tai chi – a t i s h e h

Review of Klaus Busch and Tülin Sensan’s Fluid Yoga

Fluid Yoga is a DVD unlike any I have ever seen. Let me tell you why.

But before I do, I should tell you two things. First, I worked with a review copy — I had seen the DVD online, found it compelling, and asked to review it for the site. Second, I worked with the program when I wasn’t in shape. I hadn’t been able to do any exercise for a while, so I was not at my strongest.

In fact, I was due to have surgery early the next day, and I wanted to use my body before I couldn’t again for a while. And I chose Fluid Yoga because it seemed different from everything else in my collection.

The DVD was created by and features two Bremen-based yoga teachers, Klaus Busch and Tülin Sensan. It is a thing of beauty. I mean this seriously: it is filmed and edited like a gorgeous documentary, with calming nature shots easing the way into the practice sequences. The instructional segments are filmed in a a dark, sparse studio, but Busch and Sensan are lit well enough that it is always possible to see what they are doing. The film quality is very high definition, unlike anything I’ve seen in an exercise DVD before. And the entire program, all the way through, is accompanied by gentle, unobtrusively beautiful guitar music.

I’m going on about what might seem like superficial things because I love well-crafted work. And if you read this blog, you know I really appreciate it when people take care in making DVDs. I’ll add that while the video is PAL, it has both English and German tracks (as well as music only), and as far as I can tell is region free. I worked with the English track, which is quite good, with only a few tiny nonnative moments.

Now to the practice itself. It’s a little hard to find the right words for it. As you might guess, this is a flowing yoga practice, and it is built around many of the typical yoga poses. But if you are picturing vinyasa yoga, this is not it.

Fluid Yoga has slow, but often quite challenging sequences. Busch and Sensan move like dancers: every placement of the hands or sweep of the arms is done with intention and precision. The quality of the movement sometimes reminded me of tai chi, often of flamenco too. They will often make multiple adjustments to a single position, using breath, soft arching of the back, and spiraling motions to reach different points. The focus seems not to be so much on going deeper into positions as it is on using tiny movements to explore a position’s possibilities.

At first I thought that the programme would be quite easy and passive, or at most challenging in the way yin yoga is. This is not the case. There are sequences that require you to move slowly in a balance, which I suspect will take quite a bit of practice to do halfway as beautifully as the instructors. There were also intense stretches and variations on plow pose.

The 90-minute DVD is composed of a brief Introduction, five practice sequences, a deep guided relaxation, a four-minute Bonus that is essentially a song track with inspiring scenery and yoga poses, and a brief lexicon of yoga terms. The sequences are:

Sun Salutation (quite gentle, slow variation on a sun salutation)
Half Moon (balancing and standing moves centered on the half moon)
Moon Salutation (plow pose, shoulder stands, and boat pose variations)
Forward Bends (seated forward bends with lots of tiny variations that get a very deep stretch)
Lying Trees (variations on tree pose lying down, intense leg stretches)

Every practice sequence is done fully on one side, then on the other side. I sometimes found myself with my back to the screen when I was doing the practice for the first time, so next time I will check which way I should face when I begin. In general, it would be a good idea to watch this video before working with it, since it is so different from other programs.

My favourite sequences were the forward bends and the lying trees, as they reminded me of the kinds of exercises I’ve done in ballet classes and stretch programs. My least favourite was the moon salutation. I usually love shoulder stands, but in this case the lengthy time spent in plow pose made my nape sore for a few days. (Take it easy when you do this, is my advice.)

Overall, Fluid Yoga was a deeply enjoyable practice. The beautiful music and cinematography were soothing, and made it feel more like a meditative dance than like a workout. Whereas in regular yoga practice I often want to push deeper into stretches, with this DVD I felt motivated to emulate the instructors’ graceful, soft movements. It’s a DVD to grow into too, with balances that are surprisingly challenging because done so slowly.

I would recommend Fluid Yoga to anyone who wants to be transported while doing yoga, or who is looking for programs that focus on precise movements and subtle modifications. I would also very highly recommend it to anyone who dances. The core work and stretches are precisely the kind dancers need, and the aesthetic makes yoga feel like dance.

I mentioned at the start of this post that I did this program as my last bit of exercise pre-surgery. Doing Fluid Yoga that night really felt like a gift to myself. It allayed much anxiety, helped me feel at home in my body, and helped me sleep well. I’m looking forward to continuing the exploration.

You can find Klaus Busch and Tülin Sensan’s website here.

Movespiration weekend with Khalida

Months ago, I decided my end-of-summer treat would be a weekend of workshops at Khalida’s studio called Movespiration. I knew Khalida a bit, through her DVDs and from online conversations. I’d reviewed her Shimmies DVD and worked a bit with her All About Arms program, and over email we geeked out a bit on dance and movement. So when she said she wanted to bring her favorite movement teachers into her studio for two days, I thought it would be worth going along for the experiment.

I also liked the idea of easing into bellydance by trying it again along with other dance and movement forms. And frankly, after so much stress this year, I thought it might be great just to focus on my body, no matter what the practice was. These were my two goals for the weekend.

What I knew was that we would do some taekwondo with Master Chae Seung-Eun, ballet with Constanze Janssen, and bellydance with Khalida. In fact, the two days I spent in Würselen were even more varied. Master Chae is also an expert in Haidong Gumdo, Korean sword fighting, and one of our classes with him was devoted to this art. Constanze did ballet barre exercises and centre work, but she also led us through a modern-inspired floor barre.

Sandra van Frankfoort-Mamentu, who was in the workshop as a participant, took the lead on Sunday morning and led us through a tai-chi warmup. Even Khalida’s own classes were varied: we did do a bit of bellydance movement and technique, but Khalida also introduced us to a wealth of exercises and body techniques: lymphatic drainage, tricks to improve alignment or release certain muscles, practices for increasing turnout and flexibility and reducing pain. (She taught us so many things, in fact, that at one point I had to sit down after a session and just write them all down as fast as I could.)

My biggest surprise of the weekend was how much I enjoyed the martial arts we practiced with Master Chae. Now, I’m not a very high energy person, nor do I think of myself as particularly strong, so I was a bit nervous about what taekwondo would be like. The exercises we did were exhausting, but in the best possible way. I found, to my surprise, that I loved punching and kicking. I had the good fortune to work with a partner (Lou of Brussels) who practices taekwondo, and she pushed me hard. It was wonderful. With every kick and punch I felt I was getting some of the year’s stress out, felt like I was cleansing myself of negative emotion and frustration. And at the end, although I was sweaty and had pushed myself to the limits of my energy, I actually felt revitalized.

The same was true for haidong gumdo, which we practiced using foam-covered swords for the most part, and blunt wooden swords for cutting paper. This required more precision and speed than I could muster, but also had that element of force. It felt like something I desperately want to do again. Later, as I was telling Master Chae how therapeutic I found it, he said calmly, “It looked like you had some things to get out.”

Atisheh cutting paper with korean sword — Cutting a newspaper with a blunt sword takes a bit of practice

Ballet was a learning experience too, though in another way. I’ve been taking beginner ballet classes for a couple of years now, and figured I knew the basics. In Constanze’s class, I found so much to improve just in my posture and pliés that I was sweating from the first minutes. It was such difficult work (even keeping my stomach in is still a challenge), but so important in terms of how it felt to work with that strength. My balance and turns are still terrible, and I think part of that is that I’m still not pulling my muscles in the way I need to to rice up out of my legs. On the other hand, floor barre, while challenging, was a lovely release, with lots of stretching and flowing movement.

It will take a number of weeks to work through what I learned during the Movespiration weekend. There are a few things though that I want to reflect on:

Sometimes it’s great to go really far out of your comfort zone. I would never have thought that I’d enjoy taekwondo as much as I did. But not only was it great psychologically, it also felt good as movement. I wonder what it would be like to take that knowledge that I actually enjoy putting maximum energy into something and bring it to dance.
I think it would be a fun exercise to take a similar type of move and practice it in two or different ways, switching between movement traditions. Like: doing a tai chi walk, a ballet walk, and a bellydance walk one after the other. Or alternating taekwondo kicks with grands battements. Or playing with tai chi, ballet, and bellydance arm paths.
I love stretching programs that are intense and feel like something is really happenig, but I need to learn more about the ways smaller movements and alignment changes can affect flexibility.
So much of what we learn in bellydance has to be drastically unlearned for ballet. I knew about legs — we practice keeping legs slightly (sometimes very) bent in bellydance, while ballet is all about the straight leg. Then there’s the stomach, which needs to be flexible for bellydance, and pulled in tight for ballet. But I was surprised to see how useful it can be to keep the glutes really tight too in ballet, which of course would be harder to do in bellydance. I’m not sure if there’s a good solution to switching, other than consciously practicing both.
It might be worth incorporating some journaling into dance: thinking more clearly about what I want out of any given class or practice session, and articulating for myself what kinds of things I want out of the dance itself.

This is where I am right now. I took this week to rest and let things settle — and have a bit of fun — but tomorrow I return to ballet. I’m curious to see how what I learned affects my approach, and eager to start experimenting with some of the adjustments I learned in class. I’d also love to do more taekwondo. I’m not sure I have time for another regular commitment, but I’ll see if there are any introductory lessons close to me.

And what I will definitely try to do is attend Movespiration again. Given how much we did and learned, it was an incredible value. The variety of practices we tried out took so much concentration that it felt like a real mental vacation from daily life — and that was just what I needed.

Atisheh and Khalida — Me with Khalida, who gave me an impromptu lesson on posing!

Review of Classical Stretch – The Esmonde Technique: Complete Season 10 – Strength and Flexibility

Miranda Esmonde-White doing Classical Stretch

I only recently found out about Classical Stretch. Why? I don’t have a television set, that’s why. But a very nice woman I know only from the internet had sent me a copy of Oxford American’s Southern Music Issue internationally, and she refused payment, and so I managed to convince her to accept an Amazon gift certificate, and then she announced on Facebook that she had bought a Classical Stretch DVD with it. So of course, I was curious.

Essentrics kindly hooked me up with a review copy of Classical Stretch Season 10 – Strength and Flexibility. This was in the spring. I really had no idea what to expect, even after reading descriptions on the website and various reviews online. It seems that the Essentrics DVDs are for younger, fitter people, while Classical Stretch runs on PBS and is more geared towards stopping aging. Would I be bored?

The answer was a resounding no! In fact, I’ve fallen a bit in love with Classical Stretch.

Here are the basics, for those of you who, like me, don’t go to PBS for your workouts. Classical Stretch workouts are led by Miranda Esmonde-White, a Canadian dancer and fitness trainer. Each one is about 22 minutes long, filmed in a gorgeous place, and consists mainly of flowing movements that get your muscles warm and flexible, use and extend your range of motion, and encourage you to stretch in all sorts of directions.

The movements are inspired by ballet, tai chi, and physiotherapy. They are surprisingly intense and dynamic. What you don’t have are twenty repetitions of the same exercise. Instead, you’ll be reaching down low with strong, sweeping stretches, then to the side, then up. You’ll spiral. You’ll be doing something with your arms while your legs are in a plie. Some movements are large, but then Esmonde-White will introduce a tiny variation that gives you a different feeling or a deeper stretch.

Imagine yoga, but with a thousand more directions.

Or modern dance, with less moving around.

Or pilates, with more stretching.

In short, the movements are intensely pleasurable, and I tend to break a sweat. Which is funny, because Esmonde-White talks encouragingly about how you can maintain or improve flexibility even in old age, and the entire time I am thinking: “Who are these eighty-year-olds doing Classical Stretch? I’m thirty-four and dripping wet here!”

The other thing to know is that there is a lot of variety. Classical Stretch Season 10 – Strength and Flexibility contains four DVDs, with a total of thirty episodes. (About eleven hours of programming.) I haven’t done every last one of them, but over the last months I’ve tried to work with a range. Some are barre-oriented, either with a chair or simply balancing. Some are all on the floor, with combinations of strength training and stretching. And my favourite, because they’re the newest to me, are the standing segments with all their flowing, challenging moves. All in all, there are many, many exercises I found myself doing for the first time with these DVDs.

Also cool is that the back of the DVD case tells you the goal of each program. You can choose to work on “Back Pain Relief” or “Full Body Strengthening” or “Waist Slenderizing.” (A full list of the contents is here.) My one beef here is that it’s not always clear which episodes are on which DVD. That aside, it’s great to have a workout dedicated to whatever it is you need on a particular day. And all of the episodes I’ve tried have some kind of full body stretch, so all the particularly tight bits get loosened up.

But what I love the most about Classical Stretch Season 10 – Strength and Flexibility is that this is a workout designed to get me doing it. I can almost always fit in twenty minutes. If I’m about to go to bed, but really want to get in some movement, or have some back pain, I pick one episode, do it, and go to bed happy. If I wake up in the morning, and I want to exercise just a bit, I do an episode.

The other thing that makes it really easy to do these workouts, and that I wish more DVD producers would keep in mind, is this: you need so little space. You need no special equipment. Not even a mat. You can use a chair for a barre, and books instead of yoga blocks. I’ve found this set of DVDs to be the perfect travel companion, because I can do them anywhere, and because they help me stretch everything out after sitting in planes or trains for a long time.

While Classical Stretch is aimed at anyone, really, I think it’s particularly great for dancers. I’ve been working, haltingly, on establishing my own dance practice, and I find that I can use an episode as the day’s warmup. The workouts get me properly warm, more flexible, and ready to move into a variety of directions. Then I can either do a dance DVD or just practice on my own.

I have just one criticism of some of the programs. While I find most of the workouts highly accessible and very careful about bodily safety (knee alignment is cued, etc), I think some of the barre work is really hard to follow along in proper form. In fact, in one case even the instructor has trouble keeping the hips even while she shoots her leg up. A modification should have been offered for this.

That said, Classical Stretch Season 10 – Strength and Flexibility has become, in the past months, my go-to for moving, stretching, getting warm, getting relaxed, toning my waist, soothing my back, and working my quads. I’m still not quite sure I understand what it is, but for me, it hits the spot.

You can find out more about Classical Stretch and Essentrics at www.essentrics.com.