Stylist road tests a futuristic yoga class

Our new yoga guru is a machine. No, really. It’s an actual machine… Moya Lothian-McLean tries it out.

Friday afternoon and I’m off to calm my end-of-the-week nerves with a relaxing session of yoga. But when I get there my yogi isn’t quite the bendy instructor I had in mind. For a start, it’s made of aluminium. And it’s only 40cm tall. Alpha – or Alpha 1 Pro if you want to use its formal name – is the product of a crowd-funded campaign by Chinese company UBTech. A humanoid ‘house’ robot, it’s able to read bedtime stories such as Alice In Wonderland, send emails and post to social media. It’s designed to slot into your home like Mary Poppins crossed with Optimus Prime.

But the Stylist team are here to experience the small robot’s zen side. Alpha has around 20 pre-programmed movements to work through and its companion app allows us to input further positions to try out. Realising a robot is more flexible than you is a tough pill to swallow, but as we move from a reverse plank to warrior III, it becomes obvious that proper knees give its human students an edge – Alpha does have a tendency to topple sometimes. By the end of the 45-minute session I was covered in a light sheen and my back – where I’d been suffering from a suspected trapped nerve – felt noticeably looser and has continued to improve.

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