Element: Am and PM Yoga for Beginners
Product Description
Yoga is a wonderful way to help you keep fit, relieve stress, and ease your everyday experiences. Filmed on a beautifully serene location overlooking the Pacific Ocean, these two 30-minute programs will help you realize all the benefits of yoga by unveiling a new connection between your body and mind. The AM sequence enhances basic poses with gentle repetitions to invigorate, tone, and streamline your body while reconnecting to your breathing in a new way every time you practice. The PM sequence in designed to dissolve stress as it lengthens and opens your muscles. You’ll learn to use your alignment to expand your breathing capacity, nourishing your body and balancing your entire being.
About the Instructor:
Elena Brower, Certified Anusara Yoga teacher, encourages you to invite yoga’s healing beneficence into every realm of your life. She is the founder of Virayoga in New York City and author of Alchemy, A Glossary. Named one of New York City’s top yoga teachers by Fit Yoga magazine, Elena’s clients include Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, Minnie Driver, Eva Mendes, Christy Turlington and Rebecca Romijn.
This is a 64 minute DVD of beginner’s yoga demonstrated in two sequences; AM and PM yoga by yoga master Elena Brower. The AM sequence has basic poses with gentle stretching and bending with repetitions to tone, and streamline the muscles. AM sequence also includes Surya Namaskara (Sun Salutation), which is defined by a series of six specific postures with a breathing pattern. The PM sequence is designed to stretch the muscles. Most beginners could benefit from this DVD as the yoga practice demonstrated in the DVD is easy to follow and it does not involve difficult asanas.
The background music is soothing, but it would have been more appropriate to use Hindustani classical music, especially instrumental music such as sitar or violin using a morning raga for AM yoga demonstration, and an evening raga for the PM yoga demonstration.
1. Element: Yoga for Beginners
2. Yoga For Weight Loss – Beginner & Beyond (2007)
3. Essential Yoga For Inflexible People
4. Yoga For Beginners
5. Yoga for Stress Relief (With The Dalai Lama)
6. Yoga for Absolute Beginners
7. Basic Yoga Workout for Dummies
8. Shiva Rea – Flow Yoga for Beginners (Amazon Exclusive)
9. Shiva Rea – Yoga Shakti
Rating: 3 / 5
The AM portion of this DVD was great, but the PM version was pretty blah. I understand that yoga is about breathing, but JUST breathing? I thought stretching was involved, too. I’ve used it once. I wouldn’t recommend it.
Rating: 2 / 5
I like the 2 yoga sessions on this DVD. The instructors voice is soothing and the music (sounds Indian with sitar) is appropriate for relaxation and meditation. It is definitely for beginners as is stated in the title. I have already spent some time learning the basics of yoga but am out of practice and have forgot quite a bit. So, this is very nice to get me started into it again.
People looking for an introduction to Yoga would be well advised to check this out. The basics of breathing techniques and the mind-body connection are touched on – enough to get you started. Anyone who is in basically good health should be able to do the routines since there is nothing here that is going to tie your body into a knot
Rating: 4 / 5
This DVD has a good variety of Yoga exercises, taking into consideration the various times of day I may want to do them, and also offers different lengths of time that I have to do them within. This gives a sense of personalization and having options. The workouts are moderate. I am very satisfied with this disc.
I let a friend borrow this who had not really done a lot of yoga before and they were rather pleasantly surprised when the PM routines helped them unwind for the day and get a good night’s rest.
So if you are looking for something to help you start or end your day nicely, this one is a must have.
Rating: 4 / 5
I have always been interested in learning the art of YOGA because of its stress relieving properties. While the video is quite good, the person is in perfect body fitness and conditioning and while the exercises she shares seem easy, when I tried to do them it was difficult for me.
The routine is filmed at a beautiful location, overlooking the sea, and surrounded by a beautiful garden. Since I was playing this in my living room, the contrast of my surroundings was startling, and I guess that after we become proficient and are able to do this outside by the pool, the perspective may improve.
We have done a few sets this week, and have begun to look forward to the repetition because it gets easier as the days go by. Would highly recommend this as a beginning step, but look forward to an ability to do by myself, outside, where the setting will definitely improve our ability to remove stress from our daily lives.
Rating: 4 / 5