a t i s h e h

Holiday 2011 Bellydance Steals and Deals

What with the Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Commercial Craziness lately, I thought I would round up a few of the online sales that would be interesting to bellydancers. I’m including costuming! Many of them seem to be going beyond this weekend, so this post should be useful for a few months!

Updated: Ocean State Media has some good deals on their new website — varying percentages off of videos. (Link goes directly to their dance videos.) Until December 31st, use coupon code 104CH for 10% off!

New: Leyla Lanty is offering a holiday combo special: her DVD “Habibi, You Are My… WHAT?! Leyla Lanty’s Essential Arabic for Dancers Vol 1” plus her Egyptian dance music CD “Golden Days Enchanting Nights,” for $23 including shipping to US or Canada. (Usually $28). Email her at leyla – at – leylalanty.com for details.

Hollywood Music Center has had a sale for a while: Middle Eastern CDs for $5 and DVDs for $10 each. Seems particularly good if you’re interested in folkloric stuff.

BellyDanceShoppe has a Cyber Monday sale just today: 15% off with the code Cyber.

Dahlal Internationale has a 25% off sale, but for the life of me I can’t make it work!

SharifWear has a second item at 50% off sale, with free shipping for orders over $100 for Cyber Monday.

Dancers Warehouse offers 10% off with the code HOLIDAY10, and they’ll ship for free on orders over $75 with the code FREESHIP.

World Dance New York has had special pricing on their website for a while: 15% discount for orders of more than one DVD, and free shipping to US addresses.

I’ll be updating this list as I learn more — if you know of any sales, please include them in comments. I have ordered from (and been happy with) Hollywood Music Center, World Dance New York, and Ocean State Media. I can’t vouch for any of the other merchants.

Review of Annette Fletcher’s Prenatal Stretch & Strengthening

If anyone had told me that pregnancy would make me more likely to exercise — and not just to obsessively buy workout DVDs but to use them too — I would have called them crazy. After all, how could the discomfort of a growing belly make me more energetic? It turns out that at least when it comes to light, yoga/pilates/stretching type workouts, the small aches of pregnancy actually make working out a must!

Stretch with movement

There seem to be a ton of prenatal videos out there (I have about 13, and will try to review them all!), and one of the newest is Annette Fletcher’s Prenatal Stretch and Strengthening. I received a review copy from World Dance New York, and I wager I’m one of the few people to have used this program already! When I first received it, I did the warm-up, lying down moves, and final stretches. It was a weeknight and I was too tired to go for the standing moves too! But today I had a chance to work with the whole program.

After all the introductions (easily skippable), the main program consists of:

Warm Up
Full Body Movements
Standing Exercises
Deep Stretches

No times are given for these segments either on the box or on the menu, which I would have liked so I could time my workout. However, the entire workout is about an hour long.

Annette Fletcher does some classic floor pilates, but well supported

The moves are basically pilates with a bit of yoga thrown in. The only props are two yoga blankets that Annette folds in various positions to support the poses. Nothing is particularly taxing — only in a few of the lying leg exercises are you likely to feel any kind of burn, and warrior poses are held long enough to strengthen but not to the point of exhaustion. The program is great for stretching your entire body while also working on some strength, but moderately enough that you don’t really notice. (I could tell that my endurance had improved by the second use of the video however!)

What I really liked:

– Annette is clear and not annoyingly peppy.
– A number of the positions combine stretching with gentle movement, which really helped me to relax.
– Time is spent on the neck and shoulders — you wouldn’t think these get particularly tense during pregnancy, but they do.
– Some unusual positions or combinations of positions.
– Generally good cueing. For example, there is one adjustment she has you do during a forward lunge that is simply perfect for getting the right stretch.
– An exercise for working on Kegel muscles that is about as clear as such exercises get, considering that it can’t really be viewed on a DVD!

What I didn’t like:

– I know it’s more pilates than yoga, but I missed having a relaxation segment at the end. Then again, it was easy to just turn the computer off and do my own.
– There are a few moments where Annette gives safety cues for knees (“if your knees are uncomfortable, do this”) while the exercise is underway. These guidelines should be introduced right at the start.

Overall, I think the video offers a complete, accessible workout program that tones and stretches without causing discomfort at any point. It’s not broken down by trimester, but Annette offers gradations of difficulty for many of the exercises. I’ve already done it twice in one week, and can see myself returning to it throughout pregnancy and afterward.

Review of Yoga Journal’s Yoga for your Pregnancy

Yoga Journal’s Yoga for your Pregnancy is a great little video for a pregnant woman who is starting to feel the aches and discomforts of pregnancy and really just wants to get a delicious stretch. I bought it used a few weeks ago, and Sunday afternoon seemed like a nice time to do something not too strenuous for my body. However, after I finished the program, relaxed and pleased, I went on Amazon and found that many had rated the video poorly. I was shocked! It turns out, however, that many of them are regular yoga practitioners, and they, not surprisingly, found the program too easy. I didn’t. Here’s my take:

The video is composed of several segments: a 30-minute energizing routine, a 15-minute relaxation routine, and smaller videos on breathing, meditation, birthing-room yoga, along with a short postnatal yoga practice. One option allows you to do the energizing and relaxation routines along with the breathing and meditation all in a row, which adds up to an hour of practice. There is one glitch here, in that both the 30-min and 15-min routines set you up for a shavasana at the end, and playing the program in a row doesn’t skip this. Since I did the 1-hour program today, I wound up doing two short shavasanas and then continuing on with the breathing and meditation sections — a little ungainly.

As to the main practices: this is not flow yoga. The instructor sets up each position, instructs you quickly on the variations, and you then spend a brief amount of time doing the asana. There are three women on the screen, each doing a different version or level of difficulty. Now, I really liked the way they organized this. In most videos, the star instructor does the most difficult poses, setting them up as a kind of standard, while the other practitioners do variations that you can barely see in the background. In this case, the main instructor, Kristen Eykel, usually demonstrates a pose of intermediate difficulty, while the women in the back show a harder and an easier variation. Eykel also describes the modifications — up or down in difficulty — so that you do not have to look at the screen. However, the practitioners also switch it up sometimes — the one who was doing the more difficult standing exercise might do the easier bending asana. They are at various stages of pregnancy, but the modifications they do seem to be more based on their bodies and abilities, rather than on trimester.

This is such a small detail, but I really liked it — it simply seemed more real. After all, when I usually practice yoga, I’m not at the same level for all asanas. While I’m sure all the women in this video are advanced in their own practices, the way the video is set up makes exercise more approachable.

The asanas themselves are generally not difficult — really not difficult. You will get a good stretch, and you will build strength a bit, but you will probably not break a sweat or feel exhausted if you have done any yoga before. I did not see much of a difference in intensity between the “energizing” workout and the “relaxing” workout.

The breathing segment is particularly nice. I found it one of the more approachable breathing practices I’ve seen on a video, but it was still long enough for me to feel relaxed and refreshed. The meditation segment was not the most convincing meditation I have done, but I tend to think it’s hard to meditate with a video playing in the room anyway.

All in all, my body felt noticeably different — no more pain, no more stiffness — after doing the program, and I’ve been in a calm, happy zone in the hours since. I’m looking forward to checking out the birthing-room yoga segment and the postnatal yoga practice — both nice extras on the DVD.

Review of Shiva Rea’s Prenatal Yoga

I recently went to a prenatal yoga class at a local studio, and while the place was nice and the instructor was friendly, I was a little surprised when she explained that their philosophy is to do the same vinyasa flow as in their regular classes. The only modifications were to move the leg around the belly when going from downward dog to a standing position, and to do shavasana on the side. Frankly… it was a bit tiring, and moving my leg so awkwardly led to knee pain in the following weeks. Maybe I would have really enjoyed it had I been a hardcore yogini with a regular practice, but I was really just a pregnant woman with a body that changes every day, and I’d sort of been hoping for a practice tailored to my condition.

Note the three levels of modification!

Enter Shiva Rea’s Prenatal Yoga. I hadn’t really worked with any of other videos, since they tended to seem a little difficult. The prenatal workout is really accessible, however, with just a slight bit of challenge. Moreover, it really seems to be designed for pregnant women — there are gentle warm-up movements and exercises specifically for stretching and strengthening the pelvic area. Many of the standing moves are done with a chair, which makes the stretching more relaxing and less strenuous. It really is a gentle, relaxing hour-long yoga practice that you simply want to repeat.

What most impressed me, however, was this: Shiva Rea has two other women, in their second and third trimester respectively, doing modified versions of the positions next to her, but you don’t even have to look at the screen to know what modifications you need to do. With every move, she also explains out loud how to modify it in case of discomfort or if your pregnancy is advanced. She even tells you to move your block to the other side of the mat when necessary. I’ve always found it a bit perverse that yoga videos will show modifications, but then force people to squint at a little body in the background of the screen. A woman in her third trimester can actually use this video without having to look at the screen — now that’s smart.

Review of Naia’s Bellydance Prenatal Fitness

I recently worked with Naia’s Bellydance Prenatal Fitness for the first time, and can report the following: this is a useful little workout if you are pregnant, tired, but want to move a little anyway. It is not strenuous in the slightest, which could be good or bad depending on your point of view.

Naia grooves to pregnancy

If you are a pregnant lady who has done years of bellydance and wants to keep running marathons in the third trimester, you will probably not get much out this program. Just avoid it and avoid the disappointment. However, if you are a pregnant lady who hasn’t been sleeping well, or who has a bit of back or knee pain, or who just does not want to commit to an hour-long workout that day, this is very good. I’m only in the second trimester and generally feel pretty energetic, but I expect this will only come in more handy as I get further along. I also think it could be useful outside of pregnancy on days I’m lazy, want a simple 30 minutes of dancing around, or when I’m suffering from mild back pain and don’t want to take chances with a more aggressive workout.

Now to the program: it is divided into five sections, a warmup, lower and upper body, travel steps, and a bit of dance. The bellydance moves are quite basic, though I did find myself a bit confused in the travel steps section. (This is not my strong suit, so I would have liked a little slower instruction here — but it’s also something to grow into.) There’s quite a bit of emphasis on stretching, which felt very good. And there was precious little of the “think about the miracle of life growing inside of you” kind of talk which I have found in other prenatal videos, and which, frankly, drives me up the wall. (I’m not dancing for my fetus, I’m dancing for myself. My fetus can learn to dance once it comes into the world and has mastered the whole walking thing.)

I corresponded a bit with Neon, who conceived and designed the video (and, full disclosure, sent me a review copy from WDNY). She did quite a bit of research on pregnancy and labour to create this program. I’m not a medical expert, but I can confirm that there is nothing in this video that feels extreme or like it would put undue pressure on any part of the body. And given that everything I’ve read about prenatal exercise advises women to perform moves that bellydance incorporates anyway, I’d rather just do something that’s like dance than a dozen boring pelvic tilts.

Review of Gypsy Clark’s Cardio Go-Go Dance

As I said in the last post, I’m not really one for jumping around. This means that doing cardio is really a challenge, one I (occasionally) try to meet by doing some kind of dance-based workout.

A few days ago I tried Crunch’s Cardio Go-Go Dance for the first time. I have one negative thing to say about this video, and a number of positive remarks, so I’ll begin with the negative: the Gypsy Clark’s high-pitched, grainy voice kind of drives me nuts. Now, after forty minutes of hearing it and having endorphins coursing through my body, I no longer had a nails-on-chalkboard reaction to it, but oh were the first ten minutes ever hard.

Now for the positive: first of all, this is the first Crunch dance-based DVD I’ve done that actually felt like dancing. I don’t know what it is about cardio-style dancing, but that cha-cha and that hip-hop never seem anywhere close to the real thing. There’s something so weirdly controlled, so robotic, about cardio instructors’ dance movements. It’s like someone took my croissant and made it whole-grain. I’m sure it’s better for me, but it tastes funny.

That said, I’ve grown to like them, even Marie Forleo in all her strangeness. I’d rather do a fake cha cha than twenty jumping jacks. But Cardio Go-Go Dance actually feels like dancing. It’s only one kind of dance for the full DVD (no medley of “Latin heat” or whatever), and a lot of the moves felt like what I might do naturally in a club.

What I expected even less was this: so many of the movements were bellydance movements! Chest lifts and shimmies, hip bumps and lifts, omis, and so on. The mood and the music are completely different, but I think the video would be a great way for bellydancers to do some cardio that would warm up exactly the muscles they use, but with a wholly different vibe.

Finally, I really liked the fact that the backup dancers/exercisers varied in the way they performed, or danced, the movements. In fact, some of them did the movements in a more dancey, if not as intense, way than Gypsy Clark. Watching them I got a sense of how the video could be done more as a dance warmup than as a typical cardio workout.

A method to the barness – The Bar Method: Change Your Body

During one of my little forays to Half Price Books, I noticed two of the Bar Method DVDs. They were priced a little higher than their other workout DVDs, so I let them pass, but once I got home and saw how well-reviewed, pricey (and nearly unavailable on Amazon) they are, I went right back and snapped them up.

I’m a sucker for these ballet-inspired, little-tiny-movement workouts. I think it’s because I’m inherently lazy, so I don’t like to jump around a lot, but also because I like workouts that make me concentrate on what my body is doing. I love how thoughtful yoga is for the same reason. So I began by trying what seemed to be the easier program, The Bar Method: Change Your Body!.

What’s interesting about this system is that it uses light weights, which means there’s a bit more focus on arm work than in my beloved Callanetics. Almost every movement is followed by an appropriate stretch. The glutes and legs are worked in a variety of ways. And there are truly challenging abdominal exercises. Now, these use very few crunches, but the focus is on pelvic tilts. My guess — and I hope I’m not getting the anatomy wrong — is that they’re working the Psoas muscle, which is generally quite hard to reach. This isn’t discussed on the video per se, but the effect of working the Psoas muscle is, I’ve heard, to pull in the abdominals — which you can’t get just by doing crunches. I haven’t seen this kind of focus on the Psoas in any other workout video so far.

By the time the workout was done, I didn’t really feel I had done anything. Sure, the individual exercises had been challenging, but none were exhausting. Still, I thought I’d wait a day or two to see how I felt the next day, if the exercises had really worked my muscles.

The next day: oh lord. And the day after that — I could feel leg, butt, hip, and arm muscles still pleasantly hurting. Now that I know its effects, I can’t wait to do it again!

Yoga Journal’s 21 day challenge

Airport stopover, and my usual treat: heading to the Hudson’s News and buying a variety of magazines, my guilty pleasures for the flight. They usually tell more about me than I’d like to have known: I think a combination of food magazines like Food and Wine and exercise mags like Yoga Journal really says everything about causes and effects.

The current issue of Yoga Journal (to which I used to subscribe, until it got a bit boring) did inspire me, however. They’re beginning a 21-day yoga challenge. The idea? Do yoga, any kind of yoga, for 21 days straight, and make a habit of it. To support this, they’re putting up free yoga videos on their website. There are supposed to be twenty-one, for each of the twenty-one days, but when I click through the three weeks, I see the same week’s workouts repeated.

I began last night, by doing the 20-minute evening sequence. It was a super-easy practice of gentle back stretches. Which was good, since I had a bit of back pain and was almost asleep as I was doing it. Kate Holcombe encourages you to do most of the practice with your eyes closed, which made it even more soothing.

Everyone thinking of doing the 21-day challenge should begin with the evening sequence, not with the more rigorous 40-minute practice. Why? Because the evening sequence proves it is possible to get a bit of yoga in even when exhausted and ready for bed.

Quickie Review of Ralf Bauer’s Yoga 2

For most people, going to the Alps means one of two things, skiing or snowboarding, combined with liberal amounts of melted cheese. Since any of those items are likely to put me in the hospital, I decided I would do yoga instead. This was also a chance to check out some of the local yoga videos in Germany, although I had to be careful, of course, to buy only those specifically marked as Region Code 0.

One of my choices was Yoga 2 mit Ralf Bauer, and to be honest, part of my motivation was that the practice is filmed in the mountains (albeit in summer). After all, it doesn’t really make sense to be doing yoga on a cold mountaintop and looking at people stretching on a Caribbean beach, does it?

The other thing that drew me to the video is that it actually has a variety of shorter programs (morning and evening yoga, meditation, guided relaxation) along with a 48-minute practice. I’ve really only done the main practice so far, so I haven’t even begun to use all the options available.

The main practice itself was quite a bit easier than I expected — it’s really aimed at people who might not have done any yoga at all, and therefore doesn’t push too far. Usually, a simple combo is guided, and then a very slightly more difficult addition is added to that combo on the third and fourth repetitions. What I enjoyed, however, was the fact that every single move was combined with a cued breath. It reminded me of my Gary Kraftsow Viniyoga DVDs. Part of what I find so relaxing about them is not having to think about anything but following the cues.

I can imagine this workout being good for those days when I want to do something medium-length, but am not feeling too pliable. During my mountaintop practice, I had plenty of time, so I wound up using it more as a warmup for my own, added asanas, which lasted another hour or so. The whole practice wound up being some kind of magical calming drug — simply wonderful.

Back to yoga with Rodney Yee’s Strength Building Yoga

I used to do yoga pretty regularly — once or twice a week, in fabulous, long, intense sessions that left me nearly comatose. But since I’ve been too lazy to find an instructor or studio in my new town, I’ve relied on videos.

Today, I tried Rodney Yee’s Strength Building Yoga for the first time. It’s really two workouts, the first around 45 minutes, and the second another 20 or 25. That’s short enough for it to make sense just to string them together and have a decent practice. Yee assumes that you know the postures, and there is almost no instruction on how to perform the asanas. On the other hand, the breaths and movements are cued well enough that I was able to do most of the practice without looking at the screen. (What did suck: the sections aren’t really chaptered, so if you need to review an explanation for a complicated set-up, you really have to “rewind” manually.)

There were moments in both sections of the workout when I not only couldn’t keep up, but couldn’t even begin to do the basic move. But that’s the fun of yoga, no? Its effects make themselves known in increments, and almost always by surprise. And aside from those few, quite difficult, asanas, the practice is slow-paced and not particularly exhausting.