Learn using Google Hangouts

We love offering our clients the best tools to benefit their unique minds and bodies, instead of applying a one-size-fits-all approach.  Learning yoga, mindfulness or art therapy via Google Hangouts is a bit like watching a smart DVD.  You get all the remote learning benefits, but you can also pause and ask questions if there is anything you don’t understand or when you feel stuck.

Isn’t it a bit… remote?

We actually feel the complete opposite.  Yoga, mindfulness or art therapy sessions conducted online often have a real freshness to them.  To many of us this style of communication has become second nature now, and in some cases it seems to encourage people that are naturally more introverted to come out of their shells and ask questions, we love this!

With yoga how do you ensure people are aligned correctly?

As long as you set yourself up so that your teacher can see your whole body, then they can easily see what is going on as you move in and out of the asana (poses).  This enables your teacher to easily tailor and adjust the practice just as we do for our studio based sessions.  Our teachers all use high quality equipment so that we are able to stand away from the camera and demonstrate what is being taught.

What happens if I have internet issues?!

We never book in back to back remote sessions, this gives us the ability to extend your class if we experience intermittent connectivity issues.  If either you or your teacher have a major outage, we will reconnect with you by an alternative means to re-arrange the session.  Remote classes enable a level of flexibility not previously possible when home sessions were the only option.

I like to know all the details, tell me more about Google Hangouts…

Google Hangouts is a communication service developed by Google which includes instant messaging, video chat and SMS. It replaces three messaging products that Google previously offered; Google Talk, Google+ Messenger (formerly: Huddle), and Hangouts, a video chat system present within Google+.

Hangouts allows conversations between two or more users. The service can be accessed online through the Gmail or Google+ websites, or through mobile apps available for Android and iOS (which were distributed as a successor to their existing Google Talk apps). However, because it uses a proprietary protocol[7] instead of the XMPP open standard protocol used by Google Talk, most third-party applications which had access to Google Talk do not have access to Google+ Hangouts.

Chat histories are saved online, allowing them to be synced between devices. A “watermark” of a user’s avatar is used as a marker to indicate how far they have read into the conversation. Photos can be shared during conversations, which are automatically uploaded into a private Google+ album. Users can also now use color emoji symbols in their messages.[18][19]

As with the previous Google+ Hangouts, users can also perform group video now with up to 25 concurrent users in HD video for Work/Education.  For Google Chrome, users do not need to install a plugin. However, for Internet Explorer 11, the user must install the “Google Talk Plugin” to be able to use the video features.

Special features

Typing “/ponies” will let an animated pony (similar to the ones from My Little Pony) canter across the screen. There are a total of 21 different ponies. Typing “/ponystream” will unleash loads of ponies all running in different directions (right or left) on your screen. Unlike the other Easter eggs, the ponystream is only visible to the user who types it.

Another good Easter egg or surprise feature is that Typing “/shydino” will let a dinosaur hiding behind a house appear on the screen. To make the dinosaur and the house disappear, simply type in “/shydino” again,