Yoga Technology

Week 11/52 Haikus
Originally uploaded by Altered-Perspectives.

New Technologies

Helping This Generation

Find Ancient Wisdom

I bought my daughter a Wii Fit game with balance board this weekend. It's pretty good, has a load of aerobic, strength, balance and flexibility games (they call it Yoga hahaha) for kids to play. It makes exercise of different forms enjoyable, my daughter loves it.

But today she started playing, did her fitness test and the start and it unlocked a new "balance Game" called Zazen. For those who don't know, Zazen is the Zen Buddhist practice of sitting, usually done kneeling rather than cross-legged.

The aim here is to sit as still as you can. The candle in the pic flickers the more you move. As the game goes on a wee moth (seen here) comes onto the screen to distract you. And there's a creepy sound of someone stomping up behind you on the creaking wooden floorboards. And finally a nasty buzzing mosquito sound. Oh, and the moth hits the flame at times and burns up hahaha

I actually think this game is great, and am serious about this idea of technology making wisdom practices more accessible. it is externalising to some degree, but if it helps people improve their calmness in life, ti is great. Only problem is that this game only goes on for 3 minutes - I would think it far better if it was limitless (it stops if you move too much) and gave people a longer time to settle down.

I think new technology offers a good portal to some people to access the benefits of yoga and meditation. I think that bio-feedback devices could help someone access the powers of meditation, and hopefully move from improving on the external signs to being able to calm themselves using the internal signs.

PS in case anyone is wondering, these occasional haikus that I post are my own, part of the 52 haikus project on Flickr where you post a pic and a related haiku each week.