Yoga Download is something that we recently purchased a membership and here is our unbiased review. We have no commercial relationship with Yoga Download.
We signed up and paid for the subscription ourselves as we wanted to really road-test this out given the multiple options in the marketplace.
Let’s begin.
Yoga Download Review
In writing this, we assume you’re completely new to the world of yoga or have some mild experiences. That is – you may have been to a few yoga classes in a studio before.
Perhaps you’ve felt a bit daunted or frustrated with your practice. Internally there’s that voice of judgement speaking when you see other students easily doing handstands and other complex Asanas. You wonder if you’ll ever progress to such a stage.
Well, you can! It just takes a lot of practice. And that requires yoga classes, whether online or in person.
As for online, there are numerous options and alternatives to Yoga Download which we may share with you later on.
Without any more ado, we decided to get into it.
Joining Yoga Download
Joining this platform is quite easy. Unlike most others, there isn’t a free trial that you can access to Yoga Download, however you can use their $1 trial option for 14 days.
This is exactly what we did:
There are numerous discounts/coupons for Yoga Download which you can access quite easily too.
Inside the Yoga Download dashboard
Once you join, this is what you see:
It’s a great way to filter the precise content that you’re looking for.
However, we found the Dashboard to be quite bland. We’ve used alternatives to Yoga Download and they are significantly better in their user experience.
This feels like it came from 2001 and not of this decade. The company could do a lot to improve the look and feel of this platform.
But in fairness, you won’t spend much time actually in the platform. The whole premise is that you can download the yoga classes to your phone or digital media device to watch later on.
The classes
There is a whole bunch of classes on offer here and even some yoga styles we haven’t heard of before. Take for example Anusara Yoga, Bapitise Power Yoga and Fusion Yoga.
One of the best parts about the classes is that you can rate the class and see the ratings from other members. This way you don’t accidentally go into a class that isn’t that good after you spend 20 minutes inside of it.
The typical class length in Yoga Download is 31 minutes. This is roughly half the length of a real yoga class in a studio setting. Many students decide to enrol into 2 classes for their sessions.
In addition to sorting from the best reviews to the lowest reviews, Yoga Download allows you to select the length, level, intensity and teacher. And boy…there are a lot of teachers here!
The yoga teachers
There are at least 50 yoga teachers inside of Yoga Download all having multiple classes and many having entire mini-series for which you can join.
One of the things you’ll notice is the volume of people that use this app. There are 200,000 people already signed up to Yoga Download.
Below each yoga teacher’s video, you can see comments from other students:
This was one of Kylie Larson’s 40-minute classes which had 15 minutes of Savasana.
Needless to say, you’ll certainly find a yoga teacher or two that resonates with you and your new journey ahead.
The music
One of the unique selling positions that is offered within Yoga Download is their music section. Not many other platforms provide this.
If you’re searching for some Kirtan tunes then you’ll certainly find it here. However, much of this can already be found on YouTube for free.
There are, however, specific yoga class music for different styles, including the final Asana.
Live streaming classes
We got pretty excited at the prospect of having student-only live streaming yoga classes.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, these are merely YouTube videos:
Essentially, everyone can access these anyway. They do ask for donations despite YouTube paying them royalties for content creation.
This was a bit of a let-down, but it’s great to see other countries such as Australia are included in their content.
What’s more
There are articles on natural living and healthy habits. Likewise, you can get a printable pose guide which we can’t include here for privacy purposes.
(Essentially, it’s reserved for paying members within Yoga Download)
If you need guidance on the breakdown of a specific pose, then there is plenty of content based on that.
You can also join one of their beautiful yoga retreats based in Spain.
Unfortunately, there is no video content on organic vegetarian cooking, on yoga wisdom or meditations. Yoga Download, by its very nature, is mostly about being on the mat.
In summary
Yoga Download has a strange name and isn’t really branded well. The dashboard could also use a big update to make it more ‘Yoga like’ instead of the corporate 1980’s feel.
The commercialisation of yoga has made us to see things aesthetically. As we’ve seen inside and experienced numerous online yoga learning platforms where you can practice at home, we didn’t quite like what was provided here.
But…the price is affordable and you can get a $1 trial. It’s good value and unlike many other platforms, you can download the videos to your device.
