What if your prospects could teleport to an island free of the judgmental atmosphere in the gym, where they could meet in an intimate setting and learn how to live a healthy lifestyle? Now imagine doing this for free without your prospect ever leaving the comfort of their own home. Those would be some powerful barriers to break down.

Only in a fantasy world, you say? Well, not exactly. One health club is doing it in the powerfully adaptive virtual platform Second Life.

Club One Inc., which operates 19 commercial health clubs in the real world, has launched a pilot program in the virtual world to educate people about nutrition and exercise. They've built their own virtual island with all the bells and whistles of an up-scale health club and much more.

Before we dig deeper into Club One's program, it's important to gain some level of understanding about Second Life (SL). It's a virtual world, which, in some ways, seems to mirror the real world. Each resident of the virtual world has a avatar that, with the exception of the ability to fly and teleport, resembles a human. There is a sophisticated economy in which real money changes hands. Major universities, clothing retailers, and property developers are building a presence in the virtual world, and now, led by Club One, our industry is building its presence.

Club One is the first in our industry to harness the power of this technology with their pilot program, which is currently offered on Club One Island to a limited number of participants, the majority of which were not previously residents of SL and joined specifically for this pilot program. It consists of high-level interactions with Club One Island's staff in small group educational sessions. The program is not being marketed as a way to lose weight in the short term, though.

"The goal is not to just cycle participants through a 12-week course," said Celeste DeVaneaux, the creator of Club One Island. "It is to help the participant re-frame the way they think about food and movement so they can break the yo-yo cycle of dieting and sporadic exercise."

DeVaneaux plans to arm the pilot program participants with the knowledge they need to live a healthy lifestyle. Club One Island, for instance, has a convenience store that allows class members to browse through the food and drink selection and read nutrition labels in an interactive way. There is also a virtual restaurant for the same function. On top of nutrition classes, Club One Island offers a full health clubs experience, including virtual weight training, group exercise, cardio, and even some more exotic workouts, like parasailing, surfing, and roller skating.

The lessons, however, have to carry over into the real world for the program to be successful.

"It's counter-intuitive to imagine that sitting for an hour in a chair will cause you to lose weight," DeVaneaux said. "It will not cause you to lose weight, but it will educate and retrain you to think that when you leave that chair, you're making different lifestyle choices." This is a crucial step in Club One's plan.

"People can experience activity visually before they have to do it physically," said Bill McBride, Club One's COO. "They're seeing themselves as more comfortable and confident coming into a club environment." Some members of the pilot program have joined one of Club One's locations, but McBride describes that as an "ancillary benefit" and not the goal of Club One Island.

In the digital age, there is no shortage of educational material on health, as evidenced by the roughly 47 millions web pages returned in a Google search for how to lose weight. Of course within the millions of documents on the web, you'll find a variety of multimedia content which will vary greatly in quality.

With this plethora of health-related content, it's natural to wonder what makes Club One Island any different than the rest. According to DeVaneaux, there are two reasons SL has an advantage over other mediums when it comes to teaching and delivering content.

For starters, the level of interactivity that's possible in SL is much greater than what's possible in more traditional content delivery models, like websites or books. This is evidenced by the various programming they offer, like nutrition and exercise classes. And also by the fact that participants are talking to real members of club one's staff.

Another ingredient in Club One Island's recipe is the connection the user has to his or her Avatar. DeVaneaux compares this relationship to the ones we develop with other objects.

"We become invested in our cars, our clothes, and anything that is representative of who we are. Avatars represent who we are and the more they visually represent us or our idealized self, the more attached we become. And, the more attached we become to our avatars, the more we are motivated to emulate them in our everyday lives," said DeVaneaux. "That is why avatar association is so powerful."

This style of learning is not without precedent. Harvard and NYU are examples of the several schools that have built a presence in SL. There are even mental health specialists in SL, which meet for paid sessions with clients in the virtual world. Avalon Birke was the first mental health specialists to build her own virtual island, and her experience reaffirms some of the methods Club One is using to connect with their pilot program participants.

"I would not have been able to predict the ability to create a therapeutic alliance with a client over a two-dimensional, text-based medium," said Birke. "But it happens." She has consulted clients in SL since 2006 and has found great success connecting with people. However, she acknowledges that what a lot of her clients, who, many of which, would not otherwise seek help, need is a the push to get help in real life.

Club One hopes to accomplish something similar to Birke, according to McBride. "The concept really is, how do you teach good habits, behavior change, and confidence in movement to an audience that might not ever walk into a club."

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