"Do Wii Look Fat in Our Jeans?"
An Inside Look at Wii Yoga
Are there genuine physical and psychological benefits from practicing virtual yoga OR is this just a big misunderstanding?
Gaming developers have finally broken through the limits of the gaming entertainment into a very personal realm: health & fitness. We all have our insecurities about joining gyms, personal training, aerobics classes, team sports, and yoga classes. Going back to the gym can be a frightening experience for everyone and anyone who has had a fear of being judged by those who are in better shape and those of the opposite sex. Nintendo devised a well prepared marketing proposal for a new game that would allow your insecurities to stay at home with you: Wii Fit.
Wii Fit is a punishing motivator. You start by creating an avatar known as a Mii, during the body test it weighs you without permission, gives you a BMI (body mass index), and then fattens or thins your Mii based upon your results. YIKES! Talk about rubbing your insecurities in your face! By the way, a person’s BMI is a result of your height and weight comparable on a standardized chart defining what the average person your height and weight should be. Your BMI does not take into consideration muscle mass or body fat. It is a pretty generic system in calculating results in an important topic such as your general health, which could be harmfully misleading.
Once you advance past the scrutinizing comments posted by this virtual Wii board (which you stand on for almost all of the exercises and I love how it yelps once it instructs you to stand on it…not so funny) you then have your choice of different types of exercises. Wii yoga stood out amongst all of the aerobic, strength, and balance exercises as the most questionable in controversy. Having invested a good portion of my time into Bikram yoga (or hot yoga) I found that without an instructor and the proper environment to practice the meditation or spirituality of the exercise was missing. I also found myself over exerting my body to keep within the accuracy window on the screen. Having had the previous experience with yoga I issue concern for those who are trying it for the first time.
The question at hand is Wii Yoga appropriate for first time yogis? You select a virtual instructor who, during your yoga session, berates you when you are off target and sparsely congratulates you are on. What is definitely missing is the melodic voice that gives you the reassurance that patience is a virtue and that the pose will be perfected with practice, the need for relaxing the mind and body, and how breathing is key to finding your whole as a person. Though it seems as though the negatives out way the positives many people across this great nation have found solace in its form of rehabilitation and battling the bulge which is what is soon to be divulged for you all to manufacture a yay or nay for the Wii Fit Yoga.
What is yoga? For some, you may be wondering what yoga is but before I explain its more detailed characteristics it would be favorable for you to know a brief history of yoga and its evolution to today’s modernized popular practice. According to Wikipedia on the topic of yoga’s birth, scientist have been able to trace it as far back as 3300-1700 B. C. E. The earliest references to yoga were found during an archeological excavation within India’s Indus Valley, just on the border of Pakistan. There has been controversy on whether yoga was established during the time of the first civilizations, the era of antiquity. Though I would like to credit someone for being the founder of such an enormous discovery, history hasn’t yet named the creditor. Regardless of having an unknown yoga master to thank, the evolution of the practice and ideals continued to conform to the changing times.
The first form of yoga, the oldest, was called Vedic Yoga, which focused on reuniting the visible material world with the invisible spiritual world by sacrificing certain livelihood needs. The focus was on obtaining a heightened sense of mind and an overall higher level of understanding. At around 2,000 B. C. E is when Pre-Classical Yoga was introduced. As with all great ideas, this was the time when yoga was coming into its own with a lot of fine tuning and the addition of more spiritual complexities. Around 200 B. C. E. came around Classical Yoga had developed an appeal to people that was more systematic and approachable. You didn’t necessarily have to be a faithfully devout yoga student in order to partake in the practice. The idea then was to free the soul from the material world in order for it to return to its pure form. With the addition now of deep breathing, meditation, and energy focus the Post Classical Yoga was fashioned. The last stage before we hit it home to today’s variety of yoga is Modern Yoga. This period began around 1893 and gained in popularity when yoga studios in Chicago were quickly rising. During this period celebrities, musicians (The Beatles), and average Americans were delving into the spiritual practice. During the 1970s and 1960s it was extremely popular on the west coast with the Haight-Ashbury scene of San Francisco and the need for peace, love, and oneness. Today, the popularity of yoga is phenomenal with over 30 million practicing yogis! I can completely understand the popularity increase especially in the stressful world we live in where meditation and finding one’s own inner peace is squeezed in between Starbucks and the grocery store. There are many benefits to doing yoga which will be discussed right after you fully understand what yoga is!
Yoga is about creating balance in the body through developing strength and flexibility. Per say you were to walk into a yoga studio for the first time. What you would see are a bunch of stressed out, normal, hard workin’ Americans who are in their most comfortable exercise garb, waiting patiently for the class before them to exit the building. There may be light music in the air but for the most part people are quite, taking this time to relax and reflect. As the class leaves you enter the studio and pick a spot to lay your special yoga/pilates mat. This will be your peace of mind for the next hour and a half. Now the yoga begins. Your instructor will now guide you slowly through a series of breathing exercises and stretches, aka vasnas, and this is where you just pay attention to the melodic voice maneuvering you physically and mentally till the end of your session. With aerobic stretching and just letting go of you day there are rewards and great benefits for all the hard work.
There are a myriad of benefits that are associated with the regular practice of yoga. They range from improving physical health, psychological awareness, and spiritual cleansings. One of the most obvious advantages is the physical improvements. Yoga is exercise so in accordance with a healthy diet you will see weight loss, muscle toning, and increased endurance. The poses you are pretzeled into are meant to increase flexibility and during that stretch your body releases toxins that were trapped within muscles, joints, and various organs for a full body detoxification. When more blood is circulated to those areas and the inhibitors are released, the road for internal health healing becomes a lot shorter. Along with the detox process your body is making storage room for necessary nutrients that will do everything from lubricate your joints, ligaments, and tendons and add energy, a zest for life, and defy ageing to some degree. One very outstanding benefit that may perhaps be only associated with yoga is that the poses also massage ALL of the bodies’ internal organs and glands! The massage is a preventative for disease and a forewarning of the first possible instance of a disease/disorder. Though some people do partake in yoga to stay in shape there are a great majority that do it as a simple yet fun stress alleviator.
Stress can cause a lot of damage to the frail human body so when you get some time to just be yourself without the burdens of the day crashing in and just relax your body into superb health by meditating. When you meditate, according to Health & Yoga, it lowers your oxygen consumption, leads to a deeper level of relaxation, increases blood flow and decreases heart rate, builds self confidence, decreases respiratory rate, helps with chronic diseases, reduces anxiety attacks, decreases muscle tension, and increases serotonin. With all of these benefits of doing yoga, why wouldn’t someone want to improve their quality of life in the studio or in front of the Wii?
How does Wii Fit Yoga relate to attending a yoga class? There are multiple perspectives to take into consideration when evaluating this question. The answer may vary depending on who you asked. Approaching this question to someone who has been attending yoga for the last twenty years may have an outlook that is on the other side of the spectrum from someone who has only attended a few yoga classes and is now a devout Wii Fit yogi.
I definitely have my own opinion about the benefits of Wii yoga versus in-class yoga, but to give a broader opinion of this topic I have found an interesting article that certainly relates to this question at hand. According to Alicia King who wrote the article, “A Yogi Speaks About Wii Fit Yoga – A Critique of the Nintendo’s Yoga Poses”, the Nintendo Wii has approached the practice of yoga from a ‘fitness’ perspective versus an internal healing process. A few major benefits of practicing yoga is to reduce stress and to assist in the detox process of your major organs through systematic poses and breathing, and for your overall mental and physical health.
Marketing yoga on Wii Fit as though you will rapidly see your body take a new and exciting shape from practicing yoga makes for a shallow promise and visually a low return on investment. Understanding the background of yoga is just as important as understanding the background to karate; you need an educator or to be educated on WHY you are doing the pose and WHAT it is doing for your body. The Nintendo Wii does not focus on those questions but turns a heavy focus on controlled balance; which for someone who has weak muscles and is trying it out for the first time may feel consumed by the cloud of disappointment. Yoga is a ‘day at a time’ practice that is NEVER to be perfected…just practiced.
Wii Fit Yoga is a game you can play at home. The terms ‘game’ and ‘play’ are confusing to me when I think of yoga. Yoga is the practice of relaxation, meditation, and self-reflection. Mentioned in the article by Alicia King, “competitive yoga is an oxymoron” and “the Wii Fit’s scoring system distracts from this important point of yoga: self-acceptance” , and with that being stated you would think that the one place you could honestly accept yourself for who you are is in the confines of your own home. Wii Fit Yoga however uses humiliating tactics to rage you into workout mode (fattening up your avatar, sighing when your results haven’t changed in a week, giving you very little or zero points after completing a pose or activity). If you have the back bone to deal with a game system mentally bringing you down and you are deathly afraid of showing very little skin in a yoga class then Wii Fit Yoga may be just the thing for you.
Being a practicing yogi, the first exercise my class always starts off with is a deep breathing exercise. This exercise awakens the body and mind with plenty of oxygen and preps the body for the upcoming poses. Wii Fit Yoga has an optional breathing exercise that attempts to regulate your breathing through your stability on the balance board, but I still don’t understand how balance is supposed to regulate your breathing? I’m no doctor, but controlled breathing comes from within your body and every person breathes differently using the same components of mouth, throat, diaphragm and lungs; not your legs. At the very end of your in-class yoga you always close out with the Final Pose. I totally spaced this topic until I discovered it in an article. The Savasana pose allows the yogi to experience total relaxation and absorb the experience that was just had. According to Alicia King, “the final relaxation portion of the class is the single most important part”. I agree but it’s completely missing from the Wii Fit Yoga program.
I can definitely appreciate the ‘break it down dumb’ efforts of Nintendo to introduce yoga to the masses, and if anything I am thanking them for providing a yoga exercise game. If I had never attended a yoga class and started out with Wii Fit Yoga I would definitely be curious about attending an actual yoga class. To my surprise upon completing an in-class session I would then realize that I just got my butt kicked for 90 minutes by just stretching poses and I feel amazing!!
To conclude the question at hand of how Wii Fit Yoga and in-class yoga relate I can honestly say that they are worlds apart on the grounds of psychological benefits, physiological benefits, relaxation, and fundamentals. If you really want to experience what true yoga is then pay a small fee for a drop-in class. You won’t be disappointed.
In-class yoga versus Wii Yoga, let’s get it on! I have found that there are some mixed reviews when it comes down to comparing whether in-class yoga gives you the overall better bang for your buck or the purchase of the Nintendo Wii system in order to play Wii Fit’s yoga. First off I would like to start off by naming some of the pros I have come across with the Wii Yoga. The Wii Yoga has the potential to open the door to future yogis. It allows the player to acquire a basic understanding of the poses, the expectations of what would be required in an in-class environment, and it has a large emphasis on correcting balance. The gaming mechanics of it are also exciting enough to keep you playing without getting too bored of “exercise”. The Wii balance board registers your center of gravity and shows your progress at the end of your sessions so you know if you are making improvements. Unfortunately there are a few draw backs.
According to an article published in The University Daily Kansan “some health experts have estimated that it would take six to eight hours on Wii to expend the equivalent amount of energy of a regular 15-30 minute workout.” With that said who wants to spent six hours doing yoga just to get 15 minutes worth of exercise. That just seems like a ridiculous waste of time when you could go to a yoga class and get an hour and a half of consistent, high quality yoga instruction and exercise. Many of the poses do not demonstrate proper alignment, which may result in injury. The balance board makes performing some of the poses difficult to perform which means if you are doing it wrong you could get hurt. After you perform the poses there isn’t a smooth transition into the next pose which causes your heart rate to slow and doesn’t give you the transition necessary for consistent exercise. One of the biggest cons could be the fact that you have a virtual instructor who is not even comparable to the benefits of having a REAL person helping you through the processes and learning of yoga. And one of the biggest dissimilarity is the fact that it keeps score in which being competitive is not a yogic principle.
There are many positive attributes as far as going into a yoga class instead of playing on the Wii system. For starters the exercise quality you get is 100% better than sitting in front of a Wii. The transitions into poses are smooth and you are never at a lull with an instructor. The instructor is also a benefit because you are getting first hand information and added demonstrations you can learn from rather than having to wait to unlock new poses. Practicing in a group can also give you a sense of an overall accomplishment as a group and as an individual. More people equals more support! Another great added benefit is the fact that you get to learn about yoga, not just the poses but the spirituality associated with the sub culture. Yet again there are draw backs with attending a yoga class.
Going to yoga class can cost you money not only on the membership but transportation, floor mats, and yoga accessories. With the Wii system most of the above is covered with the purchase of the Wii Fit system. What might hold some people back from attending is the fact that they have to work out with other people. Some enjoy the company and support of others while some don’t have the self esteem, are embarrassed, or just flat out don’t want to work on bettering themselves with others there to judge. The classes do run longer and give you a higher intensity workout than Wii Yoga with quite a bit more poses and the difficulty level can range from beginner to advance pose to pose. With all the pros and cons available making a decision on which is right for you just comes down to personal preference and time availability.
With the capitalistic integration of spirituality in video games become platforms for interactive religion, 'at home faith'? I ask this question due to the holistic properties found in practicing yoga. The practice of yoga creates a sense on ones' being all while keeping clear of any religious influences. The practice of yoga teeters on the spiritual fence, but create no direct threat to religious practices. The surfacing of video games geared to satisfy personal health and fitness is becoming increasingly popular. Instead of having to deal with a monthly gym membership to pay and all the horrors of going back to the gym Nintendo has made it possible to exercise at your very own home-nasium for a one time upfront cost of a gaming unit and a cd.
With that being said, I predict that interactive fiction will breech into the realm of 'at home faith' in due time. Where there is a dollar to make by any church then there is an opportunity to outreach to alternative media sources to collect. For example, in the article, "Website offers prayer services for monthly fee" by Daveen Rae Kurutz, a 23 year old lab worker started a company called the Information Age Prayer that sells prayers for a fee on its website. This young man started this innovative, for-profit company to capitalize on our nation's laziness; we are definitely a fast food nation, we need it now and we need it fast! For $3.95 a month people can ask for financial help, prayers for their children, and only the computer God knows what else. What I found silly, but yet amazing is that after you make the prayer selection you get a voice on your speakers saying the prayer for you. Really, are we that lazy that we would rather just click a mouse then kneeling down for a thirty second prayer? Funny, but yet, kind of sad. Funny was definitely not the response this young entrepreneur received from local religious officials. They were scathing with fury...but why? If you ask me they were sorry that they didn't jump first at this remarkable opportunity to create a 'church membership' on the internet. Watch and see who follows suit.
What are the possibilities of bringing religious edu-tainment into homes through gaming? Since convenience is the busy American motto these days I can definitely see families withdrawing from their Sunday services to spend it at home through a television. I can envision religious institutions partnering with software companies to develop games through the eyes of their lord in hopes to educate the youth through a medium they enjoy and all while making church revenue. Technology has advanced gaming systems so that they can easily be connected to the internet using a cable modem. This will allow the church to develop games for the people who have questions about religion to easily access a priest, pastor or so forth to gain answers immediately, I mean after a credit card number is submitted for access privileges.
On a moral level some may say that this is wrong and God prefers that you worship in sanctioned facilities to hear and feel the word of God from your church leader. On the flip side, churches need money to pay property taxes, leases, salaries, operational expenses and so forth. In almost all circumstances churches rely strictly on the financial support of its followers in order to make ends meet and to continue to expand. So I ask this question, how would you perceive the crossover of standard religious operation for obtaining money (at the church) to a technological expansion into virtual fiction?
To conclude this essay, I would like to suggest to all of those who may be considering practicing yoga for the first time to take the time to do a little research. Determining personal goals, the environment you desire to practice in, and with great consideration to the varying restrictions your body may have will assist you in picking a successful practice of yoga. From there you can determine if Wii Fit Yoga or in-class yoga is right for you. Namaste!
APPENDIX
The University Daily Kansan, “Nintendo Wii: Does it have health benefits?”, Smith, Michael, Published August 21st 2008, http://www.kansan.com/stories/2008/aug/21/wii/?print
www.healthandyoga.com/HTML/meditation/objectives.html , “Meditation...Its Benefits”
Pittsburgh Tribune Review, “Website offers prayer services for monthly fee”, Kurutz, Daveen Rae, Published May 26th 2009, http://pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/tribpm/s_626709.html
http://www.suite101.com/ , “A Yogi Speaks About Wii Fit Yoga”, King, Alicia, Published July 7th 2008
