Workout #12: Baron Baptiste’s Power Vinyasa Yoga: Level 1

See the DVD cover | mat

Netflix writes:

Power up your body through yoga in this step-by-step practice that has fitness guru Baron Baptiste leading you through a basic pose, showing you how to do it in proper form, and then adding other poses to make a sequence that ultimately results in an energizing and balancing workout.

Day 23

My muscles and joints were reminding me this morning that flexibility is an important component of a fitness program! So I gladly popped in this yoga DVD. It’s been a long time since I took a yoga class and although I did Karen Voight’s yoga segment [scroll down to the end of that post for the yoga info] from her Slim Physique DVD on Feb. 16th/Day 9, I looked forward to what I thought would be more class like. I was right.

In fact I underestimated in my expectations. I guess the yoga classes I have attended just did not focus so much on talking and breathing! But Baron definitely does. Some people whose reviews I have read about his style complain about the talking, but from a beginner’s point of view it is more than helpful. Especially if you are contorted and bending so that you can’t, or shouldn’t, move to see the TV screen.

I came across Baron Baptiste when I listened to a show on Hay House Radio and I thought that he sounded like a wonderful human being. In his intro to this DVD he mentions the spiritual a little, so I guess yoga has brought him to a place spiritually where yoga is not merely a way to stretch your body – although he can sure stretch and bend. I don’t think I will ever have 1000th of his fluidity, and deep inner strength, but I will do more yoga because it really made me feel good.

I felt amazing and not just because my aches and tightness were alleviated, but because it was a very energizing workout – like what I have experiences with Qigong: fluid and deliberate moves that produce a lot of body heat and energy.

I mentioned on other posts that my back flexibility is very limited so it was pretty hard to even come anywhere close to what the people on the DVD were doing. One guy was almost as tight as me so I didn’t feel too bad! Trying to lift a leg out to the side while standing was hard – if I used my hand to hold my big toe the weight of my leg felt like my fingers would rip off my toe! I could barely raise my leg, bent, to hip height. Oh well, that’s enough motivation to make me do more flexibility work.

As this workout was not cardio I didn’t bother using my Polar F4 heart rate monitor to track my calorie burn, so there are no stats today.