Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee

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.

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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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