If you’re anything like me, your Instagram feed will be full of photos and snapshots of beautiful people in beautiful yoga poses. Typically, these poses are taken in a picturesque studio or a stunning mountaintop. When I first got into yoga, I took these images as my inspiration to want to achieve more with my body. I mean, imagine bending in the way that those people do!
However, it’s come to my attention that things might not be all they seem. Social media is renowned for being a place where things are also better than they actually are, especially when it comes to filters and photo editing.
One of the most common apps I use is Daily Yoga, a yoga app which is a fantastic resource for poses and routines as well as being home to thriving community of beginners and experts alike. If you take a look on there, the images that users are posting are far different to the poses featured on these top Instagram accounts.
These images have people who are new and experienced, practising certain poses and striving to achieve certain routines. There is a tonne of accounts you can follow when it comes to tracking and viewing someone else’s progress. I can tell you now that these homemade images are far from the ‘perfect’ images for Instagram.
Defining Yoga
In my personal opinion, and the opinion of many others, yoga is a practice of the body and the mind. It combines two of my favourite aspects of being healthy, exercise and meditation, into one common entity.
In short, the mental aspects of meditation and breathing are just as important as the physical sides of things. With this in mind, I’m starting to wonder what these images that are plastered all over our social media feeds have to do with yoga as a whole.
I’m even going to go as far as saying even a video of someone in a flow or practising a certain pose doesn’t capture the whole essence of yoga entirely. This is because yoga is a subjective experience that’s different for everybody and cannot be ‘summarised’ in one image.
The Main Pet Peeve
Moving back to social media, the yoga niche and posts are very orientated towards creating an idealistic image of what yoga is like. These are all images that are creating an expectation of body perfection which most of us will be unable to achieve in our lifetimes.
Speaking to a few of my friends, I discovered that many people loved the idea of doing yoga but having seen ‘professional’ images (which you must remember have no way of telling whether they are edited or at least touched up) are put off by the idea of doing it.
The fact that these are people getting up from the practice because of these images, rather than being inspired by them, is a cause for concern. For these people, they stated that it’s actually quite depressing knowing that they haven’t got the time to become that flexible and in some cases even lowered some of my friend’s self-esteem.
If these are the thoughts coming from my rather self-confident friends, imagine what these images are doing to body sensitive individuals or those with potential eating disorders who are viewing these unrealistic images.
Getting Inspired
I’m not saying that these posts that you see on social media platforms like Instagram aren’t inspiration. To some of us, they are. However, as with all things on social media, you need to be aware of where these images come from and what they mean.
In a world where success is defined by how we look physically, it’s more important than ever to read between the lines when it comes to the images and messages we’re subjecting ourselves too. If you’re feeling helpless or despair in regard to yoga images you’ve seen online, remember that they need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Even if you’re practising for ten minutes a day, every other day, remember that your practice is your practice, no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are. And, most importantly, remember to enjoy yourself!
