Shiva Rea’s Daily Energy Vinyasa Flow Yoga
Restore energy, strength, and balance every day with world-renowned yoga teacher Shiva Rea.
“Inspiring to all” —Yoga Journal
Restore energy, strength, and balance every day with world-renowned yoga teacher Shiva Rea. Offering seven 20-minute practices, this program will help you fit yoga into your busy life every day without having to repeat a workout.
Practicing yoga daily, even for a short time, can be more beneficial than a long, intense practice once in a while. By tuning your workout to your needs each day, you’ll acquire balance, composure, and tranquility in your life. On a stressful day, try one of the lunar programs for relaxation; when you need to be at your best, opt for an energizing solar practice, or put the two together to build stamina and sculpt long, lean muscles.
With the customizable Yoga Matrix, you can choose from more than two hours of yoga to create endless possibilities for longer practices. Open your heart, ignite your inner fire, and experience the transformative effects of daily yoga with one of the world’s most inspiring teachers.
Reviews of Shiva Rea: Daily Energy – Vinyasa Flow Yoga
Review 1: The BEST yoga DVD out there
I usually don’t bother leaving reviews but this DVD really warranted it. I’ve never been a fan of Shiva Rea’s DVDs because thye seemed more like a movie to me rather than an instructional practice. This DVD contains 7 main workouts that when done on their own give you a great workout. She also pairs them into 7 practices between 40 and 60 minutes. This really is the total package.
I personally cannot do an hour of yoga daily or every other day. I am usually pressed for time and after a while my body starts to break down. Like it says on the package that it’s better to do a little bit of yoga daily than a full routine every now and again. Don’t lt the short time of the workouts fool you, they really ARE effective. I do a different one each day, every day and my body is reallly toning, getting muscular, and this really gives me the peace and grounding that yoga is known to induce. I am statign to face the day with a serene gaze like Shiva dones in this workout, and all of her DVDs.
Reviews 2: My Favorite!
This is my favorite yoga video. The seven, 20-minute programs are easy to squeeze into a busy day. If you have more time, you can choose to do one of the five preset combinations. Four are about 40 minutes each and one is 50 minutes. These longer programs include opening meditations, a short core workout or forward bend sequence, and shavasana.
The short programs emphasize elemental themes:
Water focuses on fluid, twisting, bending motions which offer a wonderful counterpoint to the mostly single plane movements we are used to. Allowing the body to move spontaneously how and where it wants, releasing it from conscious control, opens one up to possibilities and the beauty of naturally arising energy.
Fire is an invigorating practice that gets the blood flowing and develops upper body strength with multiple pushups.
Fire & Water combines the fluidity of the water program with a less strenuous version of Fire.
Earth grounds you with its emphasis on standing poses, developing stamina in the legs and balance as you bend sideways. This practice reminds me of Shiva’s “Dancing Warrior” sequences from her “Yoga Shakti” dvd.
Heart & Air focuses on backbends.
Chakra Namaskar combines movements from each of the elemental practices.
Shanti Namaskar offers deep relaxation through slow, easy stretches. The music and narration are meant to enhance the effect, but sometimes make me a little drowsy! This is a great routine if you’ve had a stressful day.
Two opening sequences are offered: an energizing Solar routine in standing, and a relaxing, seated Lunar meditation.
Core is a beginning to intermediate abdominal program of 7 minutes.
Forward Bends is a 6-minute program featuring Paschimottasana, Upavista Konasana, and Baddha Konasana.
Shiva Rea’s supple and effortless movements inspire, her dreamy voice soothes, and the Indian décor of the background enhances the mood of each practice.
The dvd does have some flaws. The cues aren’t always well-timed. By the time Shiva tells you to move into a certain pose, she is already transitioning out of it. She doesn’t always warn you that an upcoming move will be different. She has you in downward dog, lifting one leg to the ceiling and then bending the knee to bring it forward for a lunge, but then fails to let you know that the next time through, you are to bend the knee while keeping that leg extending up. I find it difficult at times to match her breathing cadence, so in the beginning, I was either turning purple waiting for her to say “exhale” or moving on the wrong breath.
Review 3: Great for a more abstract minded beginner
I had never done yoga before and I wanted to fix my posture, there are a lot of details Shiva does not cover but I was so motivated to start and found her method to be fun and loose enough for me to figure it out on my own. It took me about a year to do the poses correctly while watching other people’s yoga in addition to this dvd. I recommend Rodney Yee’s AM yoga, it is a descriptive and straight to the point teaching style I wish I had more of when I first started.
It doesn’t bug me when my yoga teacher tells me to fly like seaweed, but I would also like more input about where my feet go or where I should be feeling a stretch. There were a couple times where Shiva does not follow the pattern of the flow or the right side may have more time than the left leaving me felling unevenly stretched. Overall, now that I know how to do yoga, they are all very fun sequences and I can substitute my own poses in if I feel uneven, but haha people like my sister strongly disagree, I showed her this dvd and she was not at all willing to jump through the clouds like a water dragon, she very much prefers the Rodney Yee way. It has been 2-3 years and I still use it as one of my primary yoga dvds.