Vinyasa

I enjoyed a leisurely 2-hour practice this morning, with many starts and stops, a full pot of chai tea and lots of note-taking. I was reviewing Seane Corn’s DVD. It was the perfect, lazy Saturday morning!

Seane Corn’s Vinyasa Flow DVD is clearly intended for those who are brand-new to yoga, as in: ‘never done a sun salutation’. For this level of practitioner, it’s a great introduction. In the instructional section, Seane covers almost every relevant aspect of Vinyasa practice, including a great introduction to Ujjayi breathing.

Her instructions are clear and she moves at a gentle pace, occasionally bringing the vinyasas up to speed after offering a slower walk-through of the poses in a sequence. For a raw beginner who is moving toward an Astanga practice, I can’t think of a better introduction - this is excellent. But this is NOT a practice DVD for a more intermediate to advanced practitioner. Even an advanced beginner will be a bit bored. Anyone who practices Astanga will definitely find it too basic.

However, for teachers, it’s a GOLD MINE of great alignment, anatomical and cueing information. Seane is a terrific teacher! Her instruction is clear and detailed. Her pacing is spot-on. I took pages of notes and I know I’ll be applying some of these cues and concepts to my own teaching

The interview on the CD is definitely worth listening to, even though it’s a fragmented collection of sound bites. Seane is down-to-earth and big-hearted. Her love of yoga and passion for sharing it really shine through in the interview; despite the choppy format, she comes across as very ‘real’. She’s the kind of teacher I aspire to being.

I flew through the postures in this DVDand took lots of notes, stopping the DVD every so often to jot down a particularly interesting cue or observation. Afterward, I was still craving a practice, so I popped in the Rodney Yee Advanced Yoga DVD and chose the 25 minute hip-opening sequence.

This sequence is from Rodney’s own practice and there are is some good stuff in there, but I’ll repeat my criticism of his ‘Yoga Burn’ DVD: everything moved WAY too fast. I’m a valiant Protector of Knees. Every Baddha Konasana, Janu Sirsasana and particularly, any half-lotus posture is approached with great mindfulness - both in my own practice and in the classes I teach.

There was WAY too much random, quick, thoughtless Baddha Konasana in this sequence. There was also a forward fold happening in Ardha Baddha Padma Padottanasana without a bind to the big toe (the bind stabilizes the knee in half-lotus). And other half-lotus weirdness that didn’t feel right to me. I took note of a few good hip openers that were new to me, but I won’t be using this sequence again.

This week’s State of the Backbend photo was taken way back on Tuesday because I knew my Lady’s was imminent. At the time, I felt like my backbend was worse than usual. I felt heavy. It doesn’t look too bad, though. In fact, it looks a lot like the previous week’s backbend, which seems to happen a lot. ;-)

Arturo has commented that he notices very little change in these photos from week to week. To make things more interesting, I’ve added three objects to the photo this week. Actually, two of them were in the frame already, and I added a third.

If you click on the photo below, you’ll be taken to a larger version of the photo, which makes it easier to spot the changes.

Have fun!