Yoga Sanctuary: A Guided Hatha Yoga Practice [Audiobook, Doppel-CD] [Englisch] [Audio CD]

I've been practicing yoga at home for several years now and occasionally attend classes, but Yoga Sanctuary was my first yoga CD purchase. So far, I am thrilled with the versatility of this amazing CD, as it lets me tailor my practice to meet my wants/needs perfectly. The set includes two CDs, each containing 6-7 separate tracks varying in length from about 6 to 16 minutes. You can follow the guidelines included for suggested practices or mix and match to create your own. The first CD, Solar, focuses mainly on more active, standing postures, whereas the second, Lunar, consists of more relaxing, restorative poses. Here is a more detailed breakdown of the tracks:

SOLAR

1-Sun Salutations. Three classic sun salutations are performed at a nice, even pace with long holds in down dog; the section finishes with a few warrior poses to prepare for the next track.

2-Dancing Warrior. This is the only segment I didn't like, as I felt it moved a bit too quickly--you transition from a vinyasa to warrior 1, warrior 2, and reverse warrior.

3-Standing Poses. Here the postures are held for a nice, long time, allowing you to really feel the effects. The poses include triangle, warrior 2, side angle, several variations of wide-legged forward bend, and pyramid to finish.

4-Standing Pose Flow. As in Track 2, this segment includes standing poses interspersed with vinyasas, but the pace is more reasonable. Poses here include pyramid, triangle, half moon, warrior 1, standing splits, and crescent.

5-Balance Poses. A nice sequence of both standing and seated balance poses, including tree, dancer, boat, firefly, and crow.

6-Abdominals. In this section, you do only two moves: a reclining straddle and an abs bicycle. However, the latter is repeated FIFTY times. This sounds grueling, but I actually found the steady, rhythmic pace to be quite soothing even though I was working hard.

7-Backbends. A progressively more difficult sequence which starts with cobra and moves on to locust, bow, camel, bridge, and upward bow.

LUNAR

1-Full Body Warm-Up. This segment begins in standing forward bend and contains some great warm-ups for the spine and upper body.

2-Forward Bends and Twists. Performed entirely on the floor, these poses feature lengthy holds.

3-Hip Openers and Twists. Another floor segment which includes happy baby pose, double pigeon, seated twist, and two seated wide-legged forward bend variations.

4-Inversions. This track includes plow, deaf man's pose, and several variations of shoulderstand (no headstand or handstand).

5-Meditation. In this segment, you practice ujjayi breathing while focusing on quieting the mind.

6-Savasana. This final relaxation is designed to be performed at the end of every practice.

These CDs are led by Shiva Rea, a well-known, experienced yoga instructor. Shiva has a very calm, pleasant voice, and she cues very well, but the set also includes a large, detailed poster of her practicing the poses to aid in following along. She frequently makes statements such as "breathe into your feet"--some people tend to not like this type of language, but I found that her imagery enhanced the practice. Furthermore, she is extremely encouraging and repeatedly reminds you to respect yourself and your own limits. She is accompanied by new-agey type background music which includes guitar, flute, and ocean waves. For the most part, this set would be appropriate for experienced beginners, but there is enough here to challenge intermediates and even more advanced students. Overall, I am very pleased with this purchase--highly recommended!

shiva rea's cd offers a lot of flexibility in designing a home practice. practing at home is an important part of yoga because it helps you integrate the benefits yoga offers into your life more readily. most people develop their home practice with video tapes, which are great as you want to watch to learn new postures.

but video tapes can be difficult (hard to rewind or adjust the volume while you're standing on your head!) and after you've used one or two a while, a little boring.

so this 2-cd set is incredibly useful. if you have a programmable cd player, you can easily create your own mix-n-match yoga practice by choosing the tracks you feel like doing that day. if you're tired, choose the slower, more meditative tracks; if you're feeling pumped, go with the more energetic, aerobic ones. this means less boredom than you might get with other home yoga instruction, and a more personal, customized practice.

if you're an intermediate student, she offers some advanced balance poses to challenge you, and you can set your cd player to repeat the more aerobic tracks for a serious yoga session; the advanced beginner can experiment with new poses, "kick it up a notch" with the crocodile (Chattarunga) vinyasa flow sequence, or refine the more familar asanas.

the set has sections that focus on balance, abdominals, hip stretching, strength building, general flexibility, fast flowing poses, and meditation. all this with a complete warm up and cool down. so this cd truly has something for you no matter what your particular needs may be. also, there's a great poster to help you visualize the poses in each section.

the drawback to this cd, to my mind, is that the only inversion offered is shoulderstand. and while you would probably expect the music on a yoga cd to be somewhat new age-y, the tunes here are a little flat and repetitive. during the fast-flowing sections, esp. the cd could have used a slightly faster pace.

overall, however, this is a *great* cd that every yogi and yogini should own as you strive to develop your home practice.

While I like the basic idea of this CD set, it seems to be appropriate only for people who don't really require much instruction or advance warning about which pose to move into. The transitions between poses are sometimes very awkward, occasionally because there isn't enough time to move into the pose, at other times because Ms Rea does not coordinate her instructions for body movement well with breathing, and finally at other times because the pose to be moved into is ambiguously described so that it just isn't clear where to put what part of the body where.

Those who may wish to compensate that fact by looking at the poses pictured in the poster included with the CD will find that several transitional stages of a pose or flow sequence are simply not pictured. So if you are new to vinyasa yoga, you will probably find yourself feeling inadequately guided. In addition to the audio description and the photo collage sometimes wanting, it is apparent that Ms Rea does not take care to ensure that both sides of the body are worked for an equal length of time. There is a clear emphasis on the right side of the body, which leaves the afterimpression that the body has been given rather lopsided attention during the workout.

Given all these limitations, my conclusion is that there are other, more effective home yoga practices on the market now. This practice is alright, but only alright, for people who are not new to yoga and preferably who have already had an introduction into vinyasa yoga somewhere else.