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Over the past few months I’ve seen a lot more cries of outrage at the Instagram craziness that plagues the cyber yoga world – which is great (though I confess, I really wish people had starting talking about this 10 years ago – but at least it’s on the table now). Yoga teachers use Instagram images to promote themselves and that’s fine – but hypermobile posture art is not only dangerous for the teachers, it also conveys the message that good yoga practice is basically a quasi-spiritualized Cirque du Soleil performance and that if you want to be “good” at yoga (or even worse, good at teaching yoga) you need to play the game.
Although I think it’s important to avoid shaming folks who feel compeled to share extreme postures, I also think it’s important to kindly and compassionately call it out. A 2017 study showed that yoga injury rate is 10 times higher than was previously reported.
But perhaps that’s because yoga, over the past 25 years or so, has been fermenting in a stew of thinking that promotes hypermobility as the holy grail of good yoga.
Fortunately, that’s starting to change.
I don’t think that yoga teachers need to sacrifice their bodies at the altar of Instagram to be successful.
Rather, I think that if you look beyond gyms and studios you may find many people who could really benefit from your expertise and who are not interested in extreme, hypermobile postures – they just want to feel better and be more comfortable in their bodies.
The 2016 Yoga in America survey showed that only 1 out of 10 people do any yoga at all in a given year. That means there’s a huge number of people who could benefit – if the practice was taught in a way that really speaks to their needs.
I’ve been working on a short, free video series about finding success as a yoga teacher without sacrificing yourself to the cult of Instagram. I mean, I’m kind of being silly here – but it’s very real – exploiting hypermobility eventually leads many teachers to surgery. It doesn’t have to be that way.
You can check out the first video here.
Thank you, you have articulated how I feel. This is fabulous and important article. My studio is often criticized and labeled as a gentle studio. I thought we were just a yoga studio. Sigh. Thanks for writing this.
Claire you are actually the future of this business. Keep up the good work!
Thankyou And well said. I am studying restorative yoga and meditation and feel this is so rewarding for myself and the people who indeed want to start a yoga practice
Thank you so very much for this article. It affirms what is taught in teacher training but is sadly not often practiced. Hopefully this will help stop the injuries and encourage respect for all forms of practice.
Loved this.
I feel sad about a lot of pics on social media, about Asana. It actually puts people off of yoga.
Thankyou. I feel relief to read your post and am continually grateful for your courage and honesty in keeping yoga a safe whole practice and not an ego driven space to shame and exclude.
Teaching yoga has nothing to do with doing acrobatics on a rock in the Bahamas
Peace and gratitude xx
Sal Padma Devi
This is such an important perspective. Subtle Yoga offers a safe and comfortable method and creates an environment for many to start a practice when otherwise, they would not.
Thank you
I have never had the courage to try yoga or go into a studio because I don’t look like or bend like the pics I see.
Is there yoga for me?
I hope so.
yes, there’s definitely yoga for you Gloria! You just need to find the right teacher. FEel free to post on the Subtle Yoga Community page to see if there’s someone teaching slow, mindful practices near you. Or just ask around town – there are people out there who know how to help.
This is such an important topic in the yoga profession right now. I work almost exclusively with people with chronic pain both in a private yoga therapy and research format, and what I hear consistently is that they didn’t think yoga was for them because they are not flexible enough or they thought it would be too intense or hurt them, or just too plain unattainable, which saddens me deeply. But also encourages me to continue to become more adept to offering yoga that is accessible to everyone. These kind of conversations you offer here are imperative to opening the door to help so many people who could learn to help themselves by incorporating yoga into their lives. I also think starting and continuing conversations that yoga and yoga practice does not just encompass asana is huge. Watching someone with debilitating symptoms find a place of peace and comfort using pranayama, meditation, contemplative work, sound work, etc. is so enriching to view but also essential as we continue to nuance the concept of what is yoga in the new yoga professional territory. Thanks so much for your gems!
Yes Barbara! Thank you so much for the work you are doing! It’s your kind of teaching and therapy that the world needs more of these days!
Thank you for pointing this out. As someone who practices yoga, and who has considered becoming a teacher, I am intimidated by these images and the thought if I can’t do these I’m not truly doing yoga, nor could I be a teacher of a practice I feel many would benefit from.
Oh Catherine – the world needs more teachers like you! We need to model healthy, sustainable practices, not hypermobile “art.” You can certainly be a teacher!
HALLELUJAH AND AMEN !!
I am so pleased you have said this. I have hEDS (hypermobility – Ehlers Danlos Syndrome). For several years I have been in a chronic pain stage of this. When I turned to yoga it was as a means of gentle movement to keep my body moving. Many people are put off of trying yoga due to the images of hypermobile bodies contorted into shapes than no normal functioning body could ever manage, no matter how fit and agile they are. My hypermobile body is too broken these days to carry out the full lotus position let alone anything else. However, I feel that it is so important to make people realise that it is the gentle movements that massage the muscles, organs and joints and assist in pain management.
yes! It’s so important. And unfortunately many yoga teachers have undiagnosed hEDS and think that pushing themselves will help. ouch. Thanks for sharing your story Eveyln and I’m so happy you’ve found a way of practicing that helps you!
At last!!!
From someone who is hyper mobile, it’s not sustainable. I fortunately stopped before the ubiquitous hip replacements and as a yoga therapist I recommend scaling back from end-range every chance I get.
Thanks for the well written reinforcement!
So nice to hear from you Beth – thanks for the good work you are doing!
Thank you for introducing us to the real meaning of yoga. It has helped me tremendously in my teaching practice as well as me.
Thanks for these insights Kristine…..there is a yoga revolution coming and it’s great to be part of the change and travel with you, your approach strongly resonates with me. Someone has to say it and frankly there is room for lots of criticism of the current yoga paradigm. The Instagram phenomena is, IMO, reflective of an incorrect approach to asana that is much deeper and pervasive and I think it traces back to some of the original yoga transmissions based on delusions of perfection and controlling masculine behaviours. The result is a physically elite approach that keeps everyone in a perpetually external practice based on what we look like rather what we feel like. Total nonsense. Your Subtle yoga approach is helping to lead the yoga community to a safer more inclusive introspective style. I’m guilty of hero shots but personally I’m in it for the long haul and my students get the gift of a self practice model that is safe and widely applicable on and off the mat. It doesn’t fit the current approach but hey…….
Great article, but I don’t have a problem with “shaming” yoga Instagram models since they are, whether they admit it or not, trying to shame everyone else who doesn’t look as “beautiful” as they do. I’m a woman who hates to admit that “Vanity, thy name is woman” is much more accurate than it should be these days. Why is it that predominantly FEMALE yoga teachers feel the need to post sexy yoga pictures of themselves? You don’t see good looking male yogis doing this so much. It’s not just yoga – I just saw the Instagram feed by a woman in the herbal field and she felt compelled to post a picture of herself in a bikini with pendulous breasts popping out of her bikini top. Yikes.
Just. Stop. It. If you are that desperate for attention, get off the Internet and start meditating more.
BRAVO!!!
I just stumbled across your blog and this article, and am so grateful that you shared this perspective.
As it happens I just wrote something similar on my blog.
After years of practicing yoga and teaching “off the mat” yoga I finally completed my 200-hour training this summer. I had long held back because I’m not flexible and struggle with mobility issues. I’ve often felt out of place in yoga classes, but thanks to some teachers who encouraged me I stuck with my practice and have appreciated the other benefits. Yoga for me has been a way to start to learn how to find home in my body.
It seems that YTT naturally attracts people with flexibility, those who believe they are “good” at yoga. My YTT itself was my yoga practice every day: to be in a room with so many people who were flexible, again feeling like the odd one out. On every pose I would ask about modifications we could offer to people like me. At one point another woman snapped at me to stop asking so we could focus on what would be on the test. I felt so shamed in that moment, like I was perhaps infringing on the others’ learning, until I reminded myself that the test that matters most comes when you’re trying to help someone find their way into a pose.
The reality is that there are more people like me, and many of them are hesitant to try yoga because they believe they can’t be “good” at it. Unfortunately the dominant images of yoga — not just on social media but also in yoga magazines and stock photos, etc -— show “perfect“ form, implicitly conveying that this is how the pose should look.
Part of my mission is to create space for those people who feel out of place in the world of the flexible and hypermobile. As I reflect on your article I realize that in service of that mission I must do more than write about this; I must also share images of what my yoga looks like, to encourage others like me to get on the mat.
As Ganga White writes, yoga is for every body.
Thank you so much for this.
Thanks for sharing your story Renee, I can totally relate!
As a Kundalini yoga teacher I can attest to the fact that people think yoga is all about being bendy and the fall out from that is – people don’t do yoga. But I would also like to attest that – YOGA STUDIOS don’t hire YOGA TEACHERS who aren’t the picture of YOGA. Too old, too fat, don’t wear tight clothes, don’t teach the super bendy types of yoga…YOGA STUDIOS need to do a better job of opening their spaces to the teachers who are out there – and we are out there – who don’t find the instagram picture…Let’s place the pressure where it is due. And notice also that lots of non-picture perfect yoga is being hosted in the basements of churches, in people’s homes, in school gyms, in rented spaces and those teachers and students are getting their yoga on…just not spending money at studios to do it.