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Product Description ------------------- The most popular of the sold-out workshops taught worldwide by L.A.-based yoga instructor Shiva Rea is presented in a stunning production filmed at White Sands National Park. In addition to her visibility as a teacher, Shiva has a ready market from her hot-selling Yoga Shakti and Prenatal Yoga DVDs, from her signature Marika clothing line, and from her Sounds True music and spoken-word CDs. Yoga Trance Dance is high-energy movement meditation appropriate for all ages and experience levels. It features the popular Yoga Matrix format as well as pre-set practices. in HD by Hollywood's Sion Michel (Memoirs of a Geisha) and fashion photographer James Wvinner, the program is a feast for the eyes as well as the body. .com ---- Released some two years after 2004's Yoga Shakti, one of the finest yoga programs on the market, Shiva Rea's Yoga Trance Dance is substantially different in content but every bit the former's equal in terms of style and presentation. Combining what she calls "two of the oldest ways (to get) back home," Rea has mixed dance and yoga to create "a contemporary exploration of conscious movement meditation," with an eye toward healing the split between body and mind that has, she says, led many of us to live primarily "from the neck up." As was the case with Yoga Shakti, several pre-set practices are offered (six in this case, ranging from 29 to 41 minutes in length); and the DVD again features the innovative "Yoga Matrix," which allows users to customize their practice by choosing and organizing various segments to suit their own needs and moods. Yet because of the dance element, most comparisons to a traditional yoga program don't apply. Whereas vinyasa yoga is essentially a series of flowing, connected poses, incorporating breath and movement and cultivating heat, strength, flexibility, and balance, here the movement is within the poses themselves, not just within the overall sequence. Thus familiar asanas such as the cobra and downward facing dog take on a new aspect, with users encouraged to constantly roll their shoulders from side to side in cobra or make undulating, wave-like spinal movements in down dog (both can be found in the terrific jala naar, the so-called "water salutation"); it's a style that may be somewhat more familiar to practitioners of kundalini yoga than those used to the more widespread, Iyengar-based hatha tradition. Meanwhile, the trance dance sections encourage spontaneous, free-form movement that may well lead to the kind of creative self-expression and loosening of inhibitions that Rea prescribes. Visually stunning (it was in high definition at New Mexico's White Sands National Monument) and augmented by a fine world music soundtrack (a music-only option is available) and Rea's soothing, authoritative presence, the DVD also includes a mini-documentary about the instructor, bonus comments by a couple of experts, and more. --Sam Graham