As I’m currently doing my certification to become a registered yoga teacher I am soaking up ALL the yoga information I can find. When I go to Blogfest at IdeaWorld I’m doing a few yoga sessions. I’ve bought books, watched videos, and this weekend I’m attending a workshop that isn’t even part of my training. You could say I am just a little obsessed. So when I saw the opportunity to review a DVD in exchange for a complimentary copy I figured it would be a nice addition to my yoga workout DVD collection and happily signed up 🙂
The DVD is Yoga Sweat by Julie Schoen, and I will say that we don’t own a DVD player. We watch everything via our computers so I had to rip the DVD and put it on my iPad. I wish more people would start offering the option of a downloadable MP4 file instead of physical products it would save me so much time! Anyway I loaded it onto my iPad and it sat there along with Crunch Yoga (I love Sara Ivanhoe) and P90X yoga and stretch. So I’m used to yoga, I’ve been doing it sporadically for 30 years! Consistently for the last 5.
The DVD is split into four parts two 30 minute workouts, and a 10 minute warm up and cool down. Each part can be done separately or together for a combined possible 80 minute workout. The DVD does say it’s for beginners…. it’s not. The warm up and cool down are definitely doable for beginners but the 30 minute workout sessions are NOT beginner friendly. They are too fast for beginners. When I say it’s fast, I had trouble keeping up!!! Did I mention I’ve been doing yoga 30 years? So beware that if you are a beginner you’ll be doing the warm up and cool down for a long time before you can join in those 30 minute workouts! Or at least expect to be lost, a lot, during the workout. I’d even suggest just watching it through first so you know where it’s going in the flow.
I’d say the yoga style was more ashtanga style, flowing and challenging. I use many of the flowing movements Julie does in my own classes and my own practice so the ‘creative flowing style’ wasn’t really new to me but the speed definitely was! Yes, I did break a sweat but I also felt like I wasn’t doing yoga, instead I was doing a workout. I was doing yoga, but not FEELING it.
I will say is Julie is amazingly flexible. Long legs, long arms and everything looks so graceful. She looks like she came out of the womb doing yoga, kwim? Anyway the set is beautiful, she is graceful and flows easily in and out of the poses. However, in one of the 30 minute workouts while flowing through the workout we move through the poses and progress to reverse warrior…
My version of reverse warrior has shorter legs, and much shorter arms (gosh I need to schedule a blog post about that!). Doesn’t look as pretty but it feels nice. Especially as I was doing this post-bodypump workout so my muscles are all tight from resistance training. After reverse warrior we came back to tadasana and briefly centered.
Then we went to the other side, same flow…except she skipped reverse warrior. Now in a live class I can forgive this, Heck I’ve forgotten things in my own classes, but in a DVD I expected more. I felt this should have been caught in post production.
It’s funny to me that five years ago I was all about yoga as a workout (hence P90X yoga) but now I’ve moved past yoga as exercise. Now I find myself yearning for something more. Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. The asana (physical practice) is meant to calm the mind in preparation for meditation. During this DVD my mind just kept saying “slow down! I need to FEEL the pose!”
In all I’d recommend beginners try another DVD however as this could be really frustrating for a beginner with no knowledge of the poses. For the seasoned yogi however this could be a great challenging DVD for a hot yoga style workout.
I received this product for free in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.