Rodney Yee's Complete Yoga for Beginners

This is a good video for beginners or people who are out of practice or lack flexibility for the standard yoga poses. This is also good for more experienced practitioners who want to work on improving their poses or do a quick warmup routine. The Basic workout and flexibility workout are my favorites - I feel like in these I get a good balance of working on poses, building strength and balance, and increasing flexibility. The energy and relaxation sequences I find not to be as useful personally. Rodney Yee does a good job of providing instruction to improve a pose. Unlike a lot of his videos, he spends plenty of time in a couple of these workouts in each pose instead of quickly moving onto the next. He employs the use of straps and blocks to modify for inflexibility and often demonstrates this instead of just talking about it. Each routine is new and not just a rehash of earlier releases. Each of the 4 routines is a little over 20 minutes - short enough to help people fit it into a busy schedule but long enough to feel improvement. This also comes with a downloadable pose guide - not very detailed but not bad - and a downloadable 10 minute express Yoga workout also done by Rodney Yee.

Have been using the practice on this DVD entitled, "Flexibility" for over two years now. I love it because it stretches my muscles out really really well including my shoulders, neck, back, and legs. And its only a 20 minute practice!Before I began using this video to practice Yoga, I couldn't even do a Child's Pose. I was 60 years young & hadn't been doing any yoga for a few years, so the muscles weren't stretching. At all!Now, I can do Child's Pose again, and any of the other poses I love from years gone by.Yoga is a great way to stay fit & retain our sense of balance as we age!I still love this Yoga practice the best, and do it often after sitting at a computer every day all week. Its great for my tight shoulders!

I'm a 40something who took a yoga class one summer during college and also purchased a yoga DVD some years ago that I gave up on, in part because it had one hour long routine on it and making the time seemed impossible. Recently I bought several beginner's yoga DVDs, including this one, so that I can switch up the routines and hear the same poses being explained by different instructors. Yee has a clear, concise, constructive way of describing and demonstrating the poses. Each of the sessions is 20 minutes long, which fits into my tight morning schedule fairly well. Three weeks into practicing yoga every day, I am now moving into longer practices with some of my other DVDs; with this one, on my longest work days I am following one routine in the morning and a second in the evening. I would recommend this DVD for anyone who is trying to start the practice of yoga at home.

Love this! 2 great workouts, plus a great relaxation yoga session on this DVD. I love the narration (voice is a guy from the old TV show Wings and he is great with this) that provides enough information that you don't have to stay glued to your TV to understand the pose. It is a beginner DVD. My ONLY complaint and the reason its 4 stars instead of 5 is that Rodney constantly pulls the hem of his shorts down - very annoying!

I'm a total novice when it comes to yoga. This is great for beginners. His voice is very calm and clear and the instructions are easy to follow. If you aren't as flexible as you need to be for some moves, he shows you how to modify it with the blocks. I used the flexibility workout after I injured one of my SI joints and it did wonders in helping to relieve the pain and getting me ready to get back into other more intense workouts. I totally recommend this! Be sure to get a set of yoga blocks and a yoga strap as well, you will need them.

I have never done yoga or even really seen anyone actually doing it so I really am a total beginner. The exercises were excellent for a complete beginner and despite being a middle aged woman with both moderate rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis I was able to achieve most of the poses without much difficulty. If I couldn't quite get the exact stretch, I simply moderated it a bit. So far, so good.I finally hit a snag when he started some seated poses and being completely unfamiliar with them I had difficulty figuring out how to achieve the correct pose. My suggestion, keep the remote handy and hit the pause button. It took me a few tries to achieve the correct position. It became even more challenging trying to do any of the positions while I was face down. At that point I got a knot in my neck trying to look sideways and up at the TV. Placement of every single body part is important and the devil is in the details, which he does not explain very much.I decided to watch the floor exercises a few times before actually trying to do them again so I could figure out what I was supposed to be doing when I couldn't actually see it. If you have a laptop that you can set on the floor in front of your nose it might be somewhat easier.I also purchased a book that has very good photographs of the most basic poses that Rodney performs which allowed me to study each position before I tried it again with the video. The book doesn't even mention how to center, balance and ground yourself like Rodney does, which was essential for me start feeling a real inner balance. However, the book has a lot of detail about breathing cycles; when to breathe in, breathe out and the importance of synchronizing your breathing with the exercise. When I tried to sync the breathing instructions in the book with the grounding instructions in the video I realized that the proper timing of your breaths is not at all intuitive but it did make a significant difference in the effectiveness of the poses and movements.I enjoy the video. It's soothing, conversational and flows seamlessly through the poses, but without the breathing cycles it's not as effective as it could be.I love the video. I was able to do all of the exercises and will have to watch the floor poses a few times before actualy trying them again but for a real beginner more instructions on the coordination of breathing and movement would be extremely helpful.

I love this DVD. Rodney Yee is easy to follow and the moves are not difficult or laborious. I find his DVD soothing to do on days that I can't make it to the gym.