A.M. Yoga for Your Week Reviews

Review by library lady for A.M. Yoga for Your Week
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This yoga dvd follows Gaiam’s usual formula – beautiful scenery, voice-over instruction, and soothing background music. A new feature is the ability to choose between detailed or minimal audio instruction – very nice once you’ve practiced the routine a few times. The interview with Rodney Yee gives some good insight into his path toward yoga. The best part is the routines themselves. New yoga concepts are presented, not just a re-packaging of the many titles featuring Rodney Yee that you may have seen and practiced. He offers advice during the routines that seems small but makes the poses work so much better.

The twists segment is my favorite.

Review by L. Starling for A.M. Yoga for Your Week
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In this DVD, you can do a different sequence each day of the week. As I interpret the default order of the choices, they are just right for the five-day workweek: standing poses to get your motor runnin’ first thing Monday morning; backbends on Wednesday (over-the-hump-day) to counteract the effects of slumping over the computer; hip-openers on Friday to open you up after a week of being chair-bound. The twists (Tuesday) and forward bends (Thursday) are delightful additions and could be done interchangeably. Take advantage of extra time on the weekends to do more than one of the sequences.

On days that I prefer a more well-rounded morning practice, I do the A.M. portion of the Yee/Walden A.M./P.M. Yoga for beginners CD, then follow it up with a more targeted sequence from Yee’s A.M. Yoga for Your Week. That combination loosens me up and primes me for a more challenging workout later in the day, whether it be yoga, pilates, kickboxing, hiking, whatever.

Oh, and the cinematography is as breathtaking as the music is enchanting. A delightful experience!

Review by Beth Cholette for A.M. Yoga for Your Week
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Rodney Yee, a veteran yoga instructor as well as the featured instructor of many yoga videos and DVDs, has recently released this new offering, AM Yoga for Your Week. The intent was to provide five 20-minute practices (but note that the actual practice times vary from 22-26 minutes) which could be used during busy weekday mornings to get the day off to a good start. In reality, these five excellent yoga sessions, each of which has a different focus, are appropriate for use at ANY time of the day. Although each individual practice revolves around a specific body area/group of postures, each are well-rounded, stand-alone yoga sessions. I have described the five practices briefly below.

STANDING, 22.5 minutes

Standing postures include standing forward bend, tree, triangle, side angle pose, warrior 1, and warrior 2; standing forward bend is performed in-between some of these poses. The standing poses conclude with chair and wide-legged standing forward bend before moving to the floor for hero and then finishing in relaxation pose. Yee offers some particularly nice form pointers while holding the standing poses.

TWISTS, 26 minutes

This practice opens with a series of reclined twists (one of which uses a strap). Yee then transitions to standing with down dog and standing forward bend for revolved prayer twist and crazy dog. Coming back to seated in cobbler’s pose, he performs a twist in wide-legged seated pose and two variations on Sage 3 posture. This practice finishes with half Lord of the fishes, cobra, and relaxation pose.

BACK BENDS, 25 minutes

Yee starts here by rolling two blankets together to create a bolster for under the upper back; he lies over this for a gentle lying backbend. Coming to standing, he moves through a variation on sun salutations which include standing backbend, chair, down dog, warrior 2, side angle, warrior 1, and crescent lunge. He then moves to the floor for cobra, bow, and camel. After finishing with the backbending work, Yee nicely stretches out the body with cobbler’s pose, simple seated twist, reclined leg stretch (using a strap if needed); he finished with relaxation pose.

FORWARD BENDS, 24 minutes

This practice begins in a reclined position for a series of moves that felt more like hip openers than forward bends: reclined leg stretch (using a strap if needed), happy babies pose, and thread-the-needle. Next Yee gradually transitions to standing through child’s pose, down dog, standing forward bend, wide angle standing forward bend, and 3-legged down dog. Coming back to the floor for seated forward bends, he performs a simple cross-legged forward bend, head-to-knee pose, full seated forward bend, cobbler’s forward bend, and wide-legged forward bend, finishing with a brief rest and then relaxation pose. To my surprise, this segment was probably my favorite, as it had a great mix of postures.

HIP OPENERS, 26 minutes

This segment uses a yoga block. It starts with a seated opening vinyasa in which Yee flows from staff pose to cobbler’s to wide-legged seated pose, gradually speeding this up and also adding half-boat pose. He next does a simple cross-legged forward bend before incorporating the block. Keeping one leg stretched straight out in front, he first rests the other knee on the block, then brings the knee out to the side at a right angle. He also uses the block for cobbler’s pose with the block between the feet. Additional postures which follow include pigeon, revolved crescent lunge, double pigeon, half Lord of the fishes, wide-legged seated forward bend, and cobbler’s forward bend. The practice concludes with lightning pose, hero’s pose on the block, and relaxation.

Despite Yee’s long history of making yoga videos, he has still managed to offer something that feels fresh and new here. As always, his cueing is impeccable (although mirrored cueing would be even better!), and he offers wonderful form pointers which help you to get into the postures more deeply. Although I wouldn’t recommend this DVD for those brand-new to yoga (Yee doesn’t give quite that level of instruction), more experienced beginners and beyond should do fine. In conclusion, the practices are amazing, the instructor is extremely skilled, and the scenery is breathtaking–what’s not to like? Highly recommended!

Review by for Incident at Oglala – The Leonard Peltier Story
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I knew little about Leonard Peltier’s situation which is why I wanted to watch this documentary. I can not believe this man is still in jail, over 20 years later. His situation is a perfect example of a government who would do what is necessary to “solve” a murder. Never mind that the case had a million holes in it that were never answered. This is the kind of thing that is not supposed to happen in America (event though it does all the time). This should be required viewing for every person in America (the land of the free!).

Review by Betsy for Incident at Oglala – The Leonard Peltier Story
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Recently, I had the opportunity to give a short presentation in one of my English classes at Guilford College. The focus of my presentation was “Prison Writings, My Life is a Sun Dance, by Leonard Peltier. I am sad to report that not one student in the room knew who Leonard Peltier is. This is a class that is for continuing education adult students, ages 24 and up. I think it is important for all of the citizens of the United States of American to know who Leonard Peltier is, especially in the New World, post 9/11. I think it is important for us to ask ourselves this; is it possible that our government is capable of what the Indians have been saying that they are capable of for a very long time? If you think that these are important issues, I urge you to watch this documentary, and to read books by Leonard Peltier, and others who were part of the movement. Look at the history of AIM, and the people who were there and lived their lives in the midst of what was going on in the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. All you have to do is Google Leonard Petier and you will see that there is an enormous amount of information out there; including the FBI web page that states their case in the deaths of FBI agents Coler and Williams. I strongly urge you to review the evidence from both sides. It may seem like an over whelming task, and it is. Leonard Peltier has been in prison for 30 years now and I’m not sure that we really know exactly what happened that day on June 26, 1975 at the Jumping Bull camp. More recently, one of the murders of Anna Mae Aquash Pictou has been sent to prison and another has the US pursuing extradition from Canada. There have been aqusations among AIM members, and sad days for the Indian communities. But to me, the bottom line is this; there was a lot going on in Indian Country, particularly on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in the 1970′s. There is no doubt in my mind that there was deep government corruption involved, and it continues today, just as Jack Abramoff has just demonstrated. We need to take a much closer look at the FBI’s involvement of the Jumping Bull incident, the GOON squads that held the Pine Ridge residents in a state of fear, and the tactics used by the FBI to obtain Leonard Peltier’s extradition from Canada. The evidence, or sometimes the lack there of, speaks volumes. It’s worth looking into in these days of Homeland Security. I believe that Russell Means said it best went talking about US Indian Policy. To summarize it, he said that the US government has taken what they learned through following Indian Policy and are now applying it to the American people. Look at these things, and think long and hard about them. Perception changes as so many years pass and things change. It is what we have learned from the past that teaches us how to protect that which we love today.