A few things to look out for as you venture into the stacks of available yoga DVD products.

Know your level. Here I would like to refer to yoga teacher and fellow YogaHub writer Margaret Saraswati and her piece on yoga videos (August 17,2006). She pointed out that she found that the label “beginner” could be misleading. If you haven’t taken any yoga classes it may be difficult for you to follow the session, without prior experience.

Do your research. Several yoga magazines will have monthly reviews on some of the newest DVD’s made by national yoga teachers. Magazines to check out are Yogi Times and Yoga Journal for the most up to date information.

Watch the entire video before you begin. Again to quote Margaret Saraswati,
“I’m finding the set-up is often a challenge as you can’t really ‘watch the video while trying to do the yoga poses.” So take the time to sit through the session in order for you to determine where you may need to take some extra time to complete a pose.

And finally take another look at Margaret’s article “When You Don’t Have a Yoga Teacher.” She really makes offers some good insight in this situation.

Tags: yoga dvd, exercise, yoga teacher, yoga classes

A yoga practitioner living in India responded to my entry on

My response: Thanks, but too bad you forgot to add in transportation costs- $1,800!

or to summarize our cost effective analysis here in credit card commercial lingo:

round trip airfare to India – $$$$
reasonable yoga class – priceless!

-Margaret “saraswati”

“When exactly does the peace and good will to all kick in?”

My answer:

Hopefully you are feeling glimmers of it already by the end of a yoga and meditation session! We chant Om shanti to generate and reconnect with inner stillness in order to then extend that peacefullness all around us.

I remember a very wise student of mine telling me when I first opened my yoga studio that one person practicing affects 1000 persons around her!

So whether or not you’re feeling the “vibes” – simply by quieting your own mind, you are changing the environment and the persons, around you. In this way, peace (and I’m not talking about a docile submissiveness but a positive, strong sense of peace) can be even more contagious than violence.

“I’d like yoga to get me into spring since the weather won’t cooperate–Saraswati do you think you need to be fairly strong in yoga practice to be able to properly meditate?“

My reply:

This is a multi answer for a multi question! As I’ve stated before in Yoga and Meditation you can enter deep meditative states while doing physical asanas (which is what I think you are referring to when you say “yoga practice” here). So I don’t necessarily separate the two as some schools do.

However it is true that one of the reasons for asanas is to strengthen the physical and energy body in order to be able to experience meditation. Living the way we do, with constant demands to respond quickly to our environment (especially for city folks!), many of us can’t get to that meditative space easily and then, can’t really stay there or handle that energy.

But there are many who only do sitting meditations, without any asanas at all, more common in India and in Buddhist traditions. It all depends on your past lives!

For bringing on your spring – I do advise asanas or something like walking meditations which integrate the body and the mind. Spring being a time of rapid growth and action, in contrast to the more static energy of a long drawn out winter in the northeast!
-Margaret “saraswati”

If you go to India, you won’t find yoga studios on every corner (the way you might find them in, say, parts of Santa Monica or San Francisco!). What most non-Indian practitioners call yoga here- mainly the physical asanas – is not as prominent a feature in yoga practices in India.

In India, you may be on the yogic path and never do a sun salute in your life! Your yoga practice may consist of meditation or chanting only (as a bhakti devotee), serving others (as a karma yogi) or in any number of ways as an artist, educator, mother, renunciate or householder who dedicates her or his work to the divine.

One of these approaches is by studying (and this usually means an ability to memorize and recite) sacred text. Here also exists a difference between Indian and non-Indian definitions of what is considered knowledge. Those of us trained in Western schools read and analyze books on yoga, perhaps to understand its history or ideas. We may read spiritual biographies of the saints or try to understand yoga according to the sutras or commentaries on the teachings. As practitioners this encourages us.

But as I’ve said before, there is no ancient authoritative text you can go to that will tell you the exact alignment of your thumb in the downward dog pose! These have been produced only recently by such great teachers as Iyengar. And yes, this recent wave of teachers did come from India, but it is a false impression to think that what they brought here (and more importantly, how it influenced non-Indian teachers here, and how that has continued in our “market”) replicates what was/is yoga in India.

Yesterday I was flying from the west coast to the east coast. It was a comfortable flight with enough wiggle room and so, in between surfing cable channels which I don’t have at home on my Jet Blue screen, I occasionally twisted and whirled a bit and stretched in an inconspicuous way (if there is such a thing in a tight public space like this).

At the end of the flight as I was walking down the ramp, I noticed a dull pain around my lower rib cage. What from? Have no idea. I normally sit quite straight. But I was probably sitting slightly askew and didn’t even know it cause I was really into watching all the episodes of Top Chef!

I did not notice. My mind was in the clouds, on the screen, daydreaming and probably because I knew my body would not be in a very comfortable position for several hours- I was not really in my body.

So I did not notice. Our capability to shut off certain messages is amazing. Of course, it would be a difficult existence to notice everything that is going on in your body, all the time. But it made me think of how we do live with pain. And we don’t notice it because so many other things can hold our attention. Then, one day something changes, we get up to start walking let’s say, and we think that “out of nowhere” we have this horrible pain. A pain that was probably there for a while. Pain we had not noticed.