The human concern with physical fitness is as old as prehistory, when hunting for food required the ability to run long distances and enough physical strength to overcome prey, and when conflict with neighbors over food and other natural resources was often decided according to the maxim “survival of the fittest”.
Even after most humans no longer had to depend on strength to survive in the wild, a concern for fitness persisted into the earliest civilizations. The ancient Greeks formed public institutions called “gymnasiums” where young men received training in physical exercises, wrestling, boxing and ball games, and schooling in philosophy.
In China, the philosophical teachings of Confucius encouraged participation in regular physical activity. It was recognized by the ancient Chinese that physical inactivity was associated with certain diseases (referred to as organ malfunctions and internal stoppages, which sound similar to heart disease and diabetes) that were preventable with regular exercise for fitness. Cong Fu (called Kung Fu in the West) was subsequently developed as a gymnastic program to keep the body in good, working condition.
In India, yoga was developed first as a system of Hindu philosophy that strives to bring together and personally develop the body, mind, and spirit. Hatha Yoga, the form of yoga with which Westerners are most familiar, is defined by a series of exercises in physical posture and breathing patterns. Ancient Indian philosophers recognized health benefits conferred by yoga including proper organ functioning and whole well-being. Additionally, meditation practices have been used in India and throughout the ancient Far East for thousands of years to calm the mind and provide physical, spiritual and emotional balance to the practitioner.
In the United States, physical fitness has, until relatively recently, been an almost purely physical endeavor, involving sporting activities such as track and field and ball games, competitions such as wrestling and boxing, and weight and stamina training. Also, until recently physical fitness has been a largely male activity in the United States.
Since the 1960's and 1970's a change began to take place in the U.S. and other Western countries, in which each of these two long-standing facts concerning physical fitness has rapidly changed. The introduction of Buddhist and Hindu spirituality and philosophy in the West as part of the “self-awareness” explosions of the 60's has resulted in more and more Americans embracing yoga (hatha yoga), Tai Chi, and meditation practices, as well as Chinese, Japanese and Korean martial arts disciplines such as karate, Kung Fu, each of which has a strong spiritual and/or experiential component.
Furthermore, physical fitness itself has also become a far more common and popular practice in the last 30 years than previously in American history. From 2005 to 2014 alone, the number of gym memberships rose 22%. Furthermore, in 2014 gym membership rates in the U.S. were split roughly 50:50 between men and women. The gym, fitness and health club market is valued at around $27 billion annually in the U.S., while it is valued at about $75 billion world-wide.
Additionally, physical fitness, meditation, spirituality, and holistic medicine are today being practiced together under the umbrella term “wellness”. Wellness is a term coined in 1961 by Halbert L. Dunn in his book “High-Level Wellness” to mean “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The so-called Wellness Movement incorporates alternative medicine approaches to holistic health, physical fitness, yoga and meditation in order to attempt for each person to reach their own wellness state.
Wellness centers and studios, in which yoga, physical fitness (such as, without limitation, pilates, martial arts training, stationary bicycling, cardiovascular training and the like) and/or meditation can be taught and practiced are now increasingly common.
Yogis use meditation for their quest to enter “Nirodha”, a state of mind that is not distracted by random thoughts but is fully absorbed in the object of focus. In the fitness world athletes have a different name for a similar phenomenon: athletes across a number of sports often refer to “the zone” to describe the desirable mental state in which awareness of time is suspended, and in which a person is performing at peak or optimal ability, a place of focus, achievement and fulfillment.
In order to create an immersive wellness experience some fitness and meditation studios and centers use music, scent, choreography and/or professional instruction to enhance participants' concentration, training and/or practice and to aid them in reaching such a state of mind.
Some fitness studios have included a visual component as well. Thus, one fitness studio combines knowledge of studio fitness with a 360° cinema technology, which can also be used for live music performances. The Edge of Fitness, addidias GamePlan A (Aug. 4, 2014) at https://www.gameplan-a.com/2014/08/the-edge-of-fitness/. Participants find themselves surrounded by video content that projects onto three screens of a purposefully built studio. People are immersed in the video content's perfect synchronization with music and the trainer's instructions, and can get into the zone, leaving their day-to-day life behind. Thus, participants taking part in a cycle class may find themselves riding up an impossibly steep glacier or sprinting their way around a digital velodrome. In a dance class they might be experiencing a music festival where everybody is dancing together.
According to one article, a meditation studio in New York, Inscape, contains a meditation dome within the studio. Intermix Founder Opens Meditation Studio in NYC, Business Insider (Feb. 18, 2017) at http://www.businessinsidencom/intermix-founder-opens-meditation-studio-in-nyc-2017-2/. Teachers greet guests in the front lobby area, which is set up like a yoga studio, with books and candles available to purchase, and with lockers and restrooms available in the rear. The meditation dome is entered through doors, and the curved roof of the dome is scalloped with geometrical designs which interface with colored mood lighting. The lighting can be adjusted during the meditation session to enhance the meditation experience. The dome thereby creates a space in which the meditation students can have a fruitful meditation experience without everyday distractions and separate from the outside world.
In a Milwaukee fitness studio, participants can choose from a variety of immersive experiences, such as cycling, kickboxing, yoga, and tai chi on a touch screen. Video images are then projected on a large curved screen using technology developed by Surround Fit and Wellness in conjunction with the Marquette University virtual reality lab. Thus, for example, “instead of running a cycling class in February, you'll be riding through a Hawaiian roadside synchronized with [a virtual] instructor.” Fit For You: Virtual Fitness, WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio website (May 31, 2017) at http://wuwm.com/post/fit-you-virtual-fitness.
A Los Angeles yoga studio provides classes in which the practitioners pose and stretch amidst digital projections that encompass the entire four walls of a heated room. Images include forests, marine life, and outer space to heighten the practitioner's senses for an immersive yoga experience. Immersive Yoga Studios, TrendHunter® webpage at https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/technology-and-yoga.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0000099 A1 discloses mood regulation enclosures including an interior space to contain a user, a closable aperture and physical barriers to effectively sensorily separate the user from the outside environment; these enclosures can include displays such as cathode ray tube display screens, LCD displays and LED displays.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2015/0114439 A1 discloses inflatable exercise chambers for performing exercise within.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2016/0059105 A1 discloses a portable outdoor fitness studio for creating an outdoor workout space.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,126,551 discloses a rink and corridor recreational facility comprising movable partitions.
Korean Patent Publication No. 2014/0026095 discloses an interactive yoga studio for a practitioner to enjoy yoga alone without a lecturer while waiting for a flight in an airport. The studio comprises an output device including a sound system for providing voice guidance or music. The output device may also include a projector and screen for receiving information, which may include a preprogrammed video, from a server and displaying the information on a screen.
Each and every patent, patent publication, and non-patent publication cited in this specification is hereby incorporated by reference as part of the specification in its entirety.