This 56-minute yoga practice focuses on strenthening every part of the body via classic yoga postures such as hip openers, inversions, and twists. The warm-up highlights breathing through use of both chants and an "energized breathing" exercise; the workout then moves on to sun salutations, standing poses, balance poses, and floor work. This is an intermediate level workout which contains some more advanced moves, including a pigeon series and lying inversions. The relaxation posture which ends the workout is extremely brief, probably less than 30 seconds--not an effective end to an intense hour long practice. However, the first 35 minutes or so of this workout are excellent; advanced beginners could probably skip the more challenging poses and do an extended relaxation on their own.

The music on this video is quiet and pleasant with sort of a tribal theme (similar to Minna Lessig's "Strength and Grace"). At times, the music contained odd transitions--ie, the music is upbeat as you perform a specific pose on one side of the body and then more mellow as you complete the pose on the other side. In summary, if you can overlook this workout's flaws, it provides a nice alternative yoga practice.

Instructor Comments:
Hemalaya has a pleasant voice and offers good general instruction, but there are two main problems with her cuing: 1) her voice over instructions are often out of sync with her camera performance of the poses, and 2) when she cues right and left, she is inconsistent about using mirrored instructions. In addition, I found that her guidelines for getting into some of the more challenging poses (such as camel) were not as effective as what I've encountered with other instructors.

Beth C (aka toaster)