Health.com
by:Su Reid-St. John
I owe Shiva Rea a debt of thanks. A few years ago, when I got too pregnant to continue with my usual yoga class, I turned to her excellent Prenatal Yoga DVD to keep me limber-and I truly believe she deserves some credit for the relatively short, easy labor that brought my daughter into the world. Her newest DVD is Shiva Rea: Daily Energy-Vinyasa Flow Yoga given our history, I felt compelled to give it a try.
Daily Energy offers seven 20-minute practices (along with a few shorter options) that can be mixed and matched to fit your particular yoga desires and time frame for that day. Some are enlivening (for those "I am woman, hear me roar" days), while others relaxing (for those "I'm so stressed I want to scream" times). When you select the Yoga Matrix option, you can click on as many of them as you want to do, in whatever order you want to do them. Or you can just click on one if you've got a mere 20 minutes to spare (which is often the case for me).
There are also shorter sequences, for meditation, core moves, forward bends, and Shavasana (aka, total post-practice relaxation); you can make them a part of your personal "matrix," do them separately, or ignore them altogether.
And if you're either too lazy to put your own program together or not sure the best way to combine the routines, there are also several preset practices to choose from.
It's all very cool.
Rea's delivery, as always, is soothing and melodic. She gets a little New Agey at times, but uses some vivid, effective imagery to help get your body moving in the right way (one of my favorites, in the Water segment: "Imagine your body is like a buoy in the ocean.") And if you get tired of listening and simply want to do, you can choose the "music only" option once you become familiar with the routines.
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