Yoga with Konstanze Wegman: Hatha Yoga 101 for Beginners

I have been curious about this DVD for some time. The instructor is Konstanze "Stency" Wegman, wife of Danny Wegman, owner of Wegmans supermarkets, a chain that originated in the Rochester NY area, where I live. These DVDs are sold in local stores and are rather pricey, but I was lucky to find this one at a local library used book sale.

The Main Main of the DVD reads as follows:

*Yoga at Dawn, 60 minutes, Instruction

*Yoga at Dawn, 30 minutes, Music

*Yoga at Dusk, 60 minutes, Instruction

*Yoga at Dusk, 30 minutes, Music

*PROPS

*INTERVIEW

Wegman did her teacher training with a local Iyengar instructor who is internationally known (Francois Raoult), so she is likely an excellent yoga teacher. What she is clearly NOT is a good VIDEO yoga instructor. (My own criteria for judging this is 1) being a yoga teacher myself, and 2) having tried well over 100 yoga videos.) The practices themselves are decent routines, with the Dawn incorporating a mix of standing postures, basic backbends, and hamstring/hip opening work and DUSK focused mainly on floor postures, particularly forward bending. As is typical with Iyengar-based yoga, many props are utilized, including one or more blankets, two yoga blocks, a yoga strap, and a yoga bolster. (Common household items can be substituted for some of the props.)

The problem is with how the instruction versus music only practices are presented. The instruction practices have many stops and starts as Wegman pauses to explain, suggests different modifications, offers alternatives, etc., so there is not a good flow to this routines. The only time this is different is towards the end of each practice, when there are longer holds. (One positive is that both practices do include a nice long shavasana, or final relaxation.) But the music only practice suffers from exactly the opposite issue. These are truly music only routines, with loud (I found it disturbingly so, and not conducive to relaxation) classical music playing. Wegman moves through the postures, but because the viewer is often lying on the floor or otherwise not facing the screen, there is no way to know when she moves from one pose to the next. This makes it virtually impossible to follow along with the video unless one constantly looks up or sets some kind of timer. It is simply not practical, and not enjoyable.

I still would be curious to take a live class with Stency Wegman, as I have the sense that she might be a good instructor. But I simply did not find this DVD workable, and I wouldn't recommend it.