Book Review: Hurry Up - Relax! Breathing Themes That Make Yoga Possible, and Even Enjoyable! by Corinne Friesen

Corinne Friesen has written "Hurry Up - Relax!" after having 30 years of yoga and Reiki experience. I've taken Corinne's Reiki classes - she is an amazing teacher. And her book reflects that.

The book starts by telling the reader several secrets and they all come together to:

Yoga is not about pain. Pain no gain.

Corinne finds her cat to be her best teacher. She says that cats doing yoga naturally and they are excellent at it. Have you seen a cat arching their back for up to several minutes? They have mastered the streching art and now it's your turn to master that skill and have a better life.

The first part of the book talks about breathing. As you advance you think that now you know everything about the art of breathing but the next page brings yet another technique or nuance about the way you can breathe. Corinne starts with a simple breath observation techiques and them moves into explaining the abdominal breathing, which is essential for feeding all parts of your body with oxygen. The things get more complicated, where you learn how to hold your breath between inhales and exhales to optimise the process of getting rid of the uses air and then to refill all cells in your body with fresh air. Many of those technique were already familiar to me from swimming, since one constantly need to hold breath while swimming. After reading those chapters on breathing it dawned on me why I always felt great after swimming - it's because I was doing a very good breathing while swimming, compared to the very shallow breathing I do while busy working or doing other things.

The next part of the book talks about special exercises called The Sponge and The Fountain where you learn how to revitalise yourself. And you get to learn even more about breathing, by learning how to relax your breathing apparatus to gain further benefits.

Next you learn about Chakras and Enegy flow in your body. Corinne is a reiki teacher and practitioner and she knows a lot of things about Energy work. She teaches you how to regain your balance, by practicing various yoga routines, poses and breathing strategies. Corinne introduces The Ojai breathing, which is a traditional yoga breathing technique, that can be used to build and keep Energy in your system. She covers the grounding and energy building exercises, methods to clear, cleanse and energize your chakras.

The remainder of the book introduces over 80 routines, complete with descriptions, instructions and photographs. And which are also backedup by her website audioyoga.com where you can find a lot more information about routines, including audio instructions, explaining how to correctly practice those routines.

"Hurry Up - Relax" is useful to almost anybody who wants to improve their health. Even if you don't do any yoga exercises, you will still benefit a lot from the breathing techniques.

The only thing I've found confusing in Corinne's book is that routines were all grouped at the end of the book and I prefer to read books without jumping back and forth. I wish the book was an electronic format, so I could just click around it. Also I think the typesetting could be improved.

On the other hand the books uses a spiral binding, which makes it very easy to keep the book open on the page the routine is on, which is usually not the case with most books.

I've enjoyed reading "Hurry Up - Relax" and hopefully you will too. I just need to figure out how to consistently practice the techniques that I've learned :)

You can purchase an autographed copy of Corinne's book from Corinne's website or at amazon.com.

See also Corrine's articles on Yoga and Sexuality.