I have suffered from back problems for many years and the only thing that has really, genuinely helped is Yoga.
I built this little app to help remove one more barrier to me practicing everyday.
I'm very yoga curious but the woo that often creeps in is a real turn off.
For example, the first session I looked at sent me to https://youtu.be/s2NQhpFGIOg and at the one minute mark it tells me that a yoga mat (preferably made of cotton) is important because it prevents earthing of the energy that gets generated in the process.
I whole heartedly second this recommendation. This is from Diamond Dallas Page (I believe that was his wrestling name, I'm no fan of Pro Wrestling, I'm afraid) who had major compression of multiple spinal discs, almost unusable shoulders, hip issues and knees that were destroyed. He started yoga exercises without the "woo woo" and has brought a lot of the functionality back to his body.
He has gone on to rehabilitate multiple people and document it. It's really a fascinating story. Kudos!
Wow this guy got me pumped. I used to do P90X last decade, but as my body’s getting older and my eating habits and motivation are not what they used to be, I need a bit of a change. This guy has that “it” factor that just makes you want to get up and move (like Tony used to inspire, too).
I hear you; it was something that prevented my trying a real class for a long while, and I still struggle with the spiritual and "energy" side of it. But once I got past that and focused on the exercises and breathing I was amazed how much it helped me.
Rather than collate yoga videos with differing levels of accuracy relative to search (the search I just did was pretty inaccurate), why not have some gifs of poses and generate the practice by linking these poses together to mix something based on the user’s chosen level of difficulty, style, and goals?
For my example, I chose “Advanced” and two of the three videos were labelled “Beginner”. The third I did a quick view of and it also looked like a beginner practice. This is an issue generally with yoga videos online - they are predominantly for beginners with somewhat limited Intermediate videos and very rarely Advanced videos. But you could solve this with gifs of different poses linked together on the fly, and generate the exact desired length of practice!
That's the approach that the Down Dog yoga app seems to take. They had an instructor go through all the poses and transitions, and they can then run all sorts of different classes by combining them in different ways. They do it pretty seamlessly, but i have to imagine a lot of planning went into it.
Interesting I'll check this out. I had a similar idea that you would basically catalog everything and then have instructors put in classes. And as you grew more and more class you could start to find repetitions that instructors use and eventually be able to randomly generate classes with well known sequences.
This is tricky because practices aren't just random sets of poses. I don't know much about yoga sequencing - maybe you could generate a reasonable set of rules as to how to combine poses but it doesn't feel trivial to me. Also 'beginner' is hard to define - familiarity with poses is independent of the progression within them which one can achieve!
I had my yoga teacher ex design a simple routine for me that addressed my specific biomech issues (cycling and sitting). I videoed her walking me through it and watched it enough times to get it down.
I highly recommend getting a tailored routine. The sheer numbers of people with yoga teaching credentials make it pretty easy to find one.
My question is: Where is an AR app for yoga/PT/TaiChi/etc?
I thought it would come with the Kinect, but that died on the vine. Now that Apple is all about AR and health, it should be in the pipeline - right?
I am a certified yoga therapist, and I agree with a lot of comments here regarding some yoga practices on YouTube. Some go way into the "woo woo" stuff that is unnecessary and impractical (i.e., you don't need a cotton yoga mat), and others teach it in ways that actually can exacerbate problems.
I have been seeing private clients for years on chronic pain issues, low back pain, migraines, anxiety/stress. Throughout my years of working with them, I've created short videos and sequences on poses/practices that have helped a lot of my clients again and again.
I try to make these videos practical and bite-sized, instead of 45min or hour long practices. I get that we are all busy, and my motto is always: do a little everyday, and that will take you all the way.
Here is a link to the library of therapeutic yoga practices (including a whole playlist for low back pain). I add new videos weekly: https://www.youtube.com/user/yogawithelaine/
As a 15+ year Yogi (who practices regularly, well at least until C19!) I've never heard of these either!
According to Wikipedia:
* Hatha is seems to be a branch of Yoga (Hatha apparently means "force")
* Ashtanga is another type of Yoga brought to the modern world by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and involves synchronizing breath with a series of positions.
Yes, thats a fair point, I will add something to help explain each. To be honest I had never heard of Hatha until I started building this, but as I aggregated the data it is a keyword that came up quite a lot.
Thanks for the feedback!
Youtube search for Sivananda yoga. All the breathing / poses are effectively the same and it is very simple traditional yoga that has been practiced for a very long time.
Anyone can do it and there are different variations of different amounts of time. I personally skip the headstand stuff because I worry about hurting my neck, but the rest of it is very non-stressful on your body, but quite effective.
Since you are both positioning this for true beginners AND surfacing YouTube videos which offer varying degrees of teaching skill, level of spirituality, focus on anatomy, etc. I recommend adding a prominent disclaimer about variability of classes, encouraging shopping around. I'd hate for people to try a class that wasn't a fit, and judge the whole practice of yoga. I think a great onboarding would suggest 3 very different classes.
Slightly off topic but do Indians generally find Westerners doing Yoga cultural appropriation when it’s stripped from its original context? I actually see Yoga and Hinduism more broadly like open source software with its many philosophies as branches. As such developing a free app is in the same spirit of making (formerly) esoteric practices more accessible
Can't answer for Indians, but as far I understand it is a bit complicated. Depending on the classification you are looking at there are like 6-8 branches of Yoga of which "Hatha Yoga" is one. Hatha Yoga is the one which most people think of as Yoga. It has the physical 'asanas' as the main component. It has other parts like 'Pranayam' as well which are breathing exercises with chanting of verses/sounds in some of them. Most people who practice yoga are doing 'asanas' primarily with 'pranayams' mixed in sometimes. 'Asanas' in themselves are mostly physical and I think anyone can do them without any context. So, feel free to do so. :)
Not much as cultural appropriation but I consider it disrespectful to Hinduism that people don't acknowledge the origins with respect. This is not just about westerners but most Indians even Hindus do the same. Stripping Hinduism of all its good parts but vociferously pinning all the bad parts on it even if they have had strong social moorings. Even Govt of India has to say it is not religious to appease to the sentiments of Muslims and Christians.
To simplify, Yoga means union (with the existence) and the word has sacred/divine connotations. So using it for all sorts of things like say naked yoga etc and disregarding the sanskrit name for the yogasanas and calling it things like downward dog pose etc is uncomfortable. Hopefully the yogasana practicioners will get curious and go deeper into the philosophy and mindset of the Hindu philosophy.
If anyone wants the full Yoga experience I recommend organisations like ISHA Yoga Foundation.
Btw regarding open source software comparisons, people either want to force the original repo into drastically changing the rules of contribution or instead of forking it and acknowledging the original project they just want to copy it with same name but do their own thing (for eg mindfulness vs meditation)
Thanks for making this! I might not be the target of this, but it’d nice to be able to select from videos longer than an hour. I see ashtanga as a filter option and primary series is going to take at least 90 minutes to get through (sometimes 2 hours depending on who you’re practicing with and how they count).
Since SIP orders, I have been working out at home with YouTube videos. I have been bookmarking some of my favorite videos and categorizing them (arms, upper body, cardio, etc). I think you can easily build a clone of this for other forms of workouts too.
Great! I hope you find find it useful even in a small way. And, as @stronglikedan commented, if you enjoy it, try a in-person class - you get so much more out of it than watching a video :)
I hope you get into it, and if you do, you should consider going to some classes. Doing it by yourself in front of a screen is good, but nothing beats the environment of a class with others. It's hard to describe, since you don't really interact with everyone, but there's a certain energy you get - you can stretch a bit farther and relax a bit more deeply. Plus, you may think you're doing things correctly, but a good instructor can spot even the smallest misalignments.
That is very good advice, thank you. I have anxiety issues, so being able to prep on the terminology and basics actually does give me the incentive to go out to a real class. Which is something I've always wanted to do, but haven't been up to before. It's very difficult for me to productively receive instruction from somebody when I know absolutely nothing about the topic -- it's probably some sort of weird childhood conditioning thing.
