SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Most of the nation’s 36 million yogis practice at home using one of the millions of yoga-related videos on YouTube today.1 But home practitioners face one big problem: there’s no sure way to know if you’re doing yoga correctly, or if you’re improving over time. That is, until now.
Introducing PIVOT Yoga, the world’s smartest yoga wear, app, and instructional content, which helps you perfect your practice from the comfort of your home. It’s now available for US and Canadian customers.
“Good feedback is essential to deepening a yoga practice,” said Joe Chamdani, CEO & Co-Founder of TuringSense, intelligent wearables pioneer and developer of PIVOT Yoga. “And yet, for good reasons, yogis most commonly want to practice at home, where feedback is hard to come by.” He continued, “To truly democratize and expand yoga, we needed a way to do both at the same time. Our solution puts million-dollar technology and leading yoga teachers within reach of anyone, anytime and anywhere."
Among PIVOT Yoga’s founding teachers are notable West Coast teachers Briohny Smyth, Brett Larkin, Kim Sin, and Molly Grace. PIVOT Yoga intends to work with the most-respected yoga teachers in the world, teaching most major styles of yoga.
A Complete System
PIVOT Yoga consists of an exclusively developed line of yoga wear, with “barely-there” sensors in each garment. These clothes look, feel, breathe, wash, and perform like regular high-end yoga clothes, but communicate wirelessly with the company’s free mobile app and special online classes developed with PIVOT Yoga’s founding teachers.
How It Works
A PIVOT Yoga user simply puts on the clothes, opens the mobile app, and chooses a pre-recorded online class. Class starts after a short calibration routine—no equipment to set up, no cameras to position, and no furniture to move out of the way. When the instructor appears on screen, PIVOT Yoga digitally inserts a live avatar of the yogi’s body into the video, allowing side-by-side practice with the teacher. The yogi has voice control over video playback, including being able to pause it while adjusting a pose. Plus—and this is also a first—the yogi can get into the pose and ask, “How’s this look?” The teacher, in her own voice, will respond, in an automatic but completely customized way, and make specific, down-to-the-inch suggestions about how to improve the pose. View our video here.
Features
PIVOT Yoga’s multi-patented platform, four years in the making, has several industry firsts and unique features:
- Live Avatar Display Inside an Online Class Video. On PIVOT only, a yogi can effectively practice alongside the teacher, without leaving home or having an in-person private lesson. Data capture from the yogi’s body is updated at 50 Hz (50 times/second) for a lifelike, accurate avatar presentation digitally placed inside a teacher’s video class.
- Detailed, On-Demand Alignment Feedback. During class, a yogi’s pose is continuously compared to her teachers at 16 points, one for each major bone in the body. Want explicit feedback? Simply say “How’s this look?” PIVOT identifies which body part needs an alignment correction the most and makes down-to-the-inch suggestions about how to adjust.
- Leading Teachers. The class library is beginning with content from PIVOT Yoga’s founding teachers. Once the library’s first phase rollout is complete, yogis will be charged $19/month for unlimited access to all PIVOT Yoga classes. A single yoga class in a studio can cost that much, or more.
- Progress Tracking. Exclusive progress tracking capability tracks how closely a yogi’s poses match her teacher’s, during a single class and across different classes and sessions. PIVOT can track and display how a yogi executes a pose over time, or quickly identify a yogi’s strongest poses and those that suggest room for improvement.
- Voice-Controlled Operation. A yogi sets PIVOT to work with her voice exclusively. So without leaving her pose, she can control her experience. Getting lost on a pose? Just tell the teacher to “Wait a sec.” You’ll have all the time you need to catch up. The teacher will resume the class when you—and only you—say so.
- 720-Degree Views. Because PIVOT technology is based on digital motion capture, PIVOT can display all sides of a pose, including an overhead view.
- Technical Breakthrough. PIVOT’s accuracy is comparable to (and in some cases better than) multimillion-dollar Hollywood optical motion capture systems. Yet it costs thousands of times less, takes just a few minutes to start up, and is immune to technical problems (like magnetic interference) that have beset traditional digital motion capture systems.
PIVOT Yoga Pricing & Availability
PIVOT Yoga is now available for shipping to residents of the U.S. and Canada. The garments are $99 for both pants and top, half the cost of high-end yoga clothes using similar fabrics. Unlimited classes will be $19/month, beginning June 1, 2020. The free iOS app, which requires PIVOT Yoga garments and an iPhone, can be downloaded from the App Store now.
The PIVOT Yoga Shirt & Pant are available online for ordering now.
An Opportunity for Yoga Teachers
With PIVOT Yoga, instructors now have the opportunity to extend their reach beyond the classroom. Teachers will be able to have students from around the world, at any time – day or night. And while often there is not enough time to devote to individual feedback for studio-based instruction, PIVOT can provide a way to extend a teacher’s instruction.
“I’ve been teaching online for years,” noted Brett Larkin, a founding teacher on PIVOT Yoga. “I love it, but one of the things that’s really challenging is that I can’t give feedback to each individual student in the way I could if I were in the same room with them in person…I’m so excited about [PIVOT Yoga] technology because it’s going to let people refine their postures at home with the help of a caring teacher.”
About PIVOT Yoga
PIVOT Yoga, the world’s smartest yoga wear and online instruction, offers the first way for yogis to perfect their practice and get a teacher’s feedback anytime from the comfort of their home. PIVOT Yoga is the first consumer product developed by TuringSense, a pioneer in intelligent wearables technology. Revolutionizing instruction for all kinds of human movement activities, the company’s line of PIVOT-branded consumer products uses patented technology (US patents 10,157,488 and 10,304,230) so consumers can learn skills and track progress. TuringSense is venture-backed and based in Santa Clara, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. For more information, visit https://pivot.yoga/
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1 As of November 12, 2019. See https://www.google.com/search?q=yoga+site:youtube.com. The 2016 Yoga in America study found that of 36 million yogis in the US, 65% of respondents cited home as a place to practice, vs. 45% for yoga studios. And the 2019 Eventbrite Yoga Survey showed that 67% of yogis practice at home. Statista recently published a forecast that there will be 55 million yogis in the US by 2020.
