Help me with a Yoga Rotation!

[Stacy]

I love the way I feel after yoga, but I can't find an instructor or style I click with enough to make me do yoga more than once a month, sometimes less! As I age I really do want to become more flexible, and theoretically like the idea of doing less intense workouts, but I fear losing strength and that cardio high. Maybe I'm picking all the wrong workouts/yoga practices (?)

I definitely do NOT like yoga with meditation or chanting or yoga practices that spend too much time on breathing. I understand the idea behind it, but to me, it's boring and makes me want to pop out my dvd. I also don't do yoga often b/c I know it's going to be sun salutations, then some warrior poses, then some chair poses, a few balance poses and then some stuff on the floor. I need more variety than that. I've tried putting together a yoga rotation in the past, but I either end up getting tired of the same instructor or bored with the monotony in the order of poses.

I have UY 180 with Travis and like some of them in the set and in general don't mind Travis. I have done Rodney Yee, but too many sun salutations in what I have done. I have Jeanette Jenkins Power Yoga which I like but it's a bit long. I don't necessarily want all athletic style/Power Yoga but I definitely want to feel worked out when I'm done but without the dread factor of the sun salutations, into the warrior poses etc. Maybe I should look more into Essentrics?? Pilates?? Exhale Core Fusion? A combo of them?

 

[Jane Power-Grimm]

I feel the same as you Stacy. I like yoga but I found I wasn't doing it all that often. What works for me now is doing the 20 min. extended stretch that is on the STS dvds. It is yoga inspired but not repetitive and not too many down dogs, etc. It is quick and so I fit it in after some of my shorter workouts or at night when I'm unwinding. But it is thorough enough to work on my flexibility and helps me feel relaxed.

I also sometimes use the shorter premixes on Yoga Relax and Yoga Max. I find a 30 min. program is the longest I like to do unless it is a rest day. With the Yoga Relax and Yoga Max programs (from Cathe's Low Impact series), you can change the audio setting so you use your own music. This can be a great option as you can change up the music and avoid boredom.

You may like to mix in Shiva Rea's Daily Energy as it has seven 20-min. practices that can be mixed and matched for lots of variety.

Hope you find something you enjoy!

 

[FireLight]

Great suggestions Jane Power-Grimm!

I have Shiva Rea's Daily Energy - need to utilize it more often!

 

[jcm]

I did the entire UY w/ Travis in 108 days. I eventually got used to him and stopped laughing. The other one I have is Yoga Warrior with Rudy Mettia (also under Udaya). Rudy and Travis are very different instructors but I like them both and it just depends what kind of a mood I'm in. Rudy is like a guy I could hang out with. My sense of humor. And he's a former marine, bouncer, ... with a rough background. He has some cool introspection during the practice that isn't all ... yoga-ish? He's be worth looking at for sure.

 

[cokonkel]

I wanted to suggest my newest yoga obsession: Five Parks Yoga from youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtTMWDx4u1dVKMpXNhjwpA

It's totally free and her practices are creative and fun. She has made me literally crave yoga every day for the first time ever. I have been under a lot of stress lately and found my regular workouts were making me achy and sore for much longer periods of time than usual. Emotional stress makes it much harder to recover from high intensity workouts so I tried backing off (going with lighter weights, more low impact, etc) but it wasn't until I stumbled upon this channel and started up with yoga almost exclusively that I started to feel amazing again. My favorite in the past was Ultimate Yogi with Travis Eliot and I also like Yoga Warrior 365 but Erin's practices blow them out of the water! I'm on week 6 of almost exclusively doing her yoga (with just a little bit of metabolic workouts sprinkled here and there to keep a little weights/cardio in the mix). I have officially become obsessed with yoga for the first time in my life.