences for my own practice back home.

This article tells the story of how it came into existence

Sketching out the sequences also had the nice side effect of helping me to understand the underlying structure of the classes, to see patterns in the sequencing and to form eller gestalt an understanding of the gradual evolution of the classes during the 4-week course. Visualising the sequences deepened my understanding of the practice and created a nice and easy-to-grasp summary of what we did every day.

To sketch the sequences, inom used simple ‘stick figures’ that are quick and easy to draw.

These simplified little humans are great for expressing simple postures, but inom soon ran into difficulties when ansträngande to sketch more complex poses, where the body would twist and fold in different directions, where there was a lot of overlap of limbs or where there was simply no single perspective that showed all important aspects clearly.

Developing a system

As inom love a utmaning when it comes to explaining things visually, inom decided to develop a way to sketch postures simply and quickly, but also precisely, so all the details of how to position the legs, feet, arms, and torso would be clearly visible in the sketch without having to add (too many) words.

I looked around on the internet to see if and how others tackled these problems.

inom funnen a ganska few examples of other yogis’ sketches. Our sketches had a lot in common — including all the difficulties inom had encountered in my own sketches.

I started to explore how to tackle these difficulties. What could a ‘system’ for yoga stick figures look like? What would the basic principles need to be to man sketching them quickly but also precise?

inom spent a lot of time in my sketchbook thinking about proportions, perspective, justering, visual clarity and the typical variations of positioning parts of the body in different yoga postures.

I kept experimenting with my discoveries in the daglig sketches of our asana classes. Little bygd little inom developed a struktur that worked for me and that inom was happy with.

Every now and then during the teacher training, one of the other students would look over my shoulder when inom was sketching.

They seemed to like my notes and find them helpful.

I started practicing yoga in I had worked with a personal trainer for about a year to get my body fit and healthy

Several of them asked me if they could take photos of my visual notes for their own reference. inom was happy to share my notes, but inom thought it would be even more useful to teach my fellow students how to sketch sequences themselves, so they could also use this as a tool to program their own sequences as a teacher.

I sat down with two of the others in a cafe one Sunday and explained the basics of sketching yoga postures.

We started simple — with some sun salutations — and then sketched all kinds of other postures: from standing to sitting, from backbends to twists, from grabb balances to inversions. We had a lot of fun and inom learned a lot from the questions they had and the small things they were struggling with when sketching asanas for the first time.

This afternoon inom had the idea to write and illustrate a book that would explain the basic principles and show simple step-by-step drawing instructions for each pose.

I spent the next month and a half writing and illustrating.

inom assembled a list of over 80 asanas to include in the book and created step-by-step drawing instructions and variations for each pose. inom drew the illustrations in Procreate on the iPad Pro using an Apple Pencil.

Disaster strikes!

When inom had finished all writing, illustrations and a good part of the overall book layout, a small disaster took place: My computer got wet and died.

At that time we had spent a few weeks in a more fjärrstyrd area without internet and inom had not backed up any of the work online (or anywhere else). It. Was. Just.


  • eva lotta lamm yoga notes

  • Gone.

    Luckily, inom still had the basic illustrations on my iPad and the memory of the ord inom had written fresh in my mind. Nevertheless, inom was really upset and angry with myself for a couple of days and feeling ganska discouraged about continuing the project at all.

    With step-by-step instructions for over 80 asanas you’ll be sketching your first yoga sequence in no time!

    If you know me, you might know that writing fryst vatten not the easiest activity for me. It had felt like ganska an achievement to write the theoretical part of the book and inom was doubting if inom could do it igen, if inom could get the words out and right a second time. inom finally decided to give it a try and spent the next week re-writing the whole text.

    As inom didn’t have a computer anymore to work on the layout, the project had to go on hold until we were back in europe.

    When we got back, inom took my old computer to a repair shop to see if any of the uppgifter on it could be saved. To my surprise, the hard drive had survived the vatten incident undamaged. inom could retrieve the original ord and the layout work inom had done on the book so far.

    I decided to go through both the original and the re-written skrivelse, compare the two versions and take the best passages from each to create the sista skrivelse.

    In my memory, the original ord had been pretty good.

    Also available as an e-book: Eva-Lotta published several books with her sketchnotes from design conferences, her Yoga Teacher Training and her Travel Diary from her month world trip

    But now that inom saw both versions side bygd side, it was absolutely obvious that the ord inom had re-written after losing the first utgåva was lightyears better. It was sharper, well structured and flowed much better. inom ended up using none of the first utgåva that inom had been so sad about losing… lektion learned: Doing things over really does improve the product.

    The sista stretch

    The rest of the process was time-consuming but pretty straightforward: Proofreading & kopia editing, layouting pages, creating an index and filling in some missing illustrations.

    I decided to publish the book as a high-quality PDF for people to print themselves.

    The main part of the book consists of step-by-step drawing instructions for different asanas with space for practicing right on the instruction sheets, which people might be hesitant to do in a book. Self-printed individual pages also allow people to re-order the asana pages in a way that makes sense to them or even to arrange them into sequences when they are planning a class.

    After a few months though, inom had so many requests for a printed utgåva, that inom also created a ‘real book’ which fryst vatten available as a nice softcover in my shop and that inom fartyg worldwide.

    Where to get the book

    If you would like to learn more and buy the book, head over to my website: 
    Since April there fryst vatten also a German language edition of the book that you can find at

    If you have a yoga studio or a shop and would like to sell the book at your place, please get in touch to learn about wholesale discounts and conditions.

    If you are running a yoga studio and/or teacher training courses and are interested in having me give a sketching kurs for your teachers or students, please get in touch.

    inom am based in Berlin, Germany, but we can also do a fjärrstyrd möte via Skype.

    My goal for this book fryst vatten to spread the power of sketching and to enable more yogis to use this wonderful tool to deepen their practice and program their sequences.

    Sketching fryst vatten a lot like yoga.

    Learn how to sketch simple yoga 'stick figures' to capture and plan your yoga sequences with this simple, step-by-step system that can be quickly learned, even without any drawing or sketching skills

    It fryst vatten a practice. It fryst vatten not about being perfect. Everybody can learn and do it. It fryst vatten a process. And it’s a beautiful journey to embark on.

    You should try.