The first thing I realized when playing with Energy Balance Yoga by Rodney Yee is how thankful I am that we have DVD technology. It would have been a royal pain with a VHS tape to keep rewinding and fast forwarding to find the various sections! With the DVD we can hop to exactly what we want. I count my blessings that we live in a DVD world
The DVD has five different parts - Awakening, Centering, Creativity, Reflection, and Surrender, plus an intro and an interview.
Annoyance #1 - when you start the DVD you get a commercial for Gaiam that you have to watch or skip. I do NOT want commercials on products I've paid for. Especially if I have to skip past this every single time.
I played the intro. The intro is nice, with Rodney talking about how to use the DVD and how yoga is good for you. A good intro to watch once and then leave alone.
So on to the first actual session. This is the "awakening" session and is matched to morning. Rodney does this short 10 minute session on a beach, right on the sand, with a beautiful sunrise behind him and the waves lapping at his side. It's quite relaxing. The routine is very gentle and a get-out-of-bed style. You start lying down, you do gentle twists, then some downward facing dog, and you're done. It's just meant to get you going.
There's minimal instruction here. Leg to chest. Other leg to chest. No modifications or details. They do a leg to the sky pose and you have to know yourself to use a strap if you need one. So they do expect you to already know yoga before you do this.
When the routine is done then POOF it immediately runs right into the next routine with barely a pause. So you're all relaxed and quiet and suddenly he's on a bright sunny beach and is telling you to do things. I don't like that. I'd want it to go back to the main menu so I can choose - at my own pace - what I want to do next.
Still I did the Awakening one twice in a row (so twenty minutes) and my spine and body does feel better for having done that. It was very soothing. So I suppose if you only have 10 minutes to spare in your morning and want a wake-up gentle routine, this would be OK to do.