Bar none, the best beginning yoga DVD on the market: Max Strom’s Strength, Grace, Healing. This DVD is beautiful and gentle and challenging all at the same time. If you’d like to bring some peace and quiet into your life, turn to Max. There are plenty of DVD’s out there with titles like “Yoga for Fitness” or “Yoga for Weightloss” or “Yoga-Jam.” This DVD is called “Strength, Grace, and Healing” and that’s exactly the right title for it. It’s for more than burning calories.

Max Strom may be the only yoga instructor I’ve taken a class from who struck me as being worthy of guru-dom. And I’m definitely not someone who’s looking for a guru. Nevertheless, he practically breathes wisdom. Naturally, then, he has shied from the limelight and moved recently from Los Angeles — far, far away to Ashland, Oregon.