First impressions of Body Balance release 61 after Edinburgh Quarterly Workshop

After the sweaty excesses of the Quarterly Workshop for Body Combat 56, I staggered out of Virgin Active at the Omni Centre in Edinburgh and found sanctuary in St. Andrew Square for a couple of hours. It was lovely to sit on the grass in the sunshine people watching as my muscles recovered from all those “matrix kicks”.

But soon I was heading back to Virgin Active for the Quarterly Workshop for Body Balance release 61. Our trainer was Kathryn Cullen, a very witty enthusiastic lady who had us all in stitches during the education session. As the only male instructor at the session, I wasn’t as interested in her stories of the perfect bodies of some International Master Trainers she had met recently, but the ladies seemed to appreciate her graphic descriptions.

Here are my first thoughts about Body Balance release 61.

body balance release 61
Screenshot from the DVD Masterclass.
  • The class begins with a stunning piece of music by Delerium (featuring Aude Feuilerat) called Paris which sounds almost angelic. We build up a lovely tai chi sequence layer by layer until we finish with a very beautiful flowing set of moves. A great start.
  • Pink’s song Try is very aptly named for the standing strength track. You will really have to try hard to get through a tough set of poses including triangle, extended warrior and sun warrior.
  • If you have tight hips from running then you are going to love the hip opener track. The combination of cowface pose and modified half lotus is exquisite, almost pleasureably painful. I know us guys find cowface pose difficult for obvious reasons but stick with it. Flexibility will come.
  • The core abs track is a great bit ouch. This could be one of the toughest ever.
  • I like the way we use upward facing dog and bridge pose to extend our backs in track 7. We do it slowly and I found this a refreshing change from the more recent full back bends we have had to contend with.
  • Once again we have two forward bends tracks amounting to nearly nine minutes of hamstring stretches. I love the focus on the wide leg forward bends in the first one and then the seated bends in the second.

It seems that we have another tough but lovely release. I can’t wait to learn this and launch it to my classes over the next few weeks.

Your turn: Are you a Body Balance instructor? Do you agree with my first impressions of Body Balance release 61. Share your thoughts. Leave a comment. Participants let me know what you think of the class once we’ve launched it.

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