Why social media is ruining your yoga practice?

The Bhagavad Gita states that ‘Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.’

Yoga practice is about understanding and accepting who you are and welcoming who you may become through the practice. The whole ‘journey’ is a gem to become a more evolved human being, albeit hard work physically whatever asana you are performing depending on your flexibility or stiffness. Yoga makes you a whole, allows you to face your fears and inner self, gives you courage, and enhances your forgiveness, and it can literally change your life if and when you are ready to allow that to happen.

Over the centuries yoga has been performed/practiced and taught by men particularly in India till B.K.S Iyengar brought it to the West with highly referenced and timeless ‘Light on Yoga’ this book alone opened the flood gates of yoga asana practice, particularly among women. Yoga grew and snowballed into a massive industry of buying & selling products as well as training teachers that produced a surplus of Yoga Teachers who had to make their names known and get those studios filled- fast. This is where the advertising had to become innovative, engaging, cheap, and cheerful, and hey what better way to do that than Social Media.

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Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (all of which I own!) had to serve and advertise the teacher who rented/owned a studio that needed to run, suddenly the classes stopped being a ‘yoga class’ and it became ‘Yoga with Rose/Mary/Thyme/Parsley’ each one of the RoseMaryThyme&Parsley had to perform ‘better’ balancing Asanas in skimpier clothes and thinner they became. Out goes Ahimsa- Sattya- Asteya, incomes thinner- fitter- ‘healthier’- over-stylized- strong yogis & yoginis who promoted thinner/ sinewy you, stole (!) teachings from various styles and turned Yoga into a pornographic spectacle that can be consumed, social media has done to yoga what pornography did to women and I am not talking about the amount of flesh but the regular overused images of various poses mainly with arm balances or backbends. Yoga is summarised in arm balancing! This richness of images alone took yoga out of yoga, it had to be performed and ‘liked despite injuries, despite the impossibilities. I know teachers who refused food not to gain weight, I know teachers who do selfies in lonely hotel rooms to meet their ‘yoga challenge’, I know teachers who perform whilst ignoring their injuries, I know teachers who spent hours stylizing their yoga pose. The show must go on!

Yoga is for everyone! Not just the thin-white women. Yoga does not make you thin, yoga makes you intelligent so you love and accept yourself as you are, so that you don’t get Botox because you don’t ‘look perfect’. Yoga is not about perfection, it is about finding the perfect in you. Social media yoga is preventing just this. Having taught for many years now and practicing for 30 years, I would say ditch the social media/ ditch the ‘yogaporn’ and be ‘yoga’ however hard that may be. Although getting harder let’s remember some of the most famous yoga teachers who may not possess Fb pages, Instagram accounts, or any great pictures of balancing poses! Their classes are full and they have a world of knowledge to share gained through regular and steady yoga practice.