Yoga for Indie Rockers

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A 40-minute Yoga routine with a choice of three indie rock soundtracks — alt-rock, pop-punk or electronic. Punky Hollywood fitness pro Chaos instructs.

Advanced beginning through intermediate Yoga enthusiasts — you don’t get deeply detailed instruction and no breathing cues, so you need to know your way around a mat. It also helps if you like indie rock — meaning truly indie, meaning bands you’ve never heard before. You will need a mat; although no props were shown, I found it useful to have a strap for a couple of poses.

I was an alt-rock and heavy metal journalist before I got into fitness writing, so I liked the concept of this DVD: instead of some generic, New Age elevator music, why not use indie rock as the background music for a Yoga workout? Unfortunately, I found the actual execution of the idea a bit lacking. The workout is pretty good for a short Yoga routine: Chaos offers up an athletically based series of poses, Vinyasa style, and there are a few nice surprises, such as the quick Yogi lunges. There are also modifying students (rocker grrls all) to match your level of flexibility. Although nobody used props, I found a strap helpful for Standing Head to Knee pose and Reclined Big Toe pose; if you know how to use a strap and have one, you can do the same. The workout was fine for advanced beginners and intermediates who don’t need detailed instruction, but I thought the soundtrack could have been done far better. It was like someone just compiled 40 minutes’ worth of music that they liked, and although you get a choice of three different soundtracks, none of them seem to be sequenced to match what is going on in the workout. Granted, I’m not a fan of generic Yoga music, but it’s usually easy to ignore; if you’re going to try to do better, then create a soundtrack that matches the mood of what is going on. And the other mistake I feel was made here (as someone who has written about music) is that real music lovers, indie or no, have a variety of influences and music they listen to. Who’s to say an authentic sitar-based soundtrack is any less indie than a group of kids honing their craft in a garage somewhere? In an ideal world, I would have liked to see someone from the indie scene create a real soundtrack for the workout, using whatever influences they felt appropriate. But I’ll get off my soapbox. I did enjoy the workout, and if you happen to know an aspiring indie musician, this disc has an instruction-only version of the workout – maybe you can get him or her to make a soundtrack for you.