The Pleasure of Strength

Workout Lenth: 60 minutes

Level: Intermediate

Equipment: Mat

Date Released: 2004

Availability: New Idea Fitness

Setting: Ana is working out alone in a brightly coloured set. Cueing is done by voiceover, which is normal fo yoga videos.

I just wanted to write a quick review of this in the hopes that it might be helpful to others. Ana Forrest gets a lot of praise on the forums but I found her style just isn't for me - espeically in this video.

The workout starts with some meditation and centering. Ana has lots of detailed instructions about technique here, as always. Next is a simple seated twist followed by a few other poses on the floor (including dolphin). Next comes abs - the best, and toughest, part of the workout! Ana really focuses on tipping the pelvis up and really getting deep into the lower abdominals. I will try to work some of these moves and techniques into my other ab work. In one of them you are lying on your back with knees at 90 degrees and legs crossed (ankles wrapped if you can). Then you tilt the pelvis up and simply press your hands against your thigh and thigh against hands. This is way harder than it sounds!

After this is a very long section of Uddiyana breathing in horse stance which Ana assumes you already know how to do. I don't, so I skipped this section.

After that comes sun salutations, and a lot of them. I don't really see the point of doing sun salutations at this stage in the workout. You're already warmed up, so ???? If I'm going to do a workout with Ana I want to work on my technique and endless rounds of surya namaskar is just wasting time IMO. There is a little bit of good instruction here but it could have been taught in 2-3 rounds instead of 6-8 as she did.

At this point I was fed up. I felt that I wasn't making great use of my yoga time with this workout. The ab work was great, but other than that I had only done a few other asanas and suns salutations. I could have accomplished a lot more on my own. I stopped the DVD and comleted my workout on my own. I did skim through the DVD to see what else was there - a few standing poses including a twisting version of utthita parsvakonasana and another seated twist.

I know a lot of people really like this DVD so I'm sure there will be some more positive reviews to come. I just feel that this workout isn't a great use of my practice time. If I want to learn yoga technique, I go to class, if I want to pracitce at home, I want to get a lot more done in the time allotted and work on very different things.