Is it Yoga? Analyzing the Instagram Pose
What Social Media’s #yogainspo Is Really Selling Us
The other day I was tagged by a friend in an Instagram post. “So inspirational!” she commented. She wanted me to see a video of a petite woman exiting a swimming pool into a pike, into a press-up handstand. The hashtag? yogainspo, the internet’s popular slang for “yoga inspiration.” Maybe it was the pool, but nothing about the post said yoga to me. I thought at first the girl could have been an Olympic diver, those who pike into a handstand at the edge of the platform before jumping off. If I hadn’t known whose account this particular video belonged to, I might as well have thought it was a gymnast, a Cirque de Soleil performer, or any number of elite athletes. There was nothing about the post that told me this was yoga, except I suppose the connection could be found in the handstand itself. Yes, we sometimes do handstands in yoga, and on Instagram we do Yoga handstands quite often.
And did I find it ‘soooo inspirational?’ Perhaps I could. And yet for the post to serve as inspirational, one must assume the viewer strives for physical strength, physical balance, and a certain level of achievement over the body as outwardly tangible results of one’s yoga practice. Perhaps even the woman’s petite frame, bikini, or luxury pool-side life come into play as objects of inspiration. As an inspirational post, the assumption is if you too, yoga hard enough or long enough, you can get these things. And the assumption is that you want these things. This is today’s hashtag yogainspo. The promotion of wanting, of getting, of achieving. But is this yoga?
What is Yoga?
Yoga is the cessation of the churning of the mind. (Yoga citta vritti nirodha) Through the self-discipline of physical practice, and through the manipulations of the energy of the body from various side channels into the central channel, we arrive at the peaceful, calm abiding state of nature mind. There’s nothing about this that precludes a few handstands along the way. Of course, to balance on one’s hands requires self-discipline, and a skilled yoga instructor could say 101 things about how the physical act of balance, or inverting upside down relates to life and your place in it. It may open a door of perception or cause you to rethink a thing or two about how much control you have over your body.
But the yoga sutras never said pressing up into handstand unlocks the key to nirvana. In fact, they never mention anything about the physical poses except for two things: one’s ability to remain in a pose for an extended period of time, and one’s attention to a neutral spine. Both of course, apply in a well-executed handstand, but work equally well in sukhasana. Where then, is the #yogainspo video of someone successfully holding a one-hour seated meditation pose? It’s not there, and it’s not just because there’s a time limit to the Instagram video post. It’s because that type of contentment doesn’t inspire the same craving in us. The happiness we seek on Instagram is about pleasure, about lack of satisfaction, not the achievement of it. Are we watching yoga take place on Instagram? Or just some other performative body art?
What Inspires you to Yoga?
If the goal is the settled, calm mind, does the long-hold handstand best serve as an inspiration to us, and a reason to come to our mats each day? Perhaps. It depends on the person. First, we need to be clear about what it is in the post that inspires us. The self-discipline and the demonstration of years of training, or the bikini body and the number of likes on the post? Second, we need to be clear that we have no idea what the mind of the handstand presser looks like, nor do we know anything about her journey to handstand press ups. We have no idea if this is the 100th video take, and a happy accident, or the result of a singularly focused advanced-yogini mind. We are free to make up our own stories about these things, and we are free to think we too can someday execute this pose with the same grace and strength. We are inspired.
But are we inspired to yoga? Or to this specific task? Does the mind say, wow, I’d like to have similar focus. Or does the mind say, wow, I wish I could do a handstand press-up. Seems like most of what these posts do, is encourage more posts like this. In the medium of Instagram, videos similar to this receive more likes, more likes encourage more videos similar to this, and now we’re all competing to post increasingly fantastical videos like this. The visual of a seated meditator, or a clear blue sky or a smiling baby may be just as inspirational in getting us to our mats, but it’s not as sticky on social media. (Well, depends how cute the baby is.) If the real motivator is the sustained happiness of a calm mind, how do you photograph contentment?
Yoga is not about the getting, but the losing.
Implicit in these inspirational photos and videos is that we are inspired to get some-thing. Yogainspo is less about arriving on our mats to explore and learn more about ourselves, and more about achieving goals. We seek something. We wish to gain. We want to achieve the pose. We want to achieve the body. We want to achieve those Instagram likes. And once again, our distracted minds, which are far too caught up in the wish to achieve things off the mat, are invited to operate the same way on the mat. We have missed the point that our yoga practice is an opportunity to change our minds, to let go of that wish to achieve. The #yogainspo post sets us up for an attempt at gaining something, when a deeper yoga practice asks us to be ready to lose. Inspiration aside, what’s my motivation? What is my INTENTION?
Remember intention? Your yoga instructor likely asked you to set one at the beginning of class. Sankalpa, is an idea formed in the heart, that becomes the rule we follow above all other rules. If your intention is to achieve the press-up handstand, is that truly an idea formed in your heart? Sounds maybe a little more like ego to me. I know, you loooove handstands. But setting an intention is not to be confused with goal setting. Intention is your chance to remember what your yoga practice really is all about. And a heart-felt intention looks a lot more like unlocking a clear mind, achieving freedom from the demands of ego, arriving at a sense of contentment and well-being, and realizing that any physical achievement is temporary at best.
Yoga marketing requires you to WANT.
Wisdom is seeing what is, for what it is. Ultimately, that woman on Instagram is trying to sell you something, or she’s trying to get enough followers to sell somebody else something. Your participation requires you to want something. She needs you to want what she can do, to want what she has. In the least, you might click on the little heart below the post because you want others to know that you too, can do that thing, or you think that same way, or you support those same goals. Your ego identifies with what’s on display.
It this yogainspo because this is what yoga has become? The achievement of poses, the display of what the body can do, the attainment of the ‘long, lean muscle.’ It’s inspirational if this is what yoga is to you. And if that’s all yoga is to you, I encourage you to question why. What is yoga to you, and what would inspire you to yoga? How does the photograph make you feel? Does it cause you to crave? Does it show you how and why craving arises in you? Does it evoke an emotion such as jealousy, anger, or love? The real yoga of the photograph lies in whether or not it makes you question what you see, and your reaction to it.
If the collection of colors and shapes on the little screen on your phone say ‘yoga’ to you, and if what you perceive as an image of a woman striking a yoga pose inspires you, then yes, to you, that’s #yogainspo. All that we see online, scroll past, or pause to ‘like’ is ultimately a projection of our own minds. The way in which we relate to the image, ultimately, comes entirely from us — and the real yoga lies in exploring why we see what we do, and why it signifies what it does, to us. So if you’re inspired, get on your mat. And if you’re not? Keep scrolling.
