I had a brief moment of solitude last week so I took advantage of it and pulled up a yoga video on YouTube. I happened upon a 35-minute Jillian Michaels Yoga Meltdown and decided to try it because she's like, a fitness Goddess or something. As soon as it started I realized it would probably be a great workout, but not necessarily a great practice.
If you're not familiar with Yoga, I don't recommend doing Jillian's Yoga workouts. She does a lot of great variations of postures, but not once did she offer a restorative pose for any of her inversion/back bend postures (like Locust and Camel Pose). I actually had to stop the video so I could do a counter-pose to relieve tension in my back. In the video, she said Yoga is great exercise, but it's not going to help you lose weight unless you bring movement into all the postures.
I think that further perpetuates the misconception that Yoga is not a good workout unless it's modified. She rarely used the names of postures until you were already supposed to be in the pose so I always felt a little behind the whole time (and I've been doing Yoga for 8 years!). Jillian obviously knows a lot about exercise and I think she's amazing at what she does, but she's also a little scary. And I don't think Yoga is her thing.
You're not going to learn anything about form or alignment from her Yoga videos, but you are going to get a good workout. I did enjoy a lot of the sequences and I did sweat a lot in those 35 minutes. But maybe the next time you want to do Yoga you should come to my house and I'll do it with you!
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