Best Yoga DVDs

The 7 beginning yoga practices is a 3-hour hatha yoga video from Jane Adams. She has been practicing yoga since 1976 and is a specialist in yoga for healthy aging. Her routines are always simple and easy to follow. You don’t need to think which leg or arm to rise, just mirror Jane’s moves. Every pose is shown from head to toe, the instructions are clear, and the background view is picturesque. The program is recorded at Glacier National Park, so you can enjoy the beauty of large trees on a trail, river, and a mountain lake with mountains in the background while doing your routine. This DVD includes 7 practices:

Lying practice (34 min) is done lying on your back. It includes stretches, leg lifts, twists, hugging knees to chest, and other similar exercises, so it is pretty relaxing.

Morning energy (18 min) includes simple standing movements such as arm stretches, twists, breathing with arm movements, and many more. This routine is quite energizing hence is a good way to start a day.

Relief from desk and computer work. If you can make a 20-minute break, this routine will help you relieve back pain during a hard day at work. It includes wrist exercises, twists, quad stretches, shoulder rolls, and even a face massage.

Improving balance (22 min) helps strengthen your hips, legs, ankles, feet, and improve your balancing ability. You will learn a tree pose, leg circles, and many more.

Core strength and flexibility (34 min) includes boat pose, cow, cobra, bridge, and child’s poses, forearm plank and more. As a bonus, Jane goes through a relaxing lower back technique.

Flowing and traditional standing poses (23 min) are traditional Hatha yoga poses (standing forward bends, downward facing dog, planks, triangle, warrior, etc). These poses are modified and shown with a chair as a prop.

Evening relaxation (29 min) is done standing, sitting on a chair, and lying on a mat. It includes modified forward bends, down dog, eagle arms, sitting twists, stretches with a strap and more.

8-minute relaxation is the last additional video that you can combine with any of the 7 routines or do after a hard day to relax and peace your mind.

To wrap it all up, if you are searching for a program that will pass the test of time, this DVD is the best pick. With such a variety of routines, you can train for months enjoying positive changes in your mood and physical shape.

The yoga stretch for beginners from a certified instructor and a wellness coach Jessica Smith is a good program for beginners and intermediate yogis who are looking for a gentle routine in addition to their more advanced practices. This tape includes two workouts: AM and PM. These are 30-minute practices filmed near a pool with trees in the background. The music is relaxing. The instructions are comprehensive and adequate. There is no awkward Sanskrit or difficult poses like handstands or pretzel twists that may confuse a beginner or even make them lose their interest.

The AM program is an energizing workout designed to wake you up in the morning and give you an energy boost for the day. All poses and exercises are done in a standing position on a mat. They help you develop strength and increase stamina. You will learn the most popular warrior pose, bird-dog, downward facing dog, cow-cat, and more.

PM routine helps you relax and leave all worries of the day behind. It is done lying on a mat and includes stretches of different muscle groups. You can use a pillow and a yoga strap to make exercising more comfortable and gentle. By the way, if you don’t have a yoga strap, you can use a beach towel or a flat resistance band instead. Both routines are finished with a relaxing meditation to regain strength and find balance.

Overall, this is a well-designed program that helps you strengthen and stretch your muscles with ease and pleasure. And if you like Jessica’s yoga teaching style and want to increase muscle loading, she has two more fitness plans: “Walk on: 15-minute fast fat blasts” and “Walk on: 21-day weight loss plan”.

If you are all new to yoga and want to get introduced by a professional, we'd like to direct your attention toward this Yoga for beginners DVD from Barbara Benagh. She is a certified instructor with more than 35 years of teaching experience and a talent for engaging a viewer from the first minutes. Her voice is calming, the instructions are quite clear, and comments seem to be always on point. The difficulty and time between poses are adequate enough for a beginner. Plus, Barbara gives alternatives for more or less capable yogis.

As for the program itself, it includes almost 4 hours of content neatly split into two sections. There is the getting started section and the extended section. The first includes 10- to 30-minute videos with simple routines. They are convenient for those busy days when you want to get just a little exercise.

Extended routines, in turn, are longer and harder. On the whole, the DVD includes 8 different workouts and Barbara’s interview with answers for most common questions. The cherry on the pie is the background view. With it, you can enjoy the gorgeous Half-Moon Bay of Antigua while doing your exercises.

If you like Barbara’s training program for beginners, she has a few more DVDs to offer: AM and PM Yoga for Beginners, Yoga for Stress Relief (with a 30-minute lecture from Dalai Lama about meditation), Power Yoga for Every Body and Yoga for Athletes that she has programmed (Jason Gordon demonstrates the routines).

If you have trained with Barbara Benagh before and like her style, this DVD set should be on your shelf. It is easily one of the best yoga DVDs for beginners because it offers adequate difficulty growth from beginner to intermediate and gives you hours and hours of high-quality content. With this set, you get:

Yoga for Stress Relief. This DVD includes an interview with Barbara, a discussion on meditation from Dalai Lama, and 21 routines that last from 15 to 45 minutes each. These sequences are split into 4 sections: 1) beginning and ending your day with energizing morning yoga and relaxing evening exercises; 2) practices to relieve neck, shoulder, and back pain; 3) easing your mind with breathing exercises, 30-minute mood uplift, deep rest, and more; 4) exercises to improve digestion and help solve other stomach issues. These routines are restorative, relaxing, and simple (use a strap and a firm pillow as props).

AM/PM Yoga for Beginners is the second excellent DVD in the set. It includes routines for morning and evening workouts. Their length varies from 15 to 45 minutes and includes the Sun Salutation Centering, energizing Get Up and Go, relaxing Breath Work, Unwinding Muscle Tension, and more.

Essential Yoga for Inflexible People is the easiest program out of the three. It is designed to improve the flexibility and strength of the least experienced yogi. The routines are split into three sections: 1) Short Routines: Learn the Basics; 2) Short Routines: Continued; 3) Extended Routines: As You Progress. The length of the practices varies from 8 to 90 minutes, so you can easily fit them into your day. Plus, you can mix and match routines when you feel like it. In other words, this DVD set is a good way to start doing yoga if you have never done it before.

Rodney Yee is a professional yoga instructor with almost 30 years of working experience and a lot of followers from newbies to advanced yogi. His routines for beginners are simple but not boring, with adequate difficulty increase. His instructions are clear enough to help you assume poses correctly and the voice is calm and soothing to help you relax and find balance while you meditate.

His DVD - The Complete Yoga for Beginners consists of 4 yoga routines. Each of them lasts 20 minutes and has different benefits.

Yoga basics is the slowest and simplest sequence of the four. It teaches yoga basics and famous poses like the plank, cobra, mountain, and other simple bends and twists.

Yoga for flexibility is designed to help you stretch your body slowly and accurately. It also includes different bends, stretches, and twists.

Yoga for energy is a good routine to wake up and start a new day.

Yoga for relaxation is a more gentle program. Here, Rodney combines simple poses with slow mindful movements, helping a new yogi calm their mind and release the stress of the day.

As a bonus, you get an extra 10-minute Yoga Express practice so that you can stay fit on your busiest days too.

Lastly, this program includes a complete pose guide from Rodney Yee with extensive instructions of all the poses you learn during the program. Plus, he tells about the most common mistakes people do in yoga.

In conclusion, with an approach like that, you'll be able to pick up the art of yoga in no time at all. So, if you are looking for a beginner yoga DVD with clear instructions and effective routines, this video by Rodney Yee should be right up your alley.