The Total Body Yoga Workout Lower Body Abs and Upper Body Yoga for Beginners
Living Yoga succeeds in re-creating its superb yoga programs for DVD with the three-in-one workout The Total-Body Yoga Workout, which combines the individual body part programs on one disc.
The first workout, Lower Body Yoga for Beginners, led by Suzanne Deason, is a fun, short routine that will help you to invigorate and stretch the lower body in a series of flowing postures, working to stretch, tone, and challenge one’s muscles and balance. In the second segment, Rodney Yee leads Abs Yoga for Beginners, which is designed to firm and strengthen your abs while providing a soothing respite from your hectic lifestyle. The poses are, for the most part, simple to follow, although the beginner may need to ease into some of the positions. Finally, Yee leads us through Upper Body Yoga for Beginners, a workout that will stretch, strengthen, and energize the upper body. Yee flows through poses designed to develop an open, supported chest, which in turn promotes healthy circulation, breathing, digestion, and posture. For all of these programs, a firm blanket to sit upon is needed.
The extra features on this disc are the same as those on The All-Day Yoga Workout. Once again, the DVD format is ideal for a workout program–the chapter search makes it easy to skip the introduction and jump right into the body work. Or if you’re short on time and just need to relax, you can move directly to the meditations. An extra feature, “Learning the Basics,” has pictures of every pose with written instructions on how to do them, which is just the thing for beginners who feel befuddled when told to do a cow-face pose or gate pose. A section on props explains how to use straps, bricks, and mats in order to modify more difficult poses for less limber bodies. Finally, the interviews with Suzanne Deason, Patricia Walden, and Rodney Yee round out the DVD, making for a full program. This is the ultimate introduction to yoga; it’s a workout regimen that’s easy to incorporate into your daily life and fun enough to convince you to stick with it. –Jenny Brown
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Great workouts
I bought this years ago & though they are a bit hard for those who are out of shape, I wouldn’t recommend them for novices, but they are still beginner level in terms of physical/flexibility level.
The lower body is with Susanne Season. The music is light, the scene is her near the edge of a cliff with gorgeous mountain range behind her. She is alone & there is no modifications.
There is no sun salutations, but a lot of downward dog, standing fwd bends, chair & mountain. Add is lunges, hand/knee with arm/leg balance, donward dog with 1 leg lifted, plank, upward dog, warrior 1 2 & 3, triangle, side angle, half moon, dancer’s pose, bridge, reclined single leg stretch, boat, sitting fwd bend, wide legged fwd bend, reclined cobblers, etc.
If you own several yoga dvds, the pace is not power fast, she holds it about 2 full breaths. I loved the workout though, there are many poses were if you do too many sun salutations, you never have time for many other poses.
You can see a preview at gaiam com any media product you see yoga lower body w/susanne in a mountain range, yoga abs with rodney yee in a desert or upperbody yoga with rodney in a valley.
5 Stars I love the lower body workout!!
I am not a beginner by any means. I have been studying various forms of yoga for 10-plus years. I had no idea this was a beginners workout when I did it and would never recommend this for beginners.
It has, however, a very lovely, inspiring, effective, lower body workout that I plan to do often. Suzanne Deason is wonderful. Her exercising on the edge of a cliff is a bit terrifying to watch and I don’t generally like yoga DVDs with “scenery” but this one works. I skip the Rodney Yee portion because he is not my favorite instructor though, of course, this is just personal preference!
5 Stars No, not for absolute beginners
I have pretty good fitness training and have taken some yoga. This has been a good first DVD for me to use to complement outside instruction. The 25 minute routines are short enough to easily fit in to my day, or add on a workout that includes my stationary bike. The difficulty of the poses is not terribly high, but they aren’t pedestrian, either. The pace is fairly quick, which I like. I particularly like the instructor for the Lower Body section. I like Rodney Yee, but I often find that I’m not in the mood for his ego as I choose a DVD to practice with.If you are an absolute beginner, or not comfortable with yoga, these routines will go too fast for you. For an enthusiastic novice, this DVD has been great, and has launched me to other DVDs.
5 Stars Be committed, see results in a few months
When I bought this DVD, I thought that I would be able to do all of the routines right away. But, after the first viewing and attempts, I knew that it would be a challenge. Rodney Yee and Susan Gleason present the routines clearly but quickly. For beginners this is the only fault with the contents. Furthermore, the routines are rigorous. I decided to follow just the abs rountine. After three times a week for about a month, I began to feel an increase in strength, but it was not until I had been doing the same routine for about four months before I could see a difference and longer before anyone else first took notice. After 8 months of the abs, I added the upper body routine and after 6 more months of each routine 3 times per week, I can slowly feel and see a physical improvement. Next, I will add the lower body routine and by the middle of the year I hope to have all three under my belt.
This is an excellent program for beginners, but it takes months for it to be effective. Those naysayers who have reviewed this product may not have had the willpower to stick with it, or they wanted miracle results. That will not happen. Clearly the yoga instructors have been working at this for years and the viewers have to remember that. If a viewer is easily disenheartened, this is not going to be effective. But, if one is willing to put in three to four days a week for six months or so, then the speed and the postures can be learned and practiced in the comfort of one’s home. (Once it gets too easy, add some wrist and ankle weights to build up tone and strength.)
To build up strength and flexibility, I also reccomend Tamilee Webb’s DVD, Total Body Stretch for Beginners and Jorge Cruise’s book, 8 Minutes in the Morning. These three resources combined make for an effective and efficient weight loss, management, and strenght and toning program.
4 Stars Varied yoga practices for toning and building strength
In this set, Living Arts offers three solid yoga practices, each focusing on a separate area of the body. However, with the exception of the abs video, I definitely would not recommend these practices for the beginning audience to which they are marketed, as the instruction is not overly detailed and the upper body practice in particular is quite challenging. Also, although these are billed as being 20-minute practices, each one is actually a bit longer.
That being said, I have owned these videos for some time and really enjoy them. The 22-minute abs video was my first-ever experience with yoga, and I found that I was able to follow it without any prior yoga knowledge. The practice gradually builds from gentle warm-up stretches to isometric-type movements which challenge your core strength. It is led by Rodney Yee, one of my favorite yoga instructors; he provides excellent cuing, and his voice is particularly calm and soothing. The upper body practice is lead by Suzanne Deason. She begins on the floor but moves on to standing postures, including several balancing poses such as Warrior III, King Dancer, and Half Moon. Those who have not tried these postures before will definitely find them challenging (particularly given how quickly Suzanne moves in and out of the poses). When I first started using this video, I needed to modify most of the standing poses with a block (Suzanne shows how to use props at the end of the practice), but after using this video for several years, I am now able to follow along with good form and no props (although I still wish Suzanne moved a bit more slowly). This practice is 25 minutes long. At 27 minutes, the upper body yoga practice is both the longest and the most challenging in this series. It is again led by Rodney Yee, who builds heat by taking you through several series of sun salutations, gradually adding more strenuous postures such as Bow, Camel, and Upward Bow. The latter is a backbend which you push up into from a lying position, and on my first few tries, I thought it would be impossible for me to ever acheive this pose. However, I persisted in using the video, and one day, I was finally able to push up. At the end of this practice, you will definitely feel like you have had an intense workout for your upper body.
These practices provide an excellent opportunity for experienced beginners to expand their home practice and move towards an intermediate level; those who already consider themselves to be intermediate will enjoy the intensity of the practices within short time periods. In conclusion, this set would be an excellent addition to virtually any home practice collection.