Customer Reviews

Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Things I like about the book:
1. It's incredibly beautiful! I love LOOKING at it, and it's inspiring.
2. He talks about emotional aspects as well as physcial ones, and gives you good information on anatomy, aspects of the asanas, and building a practice for yourself.
3. The structure of the course in general is excellent, and there is a great deal of knowledge put into each sequence. He has good reason for placing asanas in the order he has.
4. The photos make it easy to follow the daily sequence
5. He offers alternative postures for every asana.

WHAT I DON'T LIKE ABOUT THE BOOK:

1. It seems like a book a beginner could use, but as a long time practitioner/instructor, I find it falls short with simple things like positioning of the feet or the hips in certain asanas.(eg. Trikonasana requires that hips are facing the side and the rear foot should be at a 45degree angle, etc)

2. The meditations don't give much for a beginner to go on, and seem flimsy at times for those who do have experience. It could quickly frustrate a beginner or turn them off from an essential aspect of a full yoga practice.

3. There are no warnings about postures that are potentially dangerous for beginners, or information about postures like back bends, that for many people may take years to work up to.

4. Frequently the alternative postures are too difficult for students with limited abilities and the presentation implies that the alternative is the 'easy' pose.

If you are a beginner, or are not confident with your own knowledge of asana/the physical body...please, please, please find a qualified person to take you through DAY 1 at least. This will give you solid knowledge about which postures are feasible for you at the present moment and which ones you should alter.
Don't be afraid to stray slightly from the book....you don't need to do every posture he recommends...some of them will only create injuries if you force your body into something it's not ready for.

Having said all this, I will say I am living in the Middle East in the middle of the desert and I am using this book as a base text to teach a number of expats in my community. We are all enjoying the program...but I've made several key changes:
i)I've added basic breathing practices(pranayama); ii)I've removed postures that are too difficult and substituted them with something more appropriate for beginners; iii)I've changed the meditations and frequently change the suggested postures for the meditations.

When it's all said and done, personally I really like the book, and recommend it to anyone who has experience with asana classes, and is at the point of wanting to establish a home practice. This book helps you lay a great foundation of 'asana knowledge' that will ultimately allow you to create a personalized practice suited to your needs. However, I have more than 10 years of knowledge and I found that I frequently supplemented with my own knowledge to make my experience more fruitful and pleasurable.
If you buy this book, make sure you also get a book on pranayama/breathing....Like Donna Farhi's book for example and one on meditation...like Lawrence LeShan.
If you want to create a full practice, it's important to incorporate all aspects of yoga, not just asana.

After having done yoga on and off for the past three years, this book really helped me incorporate yoga into my every day life. I have taken yoga classes and practiced with numerous videos, but it never really felt like "my own" until I started using this book eight weeks ago. Not only does doing yoga every day revolutionize how your body feels, but the workouts are extremely well-developed and enjoyable. Yee's pictures and explanations are incredibly helpful and encouraged me to do things (ie: backbends, handstands, and headstands) that I never thought I'd try by myself at home; I always felt safe and prepared for the poses. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I actually look forward to doing yoga every morning. I feel like Yee has prepared me to practice at home much beyond the eight weeks he promises. I will never do another video; I enjoy too much looking out my window, listening to my music, while doing yoga at my own pace. Thank you Rodney Yee!

I really loved this book. I've just finished the 8 week program - it took me more like 10 to get through with my schedule, but I loved the organization of it.. each week has a different focus, and every day within that week a different angle on the week's focus... there are different versions of each pose so that you can really see how the placement of the body matters. the pictures were quite good and in the end, you have yourself weeks of practices that you can comfortably reconfigure over and over. this is a slow moving practice; generally you hold each pose for 30 seconds to several minutes. it covers a really wide range from standing poses to inversions. I really feel that I can just turn on some music, lower the lights, and comfortably make my own home practice on the fly of any length.

Rodney has written a must have book for all students of yoga. His ability to make the yoga practice understandable for all levels is first rate. This book breaks down a week by week practice to help all of us understand barriers to practice. This book is extremely helpful for those starting a home practice and for new teachers who wish to help thier students.

For those of you who want to practice yoga at home, this is a wonderful book. Videos can become very monotonous, but this book encourages personalizing your practice. Throughout the eight week program, the different poses are presented in clear photographs and descriptions with different versions of each pose for different levels. The book moves from the more familiar sun salutation to the more intimidating handstands, backbends and such. There are sequences to familiarize the reader with the poses and sequencing. The book includes specific meditations at the end of each day's work. At the end of the book there is advice about creating your own sequences.

It is a wonderful book for doing yoga at home and personalizing practice.

This book is outstanding for someone like myself who has a little over a year of Yoga and somewhat of a foundation of the asanas.

Part of what Rodney asks us to do in this visually appealing, thoughtfully put together instructional book, is to do the asanas from different perspectives - from modified to advanced. And even if one feels confident and believes they can just move to advanced - wait - follow Rodney's advise and do it all. You are not taking one step back when you follow his execution of a modifed version. Instead, you feel the asana from a different perspective that helps you understand the movement even better, making it more meaningful for your practice when you do move to the advanced version. His teaching method allows one to further discover the benefit and beauty of these asanas (and therefore Yoga as a whole).

I love this book - of the many DVDs and books I have bought over the last year, this is truly the most valuable Yoga purchase I've made to date.

Nancy - New York, NY

This is a beautifully illustrated book with a nice sequence of practices that build up to more advanced routines. There are also many preparatory exercises for difficult asanas and even sequences of asanas to improve body awareness before moving to more advanced positions. I really like this aspect of the book and a lot of this information is well presented.

What I didn't like about this book is that I don't think it offers enough warnings or fine points on asanas for beginners. While the routines take things slowly and build up to more advanced positions, it would actually be a monumental task for a beginner to reach these levels without a good teacher because the book lacks sufficient detail. However, it could be adequate if you have a good teacher or attend regular classes with a qualitifed instructor.

I'm glad I bought this book and I have used some of the ideas from it in my practice. However, I would augment it with something like "The 30 Essential Yoga Poses" by Judith Lasater which provides more detail and warnings on performing asanas correctly or "Dancing the Body of Light" which goes in to great detail about the asanas.

If you have a bad back, then I would start my yoga practice out with "Back Care Basics" by Mary Pullig-Schatz. She is an Iyengar instructor and M.D. with lots of experience using yoga to rehabilitate people with various types of neck and back problems. In fact, this is how she became involved in yoga.

I think that this is THE book for beginners. I have tried many DVD's and other books, and this is the best. It is really an 8 week introduction to basic yoga. The book starts with the easier standing poses, and works from there. Each week you begin by trying the poses featured that week three ways: first, you try the pose the easiest way with props and supports (like blankets, yoga bricks, a wall or chair for balance, etc.); the second way is with a little less support; and the final way is the pose without support. This is a great approach, because it allows you to do the yoga at your pace and ability: you can do the tree pose holding onto the wall if need be, bend your knees during downward dog, do a modified backbend without lifting your head and shoulders off the floor, and begin headstand (much later in the book) by walking your feet up the wall, etc. This is much better than jumping into a dvd where you are already supposed to know how to do it. After you have tried all the poses with modifications, and without, if you are able; the rest of the days of the week feature two poses each in particular to focus on, along with review. Everything is covered in detail with pictures, all the poses, with modifications and without, and how to do a sun salutation and so on. The pictures are beautiful and clear and the book is written in Rodney Yee's encouraging style. Best of all, you can take your time getting into a pose and do not have to worry about keeping up with a dvd. I have no experience in yoga, and I love this book. I am 38 years old.

I thought this book was great because it has so many different routines; you never have to do the same routine twice throughout the whole eight-week program, and every week you get to learn new poses. Also, the way the program is designed you really improve quickly, each week is a little more difficult than the week before it. After completing the program I felt like I knew tons of poses, and could easily keep up with many yoga classes. I really liked doing yoga from a book more than from a DVD because it gave me enough time to make each pose feel right for myself, I really learned to control my breath and set my own pace. If you are really interested in making yoga a daily part of your life, this book is a great place to start.

This book was recommended to me by an instructor whose class I took while on holiday. I had taken classes for several years and done some home videos and was looking to develop a home practice. This book is an excellent way to begin the process. The program is well organized and there are many modifications shown for the different poses. One cautionary note: it does help to have some prior experience. That being said, I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to establish a home practice.