Vinyasa Flow Yoga-Session 1 [DVD]

While having many of the features associated with Gaiam's excellent series of Yoga videos, this production also suffers from several drawbacks. On the negative side and unlike most other Gaiam productions, the action was shot entirely indoors. The background is nondescript but also quite dark. Since Seane is wearing dark blue, which appears black in silhouette, it is often quite difficult to see what she is doing. I can see why shooting indoors may make the video cheaper to produce but why then make it so dark? The full video is 1 hour 10 minutes long and there is no obvious break, so unless you expect to have the next hour and a quarter to yourself, it may be better not to start.

Seane speaks clearly and is audible at all times but why was she speaking while she was performing the asanas, instead of being dubbed on afterwards? Most of Gaiam's Yoga videos include instruction recorded in a separate sound track, added later. This makes the script clearer and more considered and would have allowed Seane to concentrate more fully on her timing and breathing. Seane has a lot of explanation of poses and possible modifications which are quite distracting and could hav been left to a "modifications" section at the end. The product comes with a second disk, which eliminates all the chat. Unfortunately, it also eliminates all the instruction. It may appear to be very pure to see the asanas being performed to lovely background music, but it is almost impossible to follow, since for much of the time you are looking away from the screen. Why is there no middle way? The second disk should have ditched the superfluous (but often interesting) insights but kept the essential instructions.

On the positive side, the disk that includes instruction does take us through a wonderful sequence of self-exploration. After a three minute introduction and four minutes of breathing, we are taken gently through cat and downward dog into a series of forward and backward bends. These become lunges, then side stretches and warrior before being combined as a vinyasa sequence. About half way through the video, standing poses begin with the tree balance, followed by triangle, warrior and wide legged forward bend. There follows a series of lunges and twists before coming down to the floor. I felt that all these sequences took a theme: bends, lunges, twists etc and developed on it. This approach helped to take me in gently but also allowed me to play with the theme, experiencing subtle variations as I look inward and explored their effects. The last 15 minutes continues this development, through bridge, forward bends and twists both from cross-legged and staff poses, before relaxing for the final five minutes. Much of the content is performed as vinyasa, flowing from one position to the next, with the breath. Had the instruction been delivered as a voice-over, the flow would have been much more smooth and rythmic.

Overall, a nice video, if you have an hour free and can ignore the superfluous talking. Had it been shot outdoors, with a voice over sound track that focussed on essential elements of instruction, this could have been a great Yoga video. I hope that, in the future, Gaiam New York can learn from some of the superb Yoga videos that Gaiam has produced from the West Coast and Hawaii.

I bought this DVD as I wanted to practice at home as well as in my classes. Unfortunate this DVD seems to be for people who've never even heard of yoga let alone practiced it before!! Each posture took about 5 mins whilst she explained how to do each one and told you the benefits... which is fine for a one off but it would have been nice to just do a 1 1/2 lesson with guidance - even my beginner's lessons we're this slow!

I would not recommend it as you could not watch the video on a daily basis to practice yoga... it's just too slow, it's good to watch once to learn but you can't practice with it. I'd like my money back!

I am a beginner at yoga (have taken 5-6 classes, but in good shape and flexible). I found this to be way too slow and although the workout without pauses for instruction could have been good, without any sound it's not really possible to follow as you try to do it yourself. Probably a good video for beginners who will just stick with the instructional DVD, but not recommended for advanced beginners and up.