Rodney Yee, a veteran yoga instructor as well as the featured instructor of many yoga videos and DVDs, has recently released this new offering, AM Yoga for Your Week. The intent was to provide five 20-minute practices (but note that the actual practice times vary from 22-26 minutes) which could be used during busy weekday mornings to get the day off to a good start. In reality, these five excellent yoga sessions, each of which has a different focus, are appropriate for use at ANY time of the day. Although each individual practice revolves around a specific body area/group of postures, each are well-rounded, stand-alone yoga sessions. I have described the five practices briefly below.

STANDING, 22.5 minutes
Standing postures include standing forward bend, tree, triangle, side angle pose, warior 1, and warior 2; standing forward bend is performed in-between some of these poses. The standing poses conclude with chair and wide-legged standing forward bend before moving to the floor for hero and then finishing in relaxation pose. Yee offers some particularly nice form pointers while holding the standing poses.

TWISTS, 26 minutes
This practice opens with a series of reclined twists (one of which uses a strap). Yee then transitions to standing with down dog and standing forward bend for revolved prayer twist and crazy dog. Coming back to seated in cobbler's pose, he performs a twist in wide-legged seated pose and two variations on Sage 3 posture. This practice finishes with half Lord of the fishes, cobra, and relaxation pose.

BACK BENDS, 25 minutes
Yee starts here by rolling two blankets together to create a bolster for under the upper back; he lies over this for a gentle lying backbend. Coming to standing, he moves through a variation on sun salutations which include standing backbend, chair, down dog, warrior 2, side angle, warrior 1, and crescent lunge. He then moves to the floor for cobra, bow, and camel. After finishing with the backbending work, Yee nicely stretches out the body with cobbler's pose, simple seated twist, reclined leg stretch (using a strap if needed); he finished with relaxation pose.

FORWARD BENDS, 24 minutes
This practice begins in a reclined position for a series of moves that felt more like hip openers than forward bends: reclined leg stretch (using a strap if needed), happy babies pose, and thread-the-needle. Next Yee gradually transitions to standing through child's pose, down dog, standing forward bend, wide angle standing forward bend, and 3-legged down dog. Coming back to the floor for seated forward bends, he performs a simple cross-legged forward bend, head-to-knee pose, full seated forward bend, cobbler's forward bend, and wide-legged forward bend, finishing with a brief rest and then relaxation pose. To my surprise, this segment was probably my favorite, as it had a great mix of postures.

HIP OPENERS, 26 minutes
This segment uses a yoga block. It starts with a seated opening vinyasa in which Yee flows from staff pose to cobbler's to wide-legged seated pose, gradually speeding this up and also adding half-boat pose. He next does a simple cross-legged forward bend before incorporating the block. Keeping one leg stretced straight out in front, he first rests the other knee on the block, then brings the knee out to the side at a right angle. He also uses the block for cobbler's pose with the block between the feet. Additional postures which follow include pigeon, revolved crescent lunge, double pigeon, half Lord of the fishes, wide-legged seated forward bend, and cobbler's forward bend. The practice concludes with lightning pose, hero's pose on the block, and relaxation.

Despite Yee's long history of making yoga videos, he has still managed to offer something that feels fresh and new here. As always, his cueing is impeccable (although mirrored cueing would be even better!), and he offers wonderful form pointers which help you to get into the postures more deeply. Although I wouldn't recommend this DVD for those brand-new to yoga (Yee doesn't give quite that level of instruction), more experienced beginners and beyond should do fine. In conclusion, the practices are amazing, the instructor is extremely skilled, and the scenery is breathtaking--what's not to like? Highly recommended!

Instructor Comments:
I have always liked Rodney Yee, although I tend to prefer his older media (ie, his Yoga Journal releases) and don't own any of his newer offerings. However, I'm happy to have found this one; it's definitely a keeper! Now, if Rodney would only learn to mirror cue... ;)

Beth C (aka toaster)