A Journey to Enlightenment: Yoga Poses, by Lockwood
By Jin Lovelace, HSM team writer and filmmaker
Ask yourself this: are there any items in Home that you feel connected to? If so, to what extent?
Home is designed to explore our social perspectives on what it is that connects us, motivates us to broaden our horizons — in a virtual MMO, of all places. The vast majority of us want to explore the possibilities of friendship, camaraderie, perhaps even something deeper to be found on here, or to group with a gregarious crowd for events and functions that’ll deepen such aspects with reason to why they log onto Home in the first place.
And you have Home developers who create products to help with the immersion for quality experiences that maybe, perhaps, we can’t find or even perform in the real world. They sell the content to the inhabitants; we buy them, and simply enjoy them or not.
So the motive behind this article: I never thought one item could actually immerse me to the point of finding an interesting purpose in my life.
What?
Someone told me that those who get Home could actually see certain items open a social spectrum: creative self-expression, be it fashion, decorating, or finding yourself playing all of the exclusive Home games available. This sort of freedom defines us as real: who we converse with, the fashions that we don, and the grammar we display in the chat log defines real; we portray ourselves perhaps as we wish to be — as we see ourselves as being — and that core personality is interesting to study when real-life markers are stripped away.
Character defines our Home experience; Home is a social metaverse which ultimately only sells us ourselves, and for the small group of people who get Home, it is an intoxicating journey.
The inquiry put forth at the beginning of this article comes from the lack of knowledge of one exercise that most of us would pass up on Home: yoga.
Yoga is defined as a Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline, including breath control, simple meditation, and a view to attain a state of permanent peace. Apart from the spiritual intent, yoga is known for its muscular, skeletal and mental health improvements, and is often used as a complete exercise program and physical therapy routine.
So how does this translate to the world that we know as PlayStation Home?
What I didn’t expect was for Lockwood to create avatar yoga poses, for me to have an open mind to try it, and to really see the purpose behind it: enjoyment.
If you were to view this item as entertainment, then the $2.99 price tag won’t justify such perspective compared to other gestures and LMOs you find on Home. It doesn’t make you appear sexy, fair, or garner attention similar to what the divas you find in the Hub or on the forums receive. But for personal use, this is intriguing. I can’t speak for anyone else’s perspective, but the decision by Lockwood to invest in something which at first glance seems to be at something of a right-angle to Home — I mean, if yoga is used for physical conditioning, why apply it to an avatar whose shape can be changed at will?
That’s the beauty of these things: they’re not designed to appeal to the masses. They serve no purpose other than to help you express a theme of self-improvement, if that theme is sufficiently important to you.
This video explores the four poses that comes with this pack, along with its therapeutic purposes. If this video enticed you enough, go visit the Lockwood store and check them out for yourselves. I do hope Lockwood produces more yoga poses in the future.
August 7th, 2013 by Jin Lovelace | 4 comments
Jin Lovelace is a machinimist and team writer for HomeStation Magazine, as well as the founder of Twilight Touch Inc. -- http://twilighttouchinc.com and http://youtube.com/twilighttouchinc. When not found in PlayStation Home, Jin studies graphic design and illustration (character design and fashion), gaming, and the culinary arts.
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Great article/video Jin, however I just wanted to add a little food for thought here.
When I first started doing yoga I believed like a great many people that yoga was just about the “odd poses” but after awhile I decided I wanted to learn more, so I enrolled in a yoga teaching program. In that program, my yogi taught me that the poses was only an eighth of yoga the state of mind and breathing were just as important. (That’s my little background for this next statement)I believe that these yoga move whether it’s Lockwood’s or Konami they could really maybe prove quite beneficial to people, say outside of Home you can not do yoga poses, maybe you could get the same benefits by putting your avatar in a peaceful space like VEEMEE’s Acorn Meadows Park have it start doing the poses, then in the “real world” you could start to relax, slow down your breath and feel the same as you would in a yoga studio.
What can I say, I enjoy yoga.
XD That’s the point of the article. I’ve undergone a full two-week study with the use of these poses and found myself in a tranquil state of mind to surmise that everything I though of--everything I saw many would combat as “real” on Home--IS indeed real and we all should be treated equally without judgement.
For anyone that does “get” Yoga may very well teach me something about the exercise because I do lack knowledge on the medium. But it is something that I might sink myself into from time to time in real life.
Thanks for the words, KFC. :3
Haven’t had a chance to read the article yet, but I just wanted to share my first impression of the Yoga poses. I just have to. My first thought went back to when I was a developer on IMVU years back. They had a lot of trouble with yoga poses and what not because the independent developers were secretly making them so that you could combine them with other avatars using the poses and create dirty poses for people too young or too cheap for an “adult pass”.
Anyway, thank god these are REAL yoga poses!
Lol Agreed, I suppose. xD