Yoga on the Ball: Enhance Your Yoga Practice Using the Exercise Ball

Rating:
Summary: Decent introduction to adapting yoga postures to the ball
Review: I have practiced yoga for several years now but just recently purchased a stability ball, so I wanted a book that would teach me how to adapt yoga postures to ball work. Author Carol Mitchell takes awhile to actually get into the exercises, as she goes into quite a bit of detail about yoga tradition, yogic breathing, and posture work. While this information might be helpful to someone totally new to yoga, I found it to be overly long-winded and was eager to get started.

Mitchell begins the practice section with yoga sun salutations modified for the ball. Although the sun salutation series is traditionally performed in a relatively brisk flow to warm up the body for more challending asana work, I found the ball version to be rather awkward, making it much more difficult to move smoothly through the series. Mitchell then moves on to several chapters of postures on the ball; I found these sections to be much more relevant. It was interesting to learn how the ball could be used to enhance the classic poses, sometimes making the poses easier and at other times making them more difficult. For every exercise, Mitchell presents at least two and often three different levels of difficulty, which allows you to customize your practice. Each chapter focuses on a particular practice goal: flexibility and strength, balance, advanced work, and relaxation. At times, the ball seems to be used only for the sake of incorporating it somehow--eg, holding the ball over your head--rather than as an integral part of the yoga posture.

A final chapter, "Putting It All Together," explains how to combine the various asanas presented to create a practice customized to your particular level and goals. Although each speciality practice is illustrated, I found the diagrams somewhat hard to follow, both here and elsewhere in the book. A nice bonus at the end of the book is an appendix which reviews all of the major muscle groups and their functions; this was perhaps the most clear and concise summary of this topic which I have ever seen. Overall, this book provided a decent introduction to mostly beginner's level yoga work on the stability ball, and it is probably best suited to those new to both yoga and ball work. Rating: 3 1/2 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Over sixty postures from introductory to advanced
Review: In Yoga On The Ball, medical exercise specialist Carol Mitchell offers an interesting new form of yoga workout combination which blends yoga with the exercise ball concept. Chapters survey how the exercise ball allows the yoga practitioner to build different muscle groups: over sixty postures from introductory to advanced are detailed with step-by-step instructions and photos.