The experts have their say on the Wii Fit Yoga as The Desert Sun, of Palm Springs, put local yogis to the test. Seasoned teachers Kristin Olson and Chuck Burks from Urban Yoga in Palm Springs were given the Wii Fit and were asked what they thought of Wii Yoga.
The Pros
This is a great way to introduce people to the world of yoga.
The game isn’t intimidating.
In most of the poses, there is a yellow circle on the screen. Players distribute their weight and maintain proper balance by keeping a red dot inside this circle. This is a nice way to focus on the core muscles.
It will help people feel comfortable doing yoga in their own homes.
The interactive nature of the Wii Fit makes it more interesting than a yoga DVD or video.
Even though yoga is not a competitive sport and is not about racking up points, the Wii scoring system can motivate players to keep practicing and continue working on their poses.
Even people who have no interest in yoga will benefit from slowing down and stretching.
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The experts noted a few cons: that the practise lacked the heart of yoga in exploring the connection between mind, body, and spirit. The meditative quality of yoga practise is lost as there are stops between postures, clicking through to the next, without consideration to sequencing, and holding the wiimote is annoying. The teachers also noted that some postures could be advanced for newcomers, and risk of injury is present if the pose is held incorrectly.
I agree with them and these are all points I have made of this blog before and the obvious conclusion is the wii fit is not a replacement for a regular yoga pratice, and thus should not be compared to yoga as a whole. The Wii fit is only a very very small sample of yoga but the percentage of people crossing over from the Wii yoga to a local yoga class to daily pratice should be noted as positive movement for the yoga community.
When my four year old goes for a run on the Wii Fit she gets a real sweat on! To our amazement, she powers through it effortlessly and scores 104% calorie burner ( i don;’t kow how you can get 104). Quite an impressive score, and i think, ‘well this is really great fitness tool. it’s so good to have the kids interested in fitness and health’. But with interruptions, stops and starts between exercises, the wii fit only offers a few occasions to raise your pulse in a cardiovascular excersise. The University of Kansan posted a study warning that the Wii Fit is not as beneficial as regular excerise:
“Electronic games like the Wii are not substitutes for regular exercise,” says Joseph Donnelly, director of the Energy Balance Laboratory at the University of Kansas. “They cannot give you the same workout as a regular workout.”
In fact, 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- to 30-minute workout.
They say 6-8 hours to approximate energy expended! It is likely that this is the case, on average, and that some excersises, like the running, certainly can approximate the activity and its benefits much better, or at least my daughter can. The researchers admit that the Nintendo Wii and Wii Yoga are of benefit if not only just to have people take an interest in their health and to introduce people to yoga. it is great guidance on how to do postures with awareness to alignment and use their bodies with greater awareness, and that’s not a benefit more important than calories burned!
Oh joy! Yoga is spreading in our family! All these years of watching their mom pull out her mat for daily practice and it takes a video game to interest my kids in yoga. I have never been a yoga-pusher, knowing that would surely backfire if I tried too hard to get the kids involved in yoga practice. My youngest does pull out her own mat and join me on occasion, but the older kids are just now enjoying the feeling of postures and noticing their alignment. It is fun to see the whole family involved. I have to say, the rating system gives it a competitive nature, and the internal focus that yoga promotes is somewhat lost by looking at the screen and following the red dot! But anything that introduces one to yoga practice is celebrated in my eyes.
It is clear that there are mixed options about the Balance Board as novices and yogis alike take on the Wii Fit challenge. I am gratified that so many are interested in yoga and that the new fangled technology is crossing with the ancient and sacred system of yoga.
I will never turn up my nose to modern versions of yoga, even though we are just scratching the surface of yoga, it is an introduction, and I think it is great to expose people to this beautiful practice for the mind, body and spirit. Having said that, I think that anyone who is to be dedicated to a yoga practice will take what they can from the Wii Fit and develop their understanding of the postures. I am not the first to point out the shortcomings in the demonstrations/descriptions of the postures in the Wii Fit yoga.
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At first, I had found the Wii Fit Yoga Balancing Board an engaging instrument for its usefulness as a yoga tool. As I progress in the practice I have been seeing with a critical eye how Wii Fit Yoga lacks precision in descriptions and demonstrations of the poses. Really, the board is great, what an awesome biofeedback tool(!), but the descriptions for the postures are not comprehensive, leaving out important alignment and structural principles. Let me elucidate you as to how the posture, Chaturanga Dandasana, or Four-Limbed Staff Pose, is improperly described. It is a common failure, in fact, to dub the posture ‘push-up pose’, because of its likeness to the push-up, although in the classical yoga posture the elbows are hugged to the sides, protecting the rotator cuff from injury. Interestingly, there is an article in May’s Yoga Journal by Natasha Rizopoulos, on the proper alignment of this pose. It’ll be interesting to see if another developer could put together a program with better descriptions and demonstrations, maybe even with custom series to address areas of focus. If anyone from Nintendo is reading this and wants to contact me for more information… J
