ExoPranayama: a biofeedback-driven actuated environment for supporting yoga breathing practices

Moran, Stuart; Jäger, Nils; Schnädelbach, Holger; Glover, Kevin

Abstract

© 2016, The Author(s). Both breathing and internal self-awareness are an integral part of any yoga practice. We describe and discuss the development of ExoPranayama, an actuated environment that physically manifests users’ breathing in yoga. Through a series of trials with yoga practitioners and expert teachers, we explore its role in the practice of yoga. Our interview results reveal that biofeedback through the environment supported teaching and improved self-awareness, but it impacted group cohesion. Two practical uses of the technology emerged for supporting breath control in yoga: (1) biofeedback can provide new information about users’ current internal states; (2) machine-driven feedback provides users with a future state or goal and leads to improved cohesiveness.

Citation

Moran, S., Jäger, N., Schnädelbach, H., & Glover, K. (2016). ExoPranayama: a biofeedback-driven actuated environment for supporting yoga breathing practices. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 20(2), 261-275. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-016-0910-3

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 4, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Publication Date: 2016-04
• Deposit Date: Mar 24, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Journal: Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
• Print ISSN: 1617-4909
• Electronic ISSN: 1617-4917
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 261-275
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-016-0910-3
• Keywords: Management Science and Operations Research; Hardware and Architecture; Computer Science Applications
• Public URL: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/32506
• Publisher URL: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00779-016-0910-3
• Copyright Statement: Copyright information regarding this work can be found at the following address: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0