Vinyasa classes in Koh Samui
Breath-led movement, one pose flowing into the next.
Vinyasa is a flowing style of yoga where you move from one pose to the next in time with your breath. Instead of holding each shape for a long time, you link them into sequences, so the class feels like a moving rhythm rather than a series of stops.
No classes scheduled in the next two weeks.
What Vinyasa does for you
You get warm, a little sweaty and pleasantly tired within an hour. Tying each movement to an inhale or an exhale gives your mind something to follow, and many people find the inner chatter quiets once the rhythm takes over. Over a few weeks, the repeated sun salutations build strength in your arms, shoulders and core, and the flow starts to feel familiar in your body. No two classes are quite the same, so it rarely gets boring.
It suits you if
- you like to move rather than hold still
- you want a class that feels different every week
- you enjoy music while you practice
- you want strength and stretch in the same hour
Read the full guide to VinyasaWhat a class is like, your first time, history and the words you will hear
What a class is like
Most classes run 60 to 90 minutes. You usually start with a few minutes of breathing, build through sun salutations into standing poses, balances and perhaps backbends or arm balances, then wind down on the floor and finish with a few minutes of lying rest (savasana). The facilitator calls out poses and breath cues, demonstrates now and then, and often walks around offering adjustments. Music is common, anything from ambient to hip-hop depending on who leads. The studio is usually at normal temperature, but you generate your own heat.
Your first time
- Wear fitted clothes you can move and sweat in; loose tops slide over your face in downward dog.
- Arrive about ten minutes early to set up and tell the facilitator about any injuries or pregnancy.
- Bring water and a small towel. Many studios lend or rent mats, but check the class page.
Good to know
- Even "all levels" vinyasa can move quickly, so it is fine to skip a round and rest in child's pose.
- Pace and style depend heavily on the facilitator, so if one class is not for you, try another before deciding.
Where it comes from
The Sanskrit word vinyasa is usually explained as "placing in a special way", arranging steps in a deliberate order. As a way of moving, it traces back to Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, who in the 1930s taught a dynamic, breath-linked sequence of postures to young students at the Mysore Palace in South India. His approach drew on older hatha yoga and on the gymnastics and physical culture of his time, a mix historians such as Mark Singleton have written about in detail.
One of Krishnamacharya's students, K. Pattabhi Jois, shaped this into Ashtanga yoga: fixed sequences joined by short linking movements, the familiar plank, upward dog and downward dog, which became known as vinyasas. When Western students began traveling to Mysore in the 1970s and Jois taught in California in 1975, that flowing way of practicing traveled with them.
In the 1980s and 1990s, American facilitators began loosening the fixed Ashtanga sequences, mixing poses in new orders and adding music. Power yoga, Jivamukti and Baptiste yoga all grew out of this period, and "vinyasa flow" became a broad label for any class where breath leads movement.
Today vinyasa is one of the most common labels on studio schedules worldwide, Berlin included. You will find it in English and German, before work and late in the evening, in polished studios and Hinterhof spaces alike. Because no school owns the name, two vinyasa classes can feel very different.
Words you will hear
- Savasana
- Lying-on-your-back rest at the end of class; the name means corpse pose.
- Surya namaskar
- Sun salutation, a short sequence repeated to warm up at the start of class.
- Chaturanga
- A low push-up position with elbows hugging your ribs, a staple transition in flow classes.
- Ujjayi
- A slow breath through the nose with a soft hiss at the back of the throat that sets your pace.
- Take a vinyasa
- A cue to move through plank, low push-up, upward dog and downward dog, or to skip it and rest.