Is the Wii Fit a yogi tool or fad toy?
We are ecstatic that Nintendo Wii has released a tool that enhances body awareness, strength, and stability. As a complement to the family video console, Nintendo Wii has released Wii Fit, with a series of exercises and yoga postures that allow you to set your physical properties, training goals, and history of your activity results.
For months as an onlooker to the Wii in my living room-occasionally joining in for a round of bowling (I even got a few strikes!)- I was so pleased about this addition to our family entertainment system which includes exercises more up to my speed! The Wii Fit is outfitted with a Balance Board, which resembles a scale, but can determine subtle (very subtle) movements and balancing points and display them on screen. In essence this is a biofeedback tool. Any yoga practitioner would benefit from practicing with the Balance Board.
I have been practicing yoga for 15 years and teaching for 10, and I find this is an excellent tool for understanding the alignment and core principles of our yoga postures. I have a keen eye to give modifications and corrections to students’ postures, but there are intrinsic balancing aspects that only the student themselves can feel, or in this case, that the Balance Board can subtly perceive through weight distribution in the foot, that will cue the student to aligning into better balance and strengthening the body in integrity. The Wii Fit yoga takes you through 15 poses, with simple and concise descriptions and demonstrations. On the screen the practitioner observes a yogi (or yogini!) model and a highlighted yellow area tells you where the centre of balance should be, a red dot indicting where the actual centre of gravity falls. An attempt is made to keep this red dot within a boundary set in the highlighted area on the model demonstrating the pose. At the end of each pose, you can see how you did on the left and right side via a score and overall scan of where your red dot travelled during the duration of the pose.
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