A Teacher in Your House

For when you can't make it to class

Two reasons we like at-home DVD sessions: no show-offs in the room, and no gnarly toenails on the next mat. Besides, they're easy, convenient, cost-efficient, and give you a chance to rewind instructions if you need to. Here are some of our recently released favorites:

FOR ALL LEVELS
Ashtanga Yoga Beginners Practice with
Nicki Doane
amazon.com; $20
Our gym-rat tester didn’t know a chataranga from a chimichanga, but she found the simple Ashtanga sequence taught by Doane easy to follow. Ashtangis (students of Ashtanga—a style of power yoga) are all brute strength and breathy prowess. Doane’s inspirational demonstration of Ashtanga series 1–4 puts Hawaii’s beautiful background to shame. A good choice if you want a 100-minute, level-1 sequence that builds you a better body and teaches you almost everything you need to know about yoga. 

FOR MORE ADVANCED
The Ancient Ayurveda Yoga Series with Sarah Tomlinson
ayurvedayogainstitute.com; $30
Thanks to this DVD, our advanced tester can now do Peacock—a crazy-hard arm balance that looks impossible. Choose between 75 minutes of yoga or three shorter sessions. Tomlinson, a soft-spoken Brit, will put
you into savasana so many times you’ll truly learn what it takes to master real physical challenges. Twenty-one poses
are specifically choreographed in three groups of seven, taking you through a relaxing, then harmonizing, and finally energizing sequence.

FOR MOMS-TO-BE
ZenMama with Rainbeau Mars
amazon.com; $11
What’s better—or at least more fun—than Lamaze? Rainbeau Mars’s yoga. She’s as hip and buff as she is Zen, and her 50-minute video featuring women in each of the three trimesters will take you through all 9 months. Once our reviewer heard Mars explaining where to put her “shameless, proud booty” in Down Dog, she knew this was one earthy yoga mom. The bonus track, called “Labor and Delivery Practice,” offers gems like kegels done in a way that Rainbeau says shortens the birth canal by 20%.

FOR ATHLETES
Kimberly Fowler’s Yoga for Athletes
go2yas.com; $25
With the tagline “no chanting, no granola, no Sanskrit,” you know where former triathlete Fowler stands on yoga. She instructs a class of four male and female students with varying body types and abilities, so you feel like you and your flaws fit right in. The funky videography makes for a cool overall vibe. Fowler’s gentle voice and tough-love instructions make the class demanding enough for anyone who needs a little power yoga in disguise. Fowler turns her class into 55 minutes of a noncompetitive sport that sucks you in. 

FOR THE DANCER
Yoga Trance Dance with Shiva Rea
shivarea.com; $20
The rockstar-esque Shiva Rea has a new DVD named after her hugely successful Trance Dance franchise—one of the many popular workshop themes she’s developed over the last 10 years. Her brand of hypnotic free-form movement is all about using breathing, asanas, dancing, and “creative joy” to boost your mojo (or what is technically called “rasa” in yoga).