Practicing yoga at home is great if you don’t have a studio nearby or can’t afford a membership. However, selecting a yoga DVD can be challenging. One problem is the inability to try out a DVD to see if you like it. Most of us have at least one or two lying around the house that we bought and weren’t crazy about.
Another problem with using a DVD for yoga practice is the lack of variety. The practice is the same each time and even with a few DVDs, there is little variety. There are a few websites who have responded to the need for yoga classes for home yoga practitioners. One that I found and like is yogadownload.com.
The website has a large number of classes in many styles of yoga, including Ashtanga, Hatha, Kundalini, Vinyasa and more. There are also prenatal yoga classes and some that are designed for health problems, such as yoga for back pain.
Some of the content is free and some is available at a cost. The free classes are 20 minutes long. These are great for people interested in a short session or to try out the class a few times before you buy the longer sessions. The longer sessions are available at a cost of between $4 and $7, depending on the length of the class.
The classes can be downloaded to your computer, iPod or burned to CD. I have an iPod shuffle and have downloaded a few classes. It works very well. One nice thing about downloading classes is you can practice in any room of your home or even outside, since you don’t need the television.
The classes are recorded music and direction, but no picture, as with a DVD. This may be a bit challenging for someone new to yoga. The site has a free online pose guide for each class that helps with new or unfamiliar poses. The names of each pose are listed in both English and Sanskrit and each has a description and pictures.