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I’ve been feeling a little guilty recently. Been a little too heavy and even wound up assigning homework (egad)! I thought I’d shake things up a little and share some interesting things that I have found. Mary Poppins said that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. You know me, I’m always on the lookout for new techs to improve our lives. Any new tech that actually serves us instead of the other way around is pretty good in my book. One thing that has surprised me over and over is that there has been a lasting shortage of games designed to improve your life. There have been attempts here and there, but nothing that I would get excited about. I have noticed that in the last few years, there have been some such games released. I myself have two of them.
Work it out with “Yourself! Fitness”
This “game” is a self-contained workout program. It starts out by building a profile for you based on the results of various tests. Then it will ask you for a long-term goal, such as flexibility, weight loss, cardio health, or strength in one area or another. You also set up a workout schedule. Be warned that if you miss a workout, the trainer will know, and you’ll hear about it. Once that is done, you’re set. When you go to workout, the game will pick a daily focus for you. You can override this if you want, but it’s generally better to go with whatever the game selects. You are given the option of working out for 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes. You can also elect to use items such as weights or a stability ball, or hand weights. Select your music and environment, and off you go. The game builds each workout from scratch each time, so no two workout sessions are the same. This is good for reducing boredom, as doing the same workout routine over and over can make it difficult to stay with it. The trainer will be on the screen and there will be a scrolling bar showing what exercise you are doing now and what’s coming up. You will proceed through a warm-up, the main exercise portion, and the cooldown, all in the time frame you specified. Breathers are interspersed in the workout. As you continue to workout when you said you would, you get more options in music and scenery, as an incentive.
The game does have a few flaws, however. The game has a glitch wherein you have a breather coming up and the game will switch it over to an exercise as soon as the breather was set to start. Not a big deal, just take the breather as it was scheduled, but it’s annoying. Another problem is that while the trainer will ask you if the exercises are too difficult for you, she will not ask about your fatigue level. If you get so fatigued that you can barely keep up, yet the exercise itself doesn’t tax your muscles, it’s difficult to make the program understand that. This is part of the game’s only real flaw: Although this game has unprecedented flexibility for it’s type, it still needs more. For example, the game designers bought into the theory that if you are over a certain number of pounds, you need to lose weight. Other factors are irrelevant. As a result, I have mine set to cardio workouts, and focus on fitness rather than weight. Another example of flexibility that could have been added (and maybe will be added if there is a sequel) is the ability to describe physical activity done without the game. You could bike for 50 miles on the day of the workout, but unless you work out with the game, it has no way to know. Still, despite these flaws, I am extremely pleased to have my own copy. It really helps out. It is available for Windows, Xbox, and PS2.
Journey to the Wild Divine - The Passage
This one I got more recently and I am really excited about it. This game is used to teach relaxation and meditative techs. It uses biofeedback sensors as the controls for the game. The sensors are three “magic rings” that attach to your index, middle, and ring fingers. They connect to a USB device that plugs into your computer. They measure things such as heart rate, skin conductivity, and heart rate variability. The game uses the data from these sensors to determine what your mental/emotional state is. The game automatically adjusts each time you put on the rings, so you needn’t worry about someone else messing up your profile.
The game guides you through the realm of the Wild Divine, which has a dreamworld feel to it. If you have played puzzle games such as the Myst series, then the format will be familliar to you. However, the challenge here is not to figure out the puzzles, but to attain the state necessary to proceed. It starts you out with simple challenges to get you used to the way it works, then will start scaling them up. What’s really fun about that is that after you have progressed through the game for awhile you can go back to the ones that gave you trouble and blow them away with your increased mastery. As you explore you will find tools that will help you. A magical mirror will guide you to your next challenge, Interacting with different guides in the game will yield different hints when you are participating in a challenge. Interacting with one guide will allow him to appear and give advice no matter where you go.
The exercises come in three basic types, with variations here and there. There are exercises to raise your energy. These are to “get the blood flowing”. There are exercises to find your inner calm and relax. These can be tricky, because when you get excited because you have almost beaten it, boom, you have to make up ground. This is my favorite because you learn to have a “passive will” regarding those exercises. You relax, and you accept that you are winning, but don’t let it throw you off. The other exercises deal with breathing techniques. These can be the most challenging of the game, and consequently they do not appear until later on. I’ve played through the game already, and continue to play it, but have not yet started on the sequel. I want to get my breathing techniques down before I play the sequel. Journey to the Wild Divine has been a big boost for getting control over my emotional state. I had been working for some time on remaining calm and centered when surrounded by chaos. Playing this game helped immensely. I would recommend it for anyone. It can be purchased here. Here is a trailer for the first one.
Brain Age
I have no personal experience with this game, but it looks impressive, and owners of the game that I have spoken to all give glowing reviews. The game gives you a mental workout, using math and puzzles. As opposed to the meditative exercises of the Wild Divine, Brain Age would appear to be more like mental aerobics. Unfortunately, the game seems to be out only for Nintendo DS, so if you’re like me and don’t have it, then you would seem to be out of luck for now.
On Monday, I’ll go more into opening communication with your non-conscious mind. In the meantime, keep up the homework, and remember to have fun!
