Search - The De-Stress Plan on DVD

Several short segments in Tai Chi, Yoga, Meditation, Self-Ma

Lena, LMT | Nassau, NY | 06/27/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Menu options are only play & chapter choices. The setting is on clip w/beautiful water below on a windy day. Lucy Lloyd-Barker instructs w/voice over in a nice, gentle British accent w/soft music playing. Each chapter starts with a 15 second video of clips of very short videos of random sweet landscapes.
Intro 2 min - basic
Tai Chi 10 min - Mostly just standing & feeling your body for several minutes. There are simple stretching arms back & 3 simple movements that are warm-up for Tai Chi Qi Gong in any other class or video for the last couple of minutes. You'd be better off getting "Discovering Chi" with Linda Modero to really build enough energy to feel your body healing which I do, or other videos.
Yoga 16 min - Lucy introduces several poses from Sun Salutation, taking her time to remind you in each pose not to compress your back, where to stretch, keep abs strong, etc. She gives many good details to avoid injury. Once instructed, she puts them together into a quick paced, flowing vinyasa Sun Salutation to be repeated around 6? times, though she won't announce which pose she's up to or when to breath, but just additional general reminders of keeping good posture, how sun salutations help relax the muscles, etc. Poses include: mountain, standing fwd bends, crescent, child's pose, plank, downward dog, and cobra.
Meditation 2 min - Basic breathing more slowly, counting & sensing how your body feels. It's over very fast.
Self-massage 8 min - Done seated, just taping the head, down the arms, chest, shaking out the arms, then massaging by twisting & rubbing to ends of the fingers & flicking off the tension. Massing the scalp, telling you the benefits for hair, flocking w/the fingertips to stimulate the scalp, the smoothing down the scalp, to the shoulders. Simple neck stretches of laying the head in several directions finish the section. A similar & longer self-massage can be found on Gaiam's QiGong for beginners as a bonus ending to the Qi Gong practice.
Head & Shoulder Massage 10 min - Lucy excels here, doing some great massage strokes LMTs learn in school on a seated woman. Easy to follow, with good camera closeup, she shows kneading, thumb pressure, cirular digital pressure, hacking etc. Couple moves I learned/forgotten:
She lays her forearms on top of the shoulders & does a rolling motion, thumb pressure to the tops of the triceps until the skin is pulled up in a pinching motion. Using palms w/the heel of the hand doing the work, stretch/gently pull the muscles away from the spine. Supporting the woman's head by the forehead, does stroking up both sides of the neck, squeezing/stimulating gently both side of the scalp, then top of the head & neck at the same time, plucking with fingertips to stimulate scalp/blood, sweeping/sliding very gently from forehead down.

To me, the tai chi did not introduce much, the yoga bored me (though great instruction), the meditation too short, the self-massage was nice, and the partner head/shoulder massage great.

Videos on youtube of Lucy Llody-Barker's other DVDs under:
"The Power of Pilates" & "part 1 - Eastern Head Massage""