"Exergame" aims to turn yoga into an activity the sight-impaired can enjoy more easily by tracking their motions and offering verbal cues on how to strike poses correctly.

Australian rugby players take part in a National Rugby League yoga recovery session in Sydney last month. Yoga can be hard for the blind and sight-impaired since they can't follow an instructor's visual example.

As anyone who has attempted a bakasana knows, perfecting certain yoga poses takes time, and watching an instructor twist and bend into position can help a lot.

The blind or sight-impaired, however, don't have the advantage of being able to see a teacher's movements.

Enter Eyes-Free Yoga, a software program out of the University of Washington that works with the cameras in Microsoft's Kinect motion sensor device to track users' position and offer spoken feedback in real time. "Rotate your shoulders left," it might say. "Lean sideways toward your left," "Bend your right leg further," or "Bring your arms closer to your head."

Currently, the virtual yoga instructor offers auditory input for six yoga poses, including Warrior I and II, Tree, and Chair, and contains about 30 different commands for improving each.

Project lead Kyle Rector, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering, conferred with a number of yoga teachers to nail the proper stance for each pose. She also did lots of yoga while writing the Eyes-Free Yoga code, testing and tweaking it by purposefully making mistakes while exercising.

We hope this acts as a gateway to encouraging people with visual impairments to try exercise on a broader scale. --Julie Kientz, University of Washington professor

Using skeletal-tracking technology and basic geometry, the Kinect suggests alignment for a user's core, then proceeds to the head and neck area and the arms and legs. It also gives kudos when someone holds a pose correctly.

Rector and her collaborators -- Julie Kientz, a UW assistant professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering, and Cynthia Bennett, a research assistant in computer science and engineering -- detail their research (PDF) in the conference proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGACCESS International Conference on Computers and Accessibility, which takes place in Bellevue, Wash., next week.

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'Eyes-Free Yoga' turns Kinect into teacher for the blind

SANTA FE Yoga is taught at John Baker Elementary School in Albuquerque, but the term itself is taboo.

Physical education teacher Ann Paulls-Neal on Friday told a legislative committee that she refers to yoga as "stretching or mat work" to avoid any suggestion that the class is religious in nature.

Nonetheless, state Rep. Alonzo Baldonado, an evangelical Christian, questioned her about whether alternate activities are offered to children who object to yoga based on their religious beliefs.

Paulls-Neal said she had one student, a Jehovah's Witness, who was excused from yoga on request.

She said her yoga class makes no mention of any religion, instead placing all the emphasis on physical activity and its importance in staying healthy.

Paulls-Neal, other teachers and a physician testified before the Legislative Education Study Committee about programs to combat childhood obesity.

Baldonado, R-Los Lunas, said his concern was that yoga is grounded in Eastern religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism.

"I think it tends to open a door to a practice tied to a religious belief," he said in an interview after the hearing. "There is a good population of people out there who feel that way, so we have to ask if another option is available for them."

Baldonado homeschools his three daughters. He said his girls attend a private swimming program, but he removes them from it when the coach uses yoga as a means of improving strength and flexibility.

Parents with children in public schools should have the option of a different activity if they oppose yoga as a possible gateway to religious indoctrination, he said.

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