Vee
Cathlete
I love Shiva Rea. She shoots the most beautiful fitness videos ever. Her yoga form is impeccable. She is passionate, strong, graceful and truly inspiring in her yoga proficiency.
Shiva does two styles of yoga. The first is traditional vinyasa (flow) yoga. However the poses she incorporates and her transitions are very unique. Her best in this category is Yoga Shakti.
The other style is fluid/creative yoga. This has some elements of free form expression. As an Indian I recognize the influence from classical Indian dance forms and martial art forms in this style. Her Creative Core and Fluid Power are from this style. I find her previous DVDs in this style strayed a bit too far from classic yoga for my taste.
Yet I look a chance on buying Creative Core + Upper Body and Creative Core + Lower Body DVDs. I LOVE them both. They do have some fluidity but there is mostly classic, yet accessible poses of yoga executed with grace.
Creative Core + Upper Body is brilliant. It has you do upto 120 pushups. You do a flow from pose to pose styled on the classic yoga sun salutation, except each one is tweaked with a variation to keep things interesting. For those not familiar, in the yoga sun salutation flow, you find yourself in high plank position, and do something like a bomb diver pushup. In this routine, Shiva makes you do 11 traditional pushups in each sun salutation and then a final one is the classic bomb-diverish move from low-plank into upward facing dog. There are 10 rounds of sun salutions so you end up doing 120 pushups. Except Shiva says you can:
a. Set your own target of how many pushups you want to do each time - it could be 6 or 8 or even as many as you can get in.
b. Do the pushups from your knees. (But she doesnt demonstrate this variation.)
I would rate this a great introduction to yoga to someone who is really fit from other forms of exercise.
Creative Core + Lower Body is also very enjoyable. It has Hindu style squats and lunge based yoga poses that will work on leg muscle endurance.
Each DVD includes a very intersting core section based on yoga plus Shiva's own unique style of core work. Also a nice bonus yoga routine from sone of Shiva's previous DVDs.
The music and the location is beautiful.
Shiva does two styles of yoga. The first is traditional vinyasa (flow) yoga. However the poses she incorporates and her transitions are very unique. Her best in this category is Yoga Shakti.
The other style is fluid/creative yoga. This has some elements of free form expression. As an Indian I recognize the influence from classical Indian dance forms and martial art forms in this style. Her Creative Core and Fluid Power are from this style. I find her previous DVDs in this style strayed a bit too far from classic yoga for my taste.
Yet I look a chance on buying Creative Core + Upper Body and Creative Core + Lower Body DVDs. I LOVE them both. They do have some fluidity but there is mostly classic, yet accessible poses of yoga executed with grace.
Creative Core + Upper Body is brilliant. It has you do upto 120 pushups. You do a flow from pose to pose styled on the classic yoga sun salutation, except each one is tweaked with a variation to keep things interesting. For those not familiar, in the yoga sun salutation flow, you find yourself in high plank position, and do something like a bomb diver pushup. In this routine, Shiva makes you do 11 traditional pushups in each sun salutation and then a final one is the classic bomb-diverish move from low-plank into upward facing dog. There are 10 rounds of sun salutions so you end up doing 120 pushups. Except Shiva says you can:
a. Set your own target of how many pushups you want to do each time - it could be 6 or 8 or even as many as you can get in.
b. Do the pushups from your knees. (But she doesnt demonstrate this variation.)
I would rate this a great introduction to yoga to someone who is really fit from other forms of exercise.
Creative Core + Lower Body is also very enjoyable. It has Hindu style squats and lunge based yoga poses that will work on leg muscle endurance.
Each DVD includes a very intersting core section based on yoga plus Shiva's own unique style of core work. Also a nice bonus yoga routine from sone of Shiva's previous DVDs.
The music and the location is beautiful.
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