about yflows

YFlows Introduction

Last modified: 2025-07-16

What is YFlows? It's a free, communal online yoga sequence viewer, editor and collaboration tool. YFlows started as a text based yoga sequence editor and structured data format. Yogi Tom teaches a series of weekly yoga classes in Scottsdale, AZ, USA and was looking for something to track taught classes, organize his iPhone Notes, share some of the cues/sequences with students, and maybe create a visualization of little pose icons. He built his own.

Keeping track of different warmups, cooldowns, SunA variations, main flows "Sun C's" (i.e. DD, 1LDD, W1, star, WLFF, ... ) lead to the developing and publishing the website. Please also use the sequence viewer/editor to remember and plan out sequences, find inspiration in other's shared sequences to to document interesting sequences in your own practive. You can copy+paste export these text sequences into your own tracking system, or use the pdf viewer to print the sequences onto notecards. For Yogis, By Yogis.

The idea behind YFlows is a way to create&share sequences, cues, variations and all things represented with modern vinyasa classes. The initial YFlows audience is yoga teachers looking to upskill cues and plan out classes.

YFlows Development and Practice

This is a free, gratis, open data project.

YFlows is in Beta Preview. What you're seeing is a live-demo of the Beta Software. Please check the blog for an update on when stable site capabilties officially launch.

There are some intricacies being worked out; pose structure, repetition information, etc. that could change. Any changes will be done in a way to be as minimally disruptive as possible.

Acknowledgements and Gratitude

The site is run and infrastructure paid for as part of the offering; please use the service. If the site runtime costs become unbearable, we will figure out a way to share the load.

Thanks to the Phoenix, AZ, USA yoga community and the South Bay LA yoga community. Special shout outs to the YFlows Beta Testers, Modern Yoga Scottsdale Teacher Training 2022 Group (holla!), DTS, 💙Blue Buddha Studio(come flow!), and all of the other teachers, students and fellow yogis continuing to practice. 🙏

The YFlows Pose Library

A note about the Pose Library - it is meant not to be representative of all yoga poses, nor a definitive list. The pose library is used for building sequences.

See the pose documentation for structure.

In the pose library, Tadasana is also Samastiti or Samasthiti or Samasthitiḥ, even though the point of the postures are different, we group the poses together via their "common names" to keep the number of unique poses in the manageable range (~200). If there are any common names missing that you want to use in your sequence definitions, always feel free to reach out.

Reminder, in the sequence editor, you can call your sequence posture variations whatever makes sense to you and your lineage!

You can also submit your favorite cues for the various poses. The cues can/will be crowdsourced (vote!).

The YFlows pose data is Creative Commons Share alike data, manual download. See the License/Legal page for a full understanding of the data. Feel free to contact us about contributing or an extract of the pose information.

Sequence Editor

We understand that the yoga is not the flow. A Sequence is a yoga practice, a set of steps you're doing for your fitness regime, with optional words (i.e. "cues") placed appropriately to get you through the workout while doing the exercises with the correct form. There are other tools for other aspects of the practice; this site and tool focused on the asana and the connections between them.

There is a logic to the structure of a modern yoga practice. The logic has changed throughout the decades, but the overall practice remains the same (intention, warmup, standing, cooldown, rest).

This site is designed to capture the creative essence of Modern Vinyasa-based yoga sequences. The images/poses are only for the display of the sequences, it is assumed that there is instruction or external guidance.

Auto generated icons are not perfect, but they are a good starting point. You can always edit the sequence to your liking, remove the icons from the sequence. If you're interested in contributing an icon set to the project, please reach out.

Sequence Playback

Playback coming soon

About the Use of AI

AI is a tool, not a replacement for human intelligence. It is also not a replacement for human creativity, but it can be a helpful tool. Use it to your advantage, but don't let it use you.

There is a cost element involved. Creating a curated list of yoga pose images is expensive. AI Art generation is ~dollars instead of ~hundreds/thousands of dollars and for the current purpose of sequence editing, we can use icons/generated work. I am open to creative commons based artistry and pose images, and it is on the roadmap. Until then, the icons in the sequence will be generated using anatomic directions. The posture anatomy and layout pictures are not perfect, should only be used as a starting point when planning out a sequence.

If you have comments on the use of AI or anything else, feel free put the site on blast on social media or whatever else. If you'd like to contribute, get in touch – you can always respond to the email that you used to sign up for the website.