Meet Chaz, The Michael Scott of Yoga

I have always loved yoga but found the instructional DVDs a little dull. I understand that yoga is supposed to be a quiet, reflective meditation, but why does that always translate to boring? I need a work out plan that satisfies my desire to not have to leave the house, exercise in one hour or less, and keep my ADD-addled brain constantly amused. Enter the FREE yoga podcasts produced by Yogamazing.com...

What's different about these podcasts versus the stuffy old DVDs? An instructor named Chaz who resembles Steve Carell's character Michael Scott on The Office, both in looks and awesome abundance of corny, forehead-slapping jokes. I can't help but giggle whenever Chaz makes an offhanded quip to the camera and then unabashedly laughs at himself.

One of my favorites is the brief, 25 minute morning podcast when he advises his students to do their yoga before they take a shower, otherwise they would (obviously) arrive at work to questions of 'Hey, did you do yoga this morning? I can tell. Har har.' What's really great is that it's just Chaz and the camera, so there's an extra-awkward silence before he begins to laugh himself. Try not to smirk when one of Chaz's stinkers blows up in his face as you perform utkatasana (chair pose) or vrksasana (tree pose). 

In all seriousness, he's a great instructor and his humor doesn't take away from his well-choreographed yoga flows. He can make fun of himself even while he's holding difficult asanas (poses), which is  very reassuring and completely unique to his classes. If Chaz can make the perpetual, dreaded return to down dog pose funny, then it can't be that bad. As he says time and time again on his podcasts, Yogamazing is 'where down dog is man's best friend'.