Ashtanga Yoga - Beginners Practice is actually kind of deceiving. What sounds like a simple DVD introduction to Ashtanga Yoga, isn’t. At least not for me.
Nicki Doane is a little less friendly, more formal and rehearsed. It sounds like she’s reading a script rather than sincerely guiding you through the process.
Like all yoga practices, Ashtanga focuses on the breath but the poses are difficult to achieve without panting and she moves to quickly for me to recover. Even after doing for 5 weeks, I still don’t have the core strength or flexibility required to do some of the sun salutation poses in the DVD.
This is my first experience with Ashtanga Yoga and I found it pretty boring. Depending on the workout, there are a few poses that are strung together to create a series and then repeated several times. I prefer to incorporate different stretches and target different areas throughout my week. There are times when I feel like practicing a more meditative state of yoga or one specifically for stretching running muscles.
Doane’s DVD offers a feature throughout the disc that allows the viewer to watch how poses are appropriately done - it’s useful but still something I wouldn’t describe as being in the realm of beginners yoga.
This DVD went back into the “return to the library” pile.
I'm MC, a twenty-something 
