yoga for beginners: part II

BEGINNING ASANA + RESOURCES FOR BEGINNERS

As a beginner, you may or may not be willing to go to a class.  Sometimes it helps to know some basics before you go to a class.  Or maybe yoga studios and gyms just aren’t an option. 

In that case, here is where I would start with a yoga practice:  your living room floor (or whatever room you can get a little peace and quiet in).

To get started, I really like the yoga podcasts on YogaJournal.com.  You can find them here.  I find that these videos, especially Jason Crandell’s, are nice and slow and accessible.  Take 20 minutes and follow one of these podcasts.  Yoga Journal also has a nice pose dictionary if you want more information on certain poses.  You can find that here.

A great resource for the beginner to take you into a little more depth in each pose is 30 Essential Yoga Poses.  This resource combined with the short podcasts will give you a good start and some variety.

If you decide, hey, yoga might be for you then you can expand your library of videos.  I don’t recommended spending the money on DVDs if you aren’t going to use them.  That is why I would start with the online videos. 

For beginners, I think Jason Crandell is great.  He gives a really solid overview of each pose and I find him very authentic. 

Once you begin exploring dvds, you might want to look into Rodney Yee, Shiva Rea, and Seane Corn.  I have videos from all of these teachers and they each have a distinct style.  It will keep you from getting bored and help you find the style of yoga you like.

For small bits of yoga, I like Yoga Today’s blog.  They are short little sequences that will help you learn new asanas and open up new parts of the body.  Yoga Today also has a part that you can subscribe to or pay $3.99 per class.  I haven’t tried it, but I imagine if you like the shorter versions, you would probably enjoy the full class.  Another version of this is YogaGlo.

Like I said, I wouldn’t go buying subscriptions to everything unless you’ll use them.  Yoga isn’t something that you have to dump a lot of money into to enjoy!

These are just some of the resources that I recommend to beginners. Do any yogis reading this have other recommendations?

Next in Part III:  What to expect in a yoga class.

Part I:  What is yoga?