Personally, I don't have enough money for a class. If you do, take advantage of it and find a school in your area that is both comfortable, friendly, and pushes your physically. "You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state. ~Sharon Gannon" So, because I cannot afford a class, I use a variety of free online and iphone (ipod Touch) apps.
If you have some basic knowledge of yoga, this can work for you. If you are a complete beginner, try to find a very cheap class at a local university's recreation center or at a community center. The teachers are often friendly and still qualified. I got my start with a, free for students, course at The University of South Alabama. It was 7am yoga and it was outside (summer of course). By 8, it was 80 degrees and we were sweating more from the yoga than from the heat. It was a great introduction.
I will post more on iphone/pod/pad apps later. Right now, I want to focus on 2 online resources that I have found particularly helpful. Free yoga instruction videos from Esther Ekhart and Tara Stiles.
Esther Ekhart runs Yogatic.com and is my top choice. It is a free website with free videos made available via youtube. However, if you don't want to spend a long time searching youtube for everything, just visit the site. Esther is a fully qualified yoga instructer with over 15 years experience. She has a soothing voice (to me) and provides nice-flowing routines. With Esther Ekhart, it's clear that it's about living yoga, not just having it sectioned off to 15 minutes-1hour of your life. I highly recommend checking out her site. If you don't want to hop on the web every time you want to do yoga, she does have a DVD available (or if you're sneaky, there are a multitude of website out there that allow you to save youtube videos to your computer, but I didn't telly you).
Right now, she's featuring Summer Yoga Workout at Yogatic.
I wouldn't call it my back-up option, because the routines are really great (though a little fast for my taste), but Tara Stiles is my next choice for free online yoga instruction. Her videos can be found on a Blip.tv site. Here is the full url: http://a.blip.tv/yoga-other-useful-stuff-with-tara-stiles I very much enjoy her videos, and if you prefer to speed things up, she is the way to go.
She also has a DVD available. More importantly, if you're an iphone/pod/pad junkie like me, she has a free video podcast available. Check it out here To date, it has 68 free videos available for your device. .
