This yoga trend is ruining the classroom for everyone

You do it all the time – go to a yoga class, unfold your mat, and start settling in. Whether you’re feeling excited, exhausted, or exhausted, you’re ready to workout, rest, or maybe just excited to set aside an hour for yourself. Then it happens. You see a student setting up a camera or phone to film themselves.

You begin to feel a shift within yourself and wonder if others are feeling it too. You look around, trying to see where the camera is pointing, unsure if you’re in the frame. Maybe you move your mat a little to feel less vulnerable.

However, whether the lens is focusing on you or not, it is too late. You are actually aware of your body in a different way than is intended in yoga. A way that doesn’t focus on how she feels, but on how she looks. You start wondering if you should be wearing newer leggings, or if your hair looks good, or if your cleavage or butt is showing when you bend forward. Thus, the way you show up in your practice has changed.

The problem of video capture in studio classes

In recent years, photographing yoga classes in a studio has become increasingly popular. Social media video reels are considered an essential marketing tool by some teachers and studios to help pay the rent. Posting videos is also how some students choose to share an integral part of their lives and build community.

But the process of filming in the classroom can disrupt everyone’s experience in different ways.
Yoga is meant to be an internal practice. It is not about monitoring, evaluation or documentation. It’s about paying attention to what’s happening inside your body and mind. Photography brings something else.

The way someone responds to the camera in class can vary depending on the person, day, and mood. You may not care one day and find that you might want to go out the next. One day you might feel shy, and another day you want to be in the shot and ask for a copy. No matter what feeling comes, the presence of a camera creates the possibility of being seen, and that possibility alone can change the way you move, comfort, and engage in your practice.

This puts you in another uncomfortable position, where you need to opt out of something you never agreed to in the first place. Even when the intention behind the photography is not, intention does not negate the effects.

How studios organize in-class videos

More and more teachers and studios are no longer recording excerpts from class and are setting boundaries regarding setting up students for cameras.

Some studio policies are clear and simply stated, as in, “No photography. No phones.” Other studios limit filming to specific classes based on schedules, referring to classes that allow students to record and classes that are camera-free.

There is also opposition to regulating the practice of video capture. Some studio managers, in defense of class capture for promotion, explain that when you sign up for a class, you sign a waiver stating that you understand that practicing in a shared space means your photo may be taken. Legally, that may be accurate. But ethically, there’s a difference between agreeing to something in theory and being photographed unexpectedly without being offered a clear way out.

Other studios have tried to find a more harmonious balance by being transparent about video capture. They have social content days in which they let students know in advance that they are looking for samples for specific classes. Students trade an hour of being a model for free lessons.

For creative students or teachers who want to record practices, there are options even if the studio has a strict no-filming policy. Some directors allow teachers to film in the studio between classes by bringing in staff and friends to record the content explicitly. Sometimes there is a fixed rental fee for the space, and sometimes a trade-in is possible.

Ultimately, the issue lies in the changes to the student experience when filming is performed during the semester. Yoga doesn’t need to be completely disconnected from the contemporary world, but it is one of the few spaces where many people intentionally go away from constant vision. And protecting that, even in small ways, can help the practice remain, at least partly, what it was meant to be.