Search - 10 Minute Solution Yoga on DVD

Randi B. from KNOXVILLE, TN
Reviewed on 5/22/2016...

This was a great film. I wanted to learn yoga. I think it's for a younger person, being 72 years old, I found even the basic exercise hard for me,but the instructor, is very devoted to yoga, and she does make it simple.

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Evelyn R. (Sushicat777) from PICKENS, SC
Reviewed on 4/27/2009...

Yoga for those in a hurry.... Not the greatest DVD on yoga, but OK if you want SOME of the benefits of yoga on a quick time schedule. Don't think the postures on this dvd are easy. Some are - but many are not! I am not quite fit enough to complete the abdominals section..... Maybe you are. :-)

Fast moving way to squeeze yoga into your life

dnk | Boston, MA United States | 09/07/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I've grudgingly come to admit that if I want to fit everything into my day (meditation, Pilates, yoga) I need to do it in short bursts, so I was very excited about this release.



Not surprisingly, this is not the kind of yoga where you hold postures for a long time. I would have preferred fewer postures held longer, but I think the majority of viewers prefer a wider range of postures held for less time. The style for most of it is vinyasa, or movement patterns linked by breath. Yoga Basics, the first section of the DVD introduces the Sun Salutations, with a variation that includes Warrior 1. Yoga for Buns and Thighs builds on the Sun Salutation by adding Warrior 2 and a Chair/Chair twist sequence. I love Chair twists, so this made me smile. In addition, she has a Lying Boat sequence which also helps target the inner and outer thighs. Yoga for Abs includes crunch variations- which always annoy me in yoga practices- as well as Leg Lifts (while supine and side-lying) and, of course, Boat. She also includes a Sphinx/Cobra to help stretch out the abdominals. Not surprisingly, this isn't a "flowing" or vinyasa practice, but that takes nothing away from it. I have a regular Pilates practice, so I see myself using this the least. Yoga Burn builds further on the Sun Salutation, now including Triangle as well as Warriors 1 and 2. We then hold Plank for about five breaths before moving onto three new mini-vinyasas. First, it's a Camel through Child's Pose, then Down Dog to Up Dog, and finally a Chair to modified Shoulder Stand. Each of the sequences is repeated five or six times before we move onto the next. The last one asks you to roll up from your back to standing without using your hands, similar to the opening sequence of Total Yoga. Tough! The final segment, Yoga for Flexibility and Relaxation, includes some hamstring and hip openers in addition to twists (my favorite yoga postures), as well as a brief (one or two breath) Savasana. Again, not flowing or vinyasa style here, but still very relaxing. If I were to do all of these back to back, I would do: Basics, Buns/Legs, Burn, Abs and Relaxation, but I think it could be done in the order it's listed in just fine. As with all of the 10-Minute Solution series, you can choose 1 to 5 segments in whatever order you'd like (it's always nice to see DVDs take advantage of the technology!).



This is definitely not the first yoga tape you should start with, although the instructor does a pretty good job of giving concise instructions. Power Yoga fans might not feel challenged enough here, because although the Sun Salutations are variations on the Ashtanga/Power Salutations, there just aren't that many of them and most of the postures aren't super tough. Also, the instructor seems to lose her train of thought a couple of times, and in the last segment, she repeats "peace sign fingers" four times, which is noticeable in a ten-minute segment. But otherwise, I found her instruction to be very competent, and in general I found her to be encouraging without being saccharine or condescending.



Recommended for experienced, time-crunched yoga fans who aren't looking for an exhaustive practice."

Five Excellent 10-Minute Yoga Workouts

Paula Z | Richmond, CA | 11/29/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Lara Hudson has designed five excellent 10-Minute yoga workouts, each with a different focus. Basics and Burn are total body energizers which will challenge your strength and agility with smooth-flowing standing poses. Buns & Thighs uses standing poses to build leg strength and improve your balance, as well as a few floor poses to target inner thighs and core. Abs focuses on improving core strength with challenging poses on the floor. Flexibility & Relaxation thoroughly stretches out the legs, hips and torso with more poses on the floor.



The 10-minute workout concept works very well for yoga, especially if you want to branch out and get more yoga into your weekly schedule, without cutting into your regularly scheduled cardio or strength workouts. If so, this DVD allows you to easily add just one segment to another workout for added strength or flexibility work. However, if your focus for the day is yoga, the versatile DVD program menu also allows you design a custom yoga workout of up to a 60 minutes.



>>>> Workout Details

Basics:

The first run-through is pretty slow, so you can learn the vinyasa pattern and warm up, then pace picks up. Begin seated for breathing practice, 3x, then stand for two versions of the sun salutation.

Basic sun salutation vinyasa is done twice: mountain pose, forward bend, back extension, high plank, low plank, up dog, down dog, forward bend, forward extension, stand while reaching arms overhead, bring hands into prayer in front of chest, and return to mountain pose.

Repeat this vinyasa twice more, each time adding leg extensions in down dog, and warrior 1 on each side.



Buns & Thighs: standing and floor poses at a faster pace, challenging your balance

Opens with chair pose, then moves into the second version of the sun salutation vinyasa above, this time adding warrior 2 after warrior 1 on each side. While holding each warrior 2, you straighten and bend the front leg 3x before continuing on. After the last plank, instead of going into up dog, you lie face down on the floor to work the inner thighs by opening and closing the legs slowly 2x, adding arm sweeps 3x, then one last torso lift with hands clasped behind back.

After a quick break of catback & childs' pose, you stand up to continue the vinyasa, adding chair pose with a twist to each side after the back extension. The final vinyasa adds high crescent pose on each side, holding and straightening the front leg 3x before continuing on.



Abs: all poses on the mat

Begin seated on mat for boat pose (v-sit with hands holding onto backs of thighs, shins parallel to floor). Next, extend both legs 5x, then place hands on floor behind your hips, lower down onto your forearms, again extend and retract both legs 10x.

Lie on your back with both hands under your glutes for double leg lifts 5x. Next, lying with legs bent in chair position and arms extended forward, upper crunch 10x, then oblique crunches L 10x, and R 10x.

After a full body stretch, work the obliques with side-lying double leg lifts 10x, and two holds before switching to the other side.

End with two challenging poses: begin in Boat pose, then roll upper back down to floor while extending both legs 10x. For the grand finale, Lara does some wrist rolls in prep so you know it's going to be tough. Begin in a face-up bridge or table-top, then lower your glutes, but don't let them touch the floor, rather, keep pushing them backwards while straightening your legs until your butt is behind your arms and you're balanced on your hands and heels (It's like Cathe's "levitation" move in Core Max, but with straight legs instead of crossed legs.) Alternate between the bridge and the "levitation" 5x, then stretch the abs with Cobra and Childs pose.



Burn: standing poses flowing to floor and back up

Begin with the opening sun salutation vinyasa from Buns & Thighs, including the leg extension in down dog, warrior 1 & 2, and adding triangle pose, and warrior 2 & 1.

After doing each side, hold high plank for 5 breaths, then do side planks on each side (on feet & one hand).

After childs pose, knee for camel pose slow (kneeling backbend) then swoop forward putting chest on thighs with arms extended behind, alternate these two poses 5x.

"Up dog, down dog flow" alternating each pose 5x.

Stand in mountain, then a challenging chair pose vinyasa: start in chair pose, then lower glutes to sit on floor and roll backwards onto shoulders (not neck), extending legs overhead, then roll forward, into standing forward bend with hands clasped behind back, lift quickly into chair pose. Repeat 5x.



Flexibility & Relaxation: seated and lying poses

Seated: butterfly stretch (bound angle pose), lateral bend over L leg, spinal twist same direction, untwist in opp direction, repeat on R side. Lie face up for bridge pose, then extend both legs, R knee to chest, hold R big toe with peace sign fingers for ham stretch, then inner thighs, lying spinal twist, repeat on L side. Finish with corpse pose.



>>>> Fitness level

Experience with yoga would be advised for this workout because the poses, although very well-cued, are meant to flow smoothly, so you need to be able to get into a pose pretty quickly and transition to the next one quickly too. Although the Basics segment sounds like it should be easy, it moves along at a good pace, and the sun salutation, with many up dogs and down dogs, requires good upper body strength as well as wrist strength. A few poses at the end of Burn and Abs are quite challenging -- definitely something to work up to. Flexibility & Relaxation is the easiest segment, and doable by all levels, because it's goal is exactly that: flexibility and relaxation. If you're still struggling with balance in Warrior poses, can't step into and out of down dog quickly, or can't hold Boat pose, you may want to avoid frustration and try an easier yoga workout.



>>>> Instruction & Cueing

Lara does an excellent job of cueing the poses and each breath. Lara is encouraging in a laid-back way, and seems very confident and knowledgeable in her instructions. Her delivery is calm and low-key as she leads you smoothly through each pose, step by step and breath by breath. She offers technique pointers and frequently explains the fine points of each pose, allowing you to make adjustments as needed. You don't need to watch the TV at all, which is very helpful, because often you can't...or at least you shouldn't be turning your head to see the next move.



>>>> Set

Studio with wood floor, peach walls, opaque windows. Plants and fitness equipment scattered against the walls.



>>>> Crew

Lara is alone on camera, so there are no alternatives shown for some of the harder poses, although she usually shows an easier version first which you can stick with if needed.



>>>> DVD features

Main menu has three choices:

Create a Personalized Workout: choose up to 6 segments from this Menu, to play in the order you want, segments can be repeated



Pick One Workout: play one segment at a time, when done you're sent back to Pick One menu to choose another



Play All: segments play in this order: Basics, Buns & Thighs, Abs, Burn, Flexibility & Relaxation



Choosing the order of workouts

If you're going to do all 5 segments in a row, start with Basics as your warm-up, then do Buns & Thighs and Burn (in either order, doesn't matter which comes first). Abs works the core with challenging moves, so it's best placed after the standing segments, so that you're not trying to balance or perform moves quickly with pre-fatigued abs. Flexibility & Relaxation should always be placed last.



For a well-rounded half-hour yoga workout, start with Basics to warm-up and get energized, then depending on your goal for the day, put Buns & Thighs, Burn or Abs in the middle, and end with Relaxation to gently and thoroughly stretch you lower body and torso.



Upward dog

There are a lot of upward dogs in the three standing segments. It takes a lot of upper body strength to lift your hips and legs off the floor until only the tops of your feet are resting on the floor. You can always modify this to a cobra pose (lifting only your torso off the floor, leaving your hips grounded). However, you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll build strength if you keep at it -- so don't give up! One caution: don't overarch your lower back in up dog (or in cobra either) by tilting your head backwards or pushing your chest forward. You'll notice that Lara's upper torso is perpendicular to the floor in this pose, her shoulders are directly over her hands, and she's looking straight ahead, so she doesn't have an excessive arch in her lower back. It helps to practice this pose sideways to a mirror a few times, so you can see how far backwards you're leaning.



Balance help for Warrior poses

Lara gives an excellent cue for the back foot in Warrior position. She cues you to put your weight on the outside of the back foot, which helps to engage the quads and lifts the arch off floor. If you've ever had trouble balancing in warrior, this cue should help you feel more solid in that split-leg stance.



As a matter of fact, lifting the arches of your feet off the floor in any standing pose helps to align the knees properly, engage the quad muscles and improves balance. Beryl Binder Birch, in her excellent book, Power Yoga explains the basic foot stance this way: "The weight of the body is distributed in three places in the foot -- in the ball of the foot behind the big toe, in the ball of the foot behind the third and fourth toes, and in the center of the heel." Beryl suggests that flat feet (fallen arches) which are often treated by prescribing orthotics for one's shoes, would be better corrected by doing yoga -- "by consciously and repeatedly shifting the weight toward the outside of your feet throughout practice, thereby developing and strengthening the arches."



If you have trouble with balance during yoga, you'll find that concentrating on pressing down through these three points and spreading your toes wide against the floor, will automatically lift the arches of your feet and improve your ability to balance on one foot for Tree or in split stances like Warrior, Triangle or Crescent poses. It will also enhance your feeling of groundedness in Mountain and Chair poses.



Double leg lifts (Abs)

Having your hands under your glutes should help to protect your lower back for this exercise. If you feel any strain in the low back, stop lowering your legs at that point. As your abs get stronger, you'll be able to get your legs lower safely. Remember that Lara has been practicing yoga for a long time and is quite strong. If you can't lower your legs as much as she does, that's ok. Recognize your own limits and adjust the move accordingly. You can do this exercise with your knees bent as much as 90 degrees and still be working the ab muscles. You can also lift and lower one leg at a time.



Boat pose roll back with leg extensions (Abs)

This exercise has a Pilates feel to it, and can be very challenging for the low back. In Pilates, you start with your upper back on the floor and curl up, whereas here you start seated and lower down to the floor. If you can't smoothly curl up and down as much as Lara, limit your range of motion when you lean back.



Bridge/table-top swing-through vinyasa (Abs)

If you have a long torso and short arms, you may have trouble holding yourself high enough off the floor to bring your glutes backwards. To make this easier, rest your hands on two yoga blocks or two thick books (I used one yoga black and my paperback copy of Gray's Anatomy) to give your glutes more clearance for your swing backwards. (I couldn't do this at all when I had my hands on the floor, but the extra clearance I got from the books made this vinyasa quite doable. (I surprised myself!)



Chair vinyasa (Burn)

If you're not flexible or nimble enough to sit on the floor directly from chair pose, roll back and forward and return to standing all in one smooth move, you can modify by holding the chair pose while Lara does the roll. This is a very advanced move.



(...)"

Fun Athletic Approach to Yoga

Yoni | Israel | 02/21/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I really like this workout , I didnt buy it for the 10 minute segments because I think doing Yoga for this short amount of time isn't really effective but for a 50 or 40 minute workout (if you want to omit 1 segment) it's pretty good. I felt really energized after doing it.The abs segment really reminded me of pilates and has a mix of boat variations and more. My favorite segment is "yoga burn" which is a fast flow of yoga postures (not sun salutations!) like rolling on your back to plough pose then rolling back to standing for a few times and more, it was really fun.While there are no really advanced poses here, you can definitely work up a sweat if you do the whole thing but I wouldn't recommend this for beginners.Lara is a very good and likable instructor her cuing is also good ,the only minus is that there's no savasana at the end . All in all if you want a non intimidating and energizing yoga workout it's definitely a good choice."