I used to do yoga pretty regularly -- once or twice a week, in fabulous, long, intense sessions that left me nearly comatose. But since I've been too lazy to find an instructor or studio in my new town, I've relied on videos.
Today, I tried Rodney Yee's Strength Building Yoga for the first time. It's really two workouts, the first around 45 minutes, and the second another 20 or 25. That's short enough for it to make sense just to string them together and have a decent practice. Yee assumes that you know the postures, and there is almost no instruction on how to perform the asanas. On the other hand, the breaths and movements are cued well enough that I was able to do most of the practice without looking at the screen. (What did suck: the sections aren't really chaptered, so if you need to review an explanation for a complicated set-up, you really have to "rewind" manually.)
There were moments in both sections of the workout when I not only couldn't keep up, but couldn't even begin to do the basic move. But that's the fun of yoga, no? Its effects make themselves known in increments, and almost always by surprise. And aside from those few, quite difficult, asanas, the practice is slow-paced and not particularly exhausting.
Labels: Rodney Yee, workout, yoga
