How To Create Yoga Flow

Space

Having a specific space set aside will help you dedicate yourself to your practice. You don't need an entire room, but give yourself enough room to spread out. Clear your space of any distractions (noise, smells, clutter). Choose your lighting, natural lighting can be invigorating and dim lighting can be relaxing. Embrace whatever helps get you in the right mindset: candles, aromatherapy spray, essential oils, plants, decor that uplifts you. Have anything you will need during your practice ready and on hand: yoga mat, towel, water, yoga block, meditation pillow, etc. Obviously, most of our lives are full and it can be impossible to eliminate all possible distractions but do what you can to set aside the time in your space for just you. Whether that means practicing while everyone else is gone, before they are awake, or after they sleep, keeping your phone out of your space, or just keeping the door closed. For more information, check out my article How to Create a Perfect Yoga Space

Theme

When I am creating my own flows I like to have a theme that I am working around. That can be a goal like preparing my feet for ballet pointe shoes, or focusing on a specific body part like my chest, doing yoga to prepare for sleep, or practicing gratitude. Not every movement in my flow needs to revolve around this theme, but I will want to keep coming back to poses that support my focus. And throughout my practice I will try to be mindful of my specific theme, keeping this presence through my flow, and engage specific muscles that I want or (if the theme I've chosen is more figurative) engaging the meditative practice I need.

Opening Poses

An opening pose should be one that begins to warm up major muscle groups (pigeon pose, child's pose, forward bend, bound angle, happy baby, cat/cow etc). While you are doing this pose concentrate on your breathing, try to slowly inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Begin to bring your awareness to your body and let go of the distractions of your life. Slowly move through a few poses to warm up your big muscle groups.
Some Opening Poses you can use:

Sanskrit Name: Eka Pada Rajakapotasana
Beginning in the seated position, bring one leg in front of you and the other behind you. Bring your front leg slightly to your side, focusing on rotating from your hips, bring your front foot directly in front of your pelvis, you should feel an opening in your hips. Bring your back leg directly behind you so the top of your thigh is on the ground. Breathe in this position until you are comfortable. From this position, place your hands by your hips and lengthen your torso. Lengthen into an arched back bend, making sure you don't compress your back or neck.
Turnout: this pose is an excellent way to isolate rotation directly from the hip instead of the from the knee, which can be tempting when you turnout while standing. Try to focus on lifting the inner thigh of your front leg away from the floor. Imagine your muscles spiraling from your hip to your knee with the top of your leg pressing down and your inner thigh pressing upwards.

Sanskrit Name: Baddha Konasana

From a seated position, bend at the knees and bring the soles together directly inline with your pubic bone. Gently move feet as close to your body as you can comfortably while keeping your knees close to the ground. Sit tall in this position for several breaths and then bend over your legs . You can grab your ankles, have your hands by your hips pushing against the ground, or drape your arms over your head to use the extra weight to carry you forward. Breathe deeply as your relax into this pose, continue to push your body closer to the ground. Stay in this position until you feel well stretched.
Turnout: From this position you can work on the turnout from both hips simultaneously. Concentrate on opening and lengthening the muscles in the hips. Imagine your muscles spiraling from your hip to your knee with the top of your leg pressing down and your inner thigh pressing upwards.

Sanskrit Name: Utkatasana

Begin standing with legs parallel under shoulders, feet facing forward. Bend the knees deeply trying to get the thighs parallel with the floor. Make sure you are sitting back so that your knees don't in front of your feet. Focus on spreading the toes and dispersing your weight through your foot. Hold this position for forty seconds to several minutes.
Strength: This pose strengthens the thighs, calves, ankles and feet

Safety

When creating your own yoga flow, you are the only one in charge of safety. Be careful to listen to your own body. Make sure that you are properly warm before trying more difficult poses, don't push yourself beyond your capabilities, if something hurts come out and adjust. If things feel off, make sure that you have transitioned carefully and see if you can figure out what you could have additionally done to prepare and protect yourself. Go slowly and conscientiously, and make sure you are always breathing deeply.

Counter Poses

Counter poses are all about balance. Make sure you are giving equal time and energy to both sides of the body (if you spend thirty seconds in a high lunge with your right leg in front, spend thirty seconds in a high lunge with your left leg in front.) And counter your strength poses with poses that stretch the same muscles. And also counter strength poses with strength poses of countering muscles (if you work on chest muscles work on upper back muscles, if you've spent a lot of time in Warrior II spend some time in revolved triangle.)

Timing

If you are creating your own flow, you can be fairly flexible with your own timing. Make sure you hold each pose for several breaths and each stretch until you feel like you can relax into it. You should generally spend the majority of time on opening poses, salutations, and standing poses to make sure that you are properly warm for your pinnacle poses.

For an hour practice you could do something like:
Ten minutes gentle warm up
Twenty-five minutes more aggressive strength and stamina
Seven minutes work on most difficult poses (inversions, back bends, balances)
Ten minutes cool down poses (counter poses, twists, stretches, reclined poses)
Eight minutes Savasana

Sequence Builders

If you would like a little extra guidance creating your flow here are some yoga sequence builders that I have found:
Yogidia This website lets you create and save your sequences and then lets you play, share, and/or print your flow
Yoga Class Plan Allows you to drag and drop poses to create your flow, access shared sequences, create own poses, see timing and difficulty, play/print/share flow
Tummee Has 21000 yoga poses and 90000 sequences to choose from as you build your own