Kundalini Yoga for Beginners and Beyond
Well, this has to win my Worst Yoga Video Ever Eward, hands down! Kundalini Yoga for Beginners and Beyond by Ravi Singh and Ana Brett is more of a Target commercial and MTV video than a yoga class.
You know, my first clue was the midriff-baring woman on the front cover. I realize that short shorts and sports bras is the standard if you are doing Bikram, but I have never in my life been to a Kundalini Yoga class where anyone, teachers or students, was wearing skimpy outfits. If anything, most of the Kundalini teachers I have studied with are covered head to toe in flowing robes and turbans. While it is not a prerequisite to be a Sikh in order to teach Kundalini Yoga, I have to say most of my favorite Kundalini teachers are.
But in spite of my misgivings over the marketing, I gave the DVD a try. Euw. The cover was just a glimpse of what was to come. The actual beginning of the DVD features Ana Brett in her underwear, consisting of a silver lame camisole and boy shorts, dancing with her hair askew. She doesn’t have a bra on and her camisole doesn’t have a shelf bra built in, so that means her rock hard nipples are poking through.
She seems to be quite full of herself, with her smug expression, and anxious to display her body. Yet she doesn’t even have that great of a body - she’s a skinny fat person as they’d say. No muscle tone, no breasts even. She looks no more than 22 going on 15.
My young male readers who cry in outrage over my Namaste Yoga review will love this Kundalini Yoga version of soft porn. And I’m sure they’ll come here and go off on me for being “jealous” - but I can assure you, I had an almost anorexic-looking skinny body with no muscle tone back in my 20s and I’m happier with my body now, thank you very much.
So for me, the tone set right in the beginning of the DVD is exploitative and anti-spirit. I’m not interested in seeing Ana Brett dance around in her underwear. This is not why I do Kundalini Yoga. And heck, I’m not even interested in seeing Rodney Yee in his underwear. I really don’t want to see anyone, male or female, doing yoga in their underwear. (Bikram can get away with it, because the room is 110 degrees. But in normal weather, put some freakin’ pants on.)
After the silver lame travesty, Ana at least changes into different underwear for the workout, so at least her nipples aren’t poking out so much. It’s a colorful pastel outfit that doesn’t leave much to the imagination, and her butt cheeks are hanging out. (Though, for some bizarre reason, she switches to a sports bra just for camel pose…so we can see her belly better? Bizarre.)
And yes, the entire DVD is shot as if it is a Target commercial. Ana, in her pastel undies, sits on a pink rug that forms the center of a yellow daisy imprinted on a white floor. At the end, the daisy now has green leaves around it. Talk about pretentious!
The music fits the music video/commercial style of presentation. It is a somewhat jarring world beat that makes you think you should be at some sort of dance club. Every single time I started doing a spinal flex, and the music started, I felt like I should get up and move somewhere else.
Ana’s exhibitionism aside, how is the actual yoga? Well, Ana herself isn’t actually doing the teaching. Ravi Singh, who appears in the video only as a disembodied voice, does. And his instruction is for the most part clear and strong. (Ana only chimes in here and there for a few supplementary instructions.) I found myself wishing I could just do the workout with him, and not have her flaunting her self-satisfied self in my face. Yet, with the disconnect between his voice and her body made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. There was something in his voice that kind of creeped me out…maybe because it appears as if this man only wants to instruct yoga if he’s got a mostly naked young girl to do the poses for him.
The exercises themselves alternated between being way too easy and way too difficult for beginners. The first part of the DVD consisted primarily of spinal flexes. Hey, I like doing spinal flexes but not 10 different variations on them. We were then instructed to stop and meditate after each easy exercise.
Then came the Five Tibetans, which I have never actually done in any Kundalini Yoga class. These are way too hard for a beginner. Full camel pose with breath of fire is too much for a beginner. But at least in that section you can get a real workout. But the consistency of the DVD overall was just not that great. I found myself skipping forward at the end, because finally, I just got bored.
At the end, we’re told “Good job!” as Ana once again dances in her silver lame underwear. Her hair has been taken out of its pigtails and she seems to be patting herself more on the back than you.
Final verdict: If you are a young male who likes skinny girls, then you’ll enjoy this. I personally found this video to be an insult to Kundalini Yoga. It’s certainly not the type of Kundalini Yoga I’ve been doing at the top Kundalini Yoga studios in the world: Golden Bridge and Yoga West.
So I’m putting this video back up on Bookins, which is where it came from. (You can get my copy of the DVD for free there, for just $4.49 shipping.) Thank heavens I didn’t buy it new, as I would not want to put money in these people’s pockets.
I came so close to buying this DVD and I am so glad you told me to get Gurmukh’s Kundalini instead. Talk about contrasts - everyone is fully clothed in that video - in fact, long yoga pants are the norm and flowy scarves. I have not taken an actual Kundalini class but done just about all of Gurmukh’s DVD - it is superb for beginners.
I checked out some of the cuts from this DVD on You Tube and found it kind of creepy too. The music is like soft core porn and with the old guy talking while the girl is writhing about - just obscene.
Kundalini is deeply spiritual and they made it out to be some kind of sexy bizarro commercial. Yuck.
[...] searching through some yoga DVDs on Amazon recently, and I was shocked to see that the DVD I dubbed “The Worst Yoga Video Ever” had a rating of almost five stars! How could that possibly [...]
Umm, perhaps you are not aware of this but it seems that your intense focus, on your perception of someones yogic/nonyogic appearance is wrought with contempt and judgment. Which runs a bit counter to what we all try to achieve in our daily practice of doing yoga both on/off the mat. It seems you would like to see
proper respect paid to the tradition of kundalini by having the appearance of this female on this video
convey it as such. I see that she brings the proper respect in convey a loving caring reverent attitude about teaching the method, and the exercises of the kriya correctly. That the video gives a
modern fitness fashion appearance has nothing to do with the quality of the practice - that I see. And it has its benefits ….such as it attempts to communicate and teach a very powerful yoga, technology, tool and
skill set to a larger audience in hopes of helping people find authentic balance, inner peace and increased
joy. Also…especially when one can’t talk to an instructor after class it is really helpful to be able to visibly see the instructors stomach when demonstrating breathing patterns?
Truly, if this yoga DVD is no good it may still sell millions, but it will reach the yoga student’s home and never
leave the student’s shelf after being viewed/tried once. It may have sold millions but if it never gets used
by the yoga student then is it really a success? And the information (which to you is how she is dressed) is not propagated any further. And again, I am still not sure how her appearance
make the video good or bad. Also how do you know she is self-satisfied and flaunting? Maybe she is
truly comfortable like that and finds long pants and tunics restricting to her movement and effectively teaching the class through a video. We have all stepped on our pant cuffs and trapped ourselves and had to readdust in the middle of a pose b/c our tunic got bunched and caught. …. sometimes it hinders flow and the building concentration and energy of the exercise when you break out of it to readjust
I appreciate your view and what you offer here because it reminds me that I need to continue to focus and
pay attention to the things I do like and that do bring joy and that when I don’t pay attention to things I don’t like and don’t enjoy they don’t enter my field. Think kind thoughts, you will say kind things and you will then be kind and attract kind and positive things.
SatNam!
“I see that she brings the proper respect in convey a loving caring reverent attitude about teaching the method, and the exercises of the kriya correctly.”
I did not think she gave it the proper respect by dancing around in her underwear as she did at the beginning and end of the video. That part was not kundalini yoga…it was a bit bizarre, actually.
“Also how do you know she is self-satisfied and flaunting?”
Her very choice of attire (especially in the kundalini yoga context) was “flaunting,” but it was all in the energy she gave off in the video.
“Maybe she is
truly comfortable like that and finds long pants and tunics restricting to her movement and effectively teaching the class through a video.”
Traditional Sikh attire has never stopped any of the world-famous kundalini yoga teachers I’ve taken classes with. There is absolutely no need to be wearing only underwear in kundalini yoga class. It’s not like Bikram.
“I appreciate your view and what you offer here because it reminds me that I need to continue to focus and
pay attention to the things I do like and that do bring joy and that when I don’t pay attention to things I don’t like and don’t enjoy they don’t enter my field.”
I think it’s important to speak out about things that you don’t like, if you feel they are taking the culture in a direction you think is not healthy.
I always find it interesting, by the way, how often new age people get on my case for being “negative” and not “accepting” of everything, and at the same time they are being negative about my opinion.
I feel my review is a service. Those people who enjoy this sort of thing will buy it, and those who are turned off I(like I am) will know not to get it. No harm done, as I’ve saved money for some folks who might have otherwise spent it on something that would not have helped them. They can then use that money for something better for them.