Daily iPad App: Pocket Yoga channels your inner yogi
When I was living in Arizona a few years ago, I lived within walking distance of a yoga school. For a few months, I attended class a couple times a week and loved it. Since then, I've wanted to get back into yoga, but cost and scheduling prohibited it.
The solution comes in the form of Pocket Yoga, which gives you a good, basic yoga workout on an iOS device. While you can use it on the iPhone, it's best suited to the iPad. You also can use the AirPlay support to transmit it to an Apple TV.
Pocket Yoga has three practices that can be done for 30 minutes, 45 minutes or an hour. There's an extensive library of poses to check out if you're not familiar with them, and two sun salutation routines. The poses are represented by a cartoon avatar with a voiceover narrating the workout. Whoever did Pocket Yoga's narration did a fantastic job, for it and the accompanying music are easy to listen to during the workout. If you don't care for the default soundtrack, you can customize it using tracks from your music library.
One of the things that Pocket Yoga lacks is the ability to do shorter exercises. I'd love to see a 15-minute version of the main exercises. I'd also like to see the example poses be animated to help beginners along. It won't take the place of a good yoga class, but it's a great supplement if you want to workout on your own.
Pocket Yoga is on sale for $1.99. If you're a pro and want to build your own practices, Pocket Yoga - Practice Builder is $4.99. Or this week, head to Starbucks and pick up a promo card to download Pocket Yoga - Practice Builder for free as part of its "Pick of the Week" program.
Developer Sergio Tacconi said that Starbucks picking Pocket Yoga - Practice Builder happened to be a coincidence. "The original app was created mostly at Starbucks," he said, "since I didn't have an office for the first year I was starting this venture."
