Journey Into Power Level 1

I'm not big into power or vinyasa yoga as it moves too fast for me. I really like this DVD for it's slower pace. The DVD is well chaptered and has a few extras on it such as a pose tutorial and a music on/off option. The music is not very noticeable (no chanting unlike Baron's Live Series).

Level 1 is a 30 minute introduction to Power Yoga. The poses include down dog, up dog, sun salutations, Warrior 1 & 2, tree pose, camel pose, and bridge pose. No triangle pose in this video. There is a pretty challenging ab segment that seems more like Pilates or traditional ab work than yoga (not that I’m a yoga expert). One exercise involves lying on your back with your legs in the air, then lowering them 30% at a time until they’re 2” off of the floor, and holding them–really tough. There’s another exercise that resembles the Pilates crisscross, and another that’s very similar to Pilates rolling like a ball. The ab segment is followed by tabletop pose, and the final stretches.

Level 2 is 45 minutes long. It includes all of the poses from Level 1, plus crow pose, side plank, crescent lunge, praying twist, and thunderbolt pose. There’s a challenging balance segment including eagle pose, the pose where you stand on one leg, grab the toe of the other foot and hold it out in front of you, then out to the side (don’t know the name of this one), from this you go into the airplane arm/one legged balancing pose. The balance segment ends with tree pose. Then you move onto twisting triangle, camel, and bridge. There’s another ab segment, similar to Level 1., followed by boat pose and a double pigeon stretch. This one is about as challenging as Bryan Kest’s Energize, although I find the balancing poses tougher.

Throughout both videos, Baron emphasizes breathing & relaxing, shows modifications for most, if not all, of the poses, and gives a lot of form points. I like to think of myself as intermediate at yoga, but I learned some new things from these tapes.

There is only a bit of music in these videos. For the most part there’s no music, but occasionally some soft music starts playing for a little while. I think I would have preferred music throughout.

Baron Baptiste is known for giving his classes in a heated room, and the classes in these tapes are no exception. The class participants are very sweaty, right from the beginning. Other than the copious amounts of perspiration, they’re a regular looking bunch of people, not intimidatingly flexible or proficient like the classes in Bryan Kest's Power Yoga series.