the rise of students filming themselves in a yoga class

In the last few weeks I’ve seen a good few reels pop up with the video being that person practicing yoga in a public group class. Their phone has been set up somewhere beside or in front of them, and they’ve recorded themselves throughout (presumably) the whole thing.

My honest, initial reaction every time I see this is ‘what?! that’s a thing?!’ because until recently, it’s not something that had ever crossed my mind to consider doing. I don’t know if it’s the small town studio environment I mostly spend my time in where something like this would feel out of place, but it’s honestly not ever been on my radar. 

Even in a town or city where it might be commonplace, it’s not something I would do personally when practicing, and it’s not something I would allow a student to do in a class I was teaching.

That said…

Despite me sticking with my initial gut reaction and is being a quick and firm ‘NOPE’, I did want to spend some time unpicking why some it’s showing up more and more, and what the implications are for the student, the teacher and everyone else in that class.

To help me try and make sure I’m coming at it with more of a rounded view, I turned to Instagram and asked the teachers on there what their experiences of this are.

Why are students (who are commonly teachers, in another persons class) choosing to film themselves and what’s the reasoning behind the teachers guiding the class being okay with it? 

For a seemingly simple question, this has turned out to be a maaaassive fuck off topic. Way bigger than I anticipated when I first asked, with well over 100 of you being amazingly forthcoming in sharing all sorts of in depth thoughts, experiences and opinions. 

I have to say there was a resounding call of ‘no way!’ but this should be caveated with the fact that many of my followers are on there in the first place because in many areas, they think like I do. It’s not necessarily reflective of the view of the general teacher population.

Amongst the responses there were views I agreed with, views I definitely didn’t, views I could begin to understand and views that genuinely surprised me. 

A few teachers said they did it. A few had experienced students doing it in class (both with and without permission). A few didn’t give a shit either way, and a good few of you weren’t really sure how you feel about it yet.

So yes, it turns out that filming yourself in class very much IS getting to be a thing, and quite a common one in some parts - but it’s still a pretty new thing, propelled by the film capability of smartphones and the rise in popularity of social media as a place to post those videos.

Although it’s not something I’ve experienced yet to date, it is something that will inevitably show up at some point so I’d rather get my well reasoned ducks in a row now so I’m not caught off guard when it comes up.

If it happens in a class you’re teaching, giving it some proper thought in advance might make or break the experience of you the teacher, the student with their phone poised in hand, and every other student around them. 

As ever, this is more involved than just a quick yes or no answer (even if you personally think it’s that clear cut).

To bring some structure to the topic, I’ve divvied it up into three key questions:

1. Would you film yourself as a student in someone else’s class?

2. Would you allow a student to film themselves in YOUR class?

3. What are your general opinions of other people choosing to do it?

While I always love a strong opinion (with the right reasoning and context), this post isn’t intended to be a soap box. My intention has been to create a review of the topic, including viewpoints I received from other yoga teachers.

Whether you’re sat on the fence about it all, or are firmly standing on one side, this is my attempt to pull all of the perspectives into one place. 

If you’re not sure where you sit on the topic, maybe this will offer some food for thought, or if you’re VERY clear on your stance,  I still hope this can be a place for you to hear, understand and be open to other opinions. 

Either way, I’d like it to be a chance for you to think ahead so that if and when this does crop up for you in class as a teacher or a student, you don’t feel caught off-guard. 

As balanced as I’d love to to be, this post will be inherently rooted in my own bias due to the fact I do have firm opinions of my own. But that’s all they are…my own personal opinions, from my own personal values and experiences, which I’ll share more of the reasoning behind as I go. 

So let’s start at the start….

one // in a group environment, would you set up your phone and film your own practice during a guided class?

Personally? No. I wouldn’t.

This is probably the most revealing of the questions, because what you answer for this likely informs your answer to whether you’d allow it in your class as a teacher. 

I wouldn’t film myself because I can’t think of any justifiable reason to do so, that would outweigh the number of reasons I have not to. 

Fundamentally, a lot of it comes down to the fact that any sort of video review or reflection doesn’t align with how I practice yoga. 

Way back when (way, way back…) I used to do a lot of pole dancing, and I taught it for a while too. In those classes it wasn’t uncommon at all to set up your phone and capture your training, because for the most part the nature of so much of it was performative. 

Even when filming wasn’t about aesthetics, you could learn a lot about technique and form from reviewing what your body was actually doing vs what you thought it was doing.

In some areas of yoga, this form review has a place as well. If you’re asana practice is more physically intensive and you’re working on things like pincha or handstand, the same visual feedback can work really, really well here too. But in this scenario I’d take that out of the yoga room and if I were filming for those purposes, do it somewhere entirely separate. 

When it comes to filming for general ‘alignment’ self-review throughout the class, I do have biases here because again, that’s not my vibe when it comes to a yoga practice.

If the way I or a student is moving is safe, it gets the green light for me as being perfectly fine without the need for refinement or correction. It part of my core values of teaching that I want students to believe that the introspective experience of a practice holds more weight above alignment and aesthetics.

I know that if I were to put myself and my personal practice under this kind of visual review, I’d basically be handing myself another stick to beat myself with.

I doubt I’d be observing my physical practice through the lens of purely kind, well meaning eyes - if I were to look back on a practice for this purpose, I’d be picking out the flaws, ‘mistakes’ and things that I felt I needed to improve on. 

That’s just me though, and perhaps you’re a teacher who values alignment and physical form, and could comfortably review themselves in a subjective way.

Whatever the state of your self review - it’s still worth considering? Where does the desire to improve what your practice looks like externally come from? Who are you making those improvements for? Yourself, or someone else?

Also, it would 100% take me out of the present moment during the class. 

My practice would no longer be something occurring in that moment, for that moment. It would be a practice that was going to be ‘used’ for some sort of future purpose, and that would inevitably affect the decisions I made or the way I did things, depending on what that purpose was. 

The layers of my practice already give me enough to work with. Adding the idea of eyes on me (even if they are just my own), brings an extra level of complexity to something that already feels like more than enough to work with. Incidentally, this is the reason my studio intentionally doesn’t have mirrors either.

Aside from the idea of reviewing your practice, some people mentioned that they liked to record it as a way of making a note of things like interesting transitions.

This is sort of get. I found that one of the hardest parts of becoming a teacher was ‘losing’ the blissful, teacher-mind-free experience of being purely a student.

When you become a teacher you effectively split yourself in two. There’s the students side of you, and the teacher side of you. When it comes to attending classes, the line between the two can blend.

Are you there as a student, fully able to embody and experience the class that’s being offered without your teacher voice running a constant commentary in your ear? Or are you attending as a teacher, experiencing the class from a different POV with more of an intention of being inspired and mentally taking notes?

I actually think it’s really valuable to go to classes with your teacher hat on - I love practicing online for this purpose because I don’t need to get lost in the environment in the same way I like to as a student, and I can attend a wider range of classes.

But I also need to keep some practices just for me, so it’s important to try and keep as far back from that blurred line as possible and retain that experience of being a student.

I love being inspired by the creativity and different approaches of other teachers, but once again, I don’t feel like the odd transition is worth banking in video format at the cost of the many reasons not to. If you love something specific someone taught, ask them at the end to go over it again. Many teachers will be happy to.

A third key reason that self-filming as a teacher came up was for promotional purposes - literally as a way to gather content for the gram, which makes what your filming have the intention of going public.

The social media train can be a hard one to ride and if content is a key part of your messaging, setting up your phone in something you’re already doing can be a quick win. I get that. I do. 

Just weigh up the convenience of that with everything else here and decide if you need to film your practice, or whether there’s another way to generate visuals for your next post? 

If your content is going to be made public, that opens up a whole new can of worms in terms of who else might be in the background of the video.

This was definitely something that was considered by those who said they do film themselves.

Some people mentioned that when they set up to film, they choose a discreet corner to practice in, ensuring they are the only ones in the frame.

This is one way to mitigate concerns about capturing others inadvertently and might avoid needing to ask direct permission from ‘background student’, but for other people around you, the mere knowledge that filming is occurring can still be distracting.

The students seeing you film don’t know your whole story either. At a glance, why might a new student might assume you’re recording your practice? Do aesthetics become something they think they should care more about in their own practice? What message is it sending?

To be honest, most of the videos I’ve seen have had other students clearly on film around them. The route here seems to be to ask permission of the people around you.

A couple of comments I got from teachers said they’ve had students who have just cracked on and filmed, without even mentioning it to the teacher. This, I would pretty unhappy with. When you join a class, you’re stepping into a community, and this is a case of being aware of the implications of your actions on those around you, especially when you’re doing something outside of the ‘norm’.

As an interesting flip-side, there were a few comments from people who said this now is becoming the norm where they are, and filming happens as standard which puts a bit of a different spin on the permissions conversation. Does the culture shift to one where it’s just expected that a bunch of phones are kicking around in class? How does that work when new students come in?

I also wonder - when permission is asked for - how much thought students (or teachers) give to their answer?

Would you default to saying yes because you’re put on the spot and aren’t actually sure how you feel about it?

Would you say yes and feel comfortable about it?

Would you say no and feel comfortable about it?

So many of us are inherent people pleasers and this is even more prevalent in women, who dominate much of the yoga space, especially where I am in the UK.

If I was in a class and was asked by a student next to me whether I okay with them filming themselves throughout their practice, would I object? No, probably not. 

I might not object outright—nobody wants to be 'that person’ - but would I actually be comfortable and okay with it though?

Also no. 

Objecting has the potential to lead to confrontation, and that prospect of that can be something that can be even more uncomfortable than the filming itself. We all know how essential boundaries are, but how many of us are putting a lifetime of work into building and holding those boundaries?

It’s difficult work because boundaries can also create tension, and that tension isn’t exactly what you want to be taking into a yoga class, with someone we’re about to practice next to for an hour. 

It’s not uncommon for someone to choose to sit in discomfort themselves, rather than make another person uncomfortable.

This is going to be especially prevalent if a student is new. They might not even know how they’re meant to feel which is going to make them even more likely just to roll with it and say yes, especially if it feels like the teacher has given it the nod.

And that leads me nicely into the second part of all of this…

two // if you were teaching a class and a student wanted to film themselves, would you okay it? 

This continues the conversation around boundaries; except once you’re in the role of teacher you’re not only maintaining your own personal boundaries and preferences, you have a responsibility to hold a certain level of boundaries and space for everyone in that class.

This question of ‘are you okay with it’ here only really considers it from one point of view - yours, as the teacher. But there’s a deeper, possibly more valuable aspect to it; you might be ok with it, but are your students? 

Asking students if they’re happy to be in the background under the spotlight of another student holding a phone ready to film, isn’t the place you’re going to get a real answer. 

It also goes back to the message and culture you want to share in your classes. When I give so much weight to experience over aesthetics in how I teach, I couldn’t in good conscience allow filming when it doesn’t align with the way I share yoga.

Maybe aesthetics isn’t why the student is filming but it almost doesn’t matter. What matters is the potential for a student to think that why they’re doing it. To perceive that if you’re filming your practice, it might be through a performative lens. To be honest, the work or explanation that would have to go into counteract that view just isn’t worth it in my eyes.

I’d rather just not let it happen and keep those thought processes and complications out of the equation. 

Aside from truth and stories, what’s more important to me is holding a safe container for everyone in that class.

You don’t know what is going to come up in any given practice.

I want my students to know that their time on their mat is a place for all feelings to be valid and heard - it’s a place of trust with fellow students. Do I truly believe that my students feel held in that safe, contained space, if there’s a video capturing what’s happening?

They might hold back. They’ll probably filter themselves.

It’s vulnerable enough practicing in a room full of strangers, let alone potentially the whole world. 

What if they do something different? What if they cry? What if they fall asleep? What if they fart? And suddenly it’s immortalised on video. 

If you film your practices you might be reading this thinking ‘God, no, I’d never post something like that!’ - but do they know that?

If a student doesn’t feel safe to be themselves, there's a chance they just won’t come back. Hell, if I went to a class where it was allowed, or especially encouraged, I wouldn’t return. So if you think ‘I don’t really mind if students film’ make sure you’re not inadvertently turning other students off your classes by allowing it.

A common theme that showed up from teachers who messaged me about this was the fact that it’s precisely because our days and our world is so digital and screen heavy now, that it’s amazing to be able to keep classes as a space away from all of that. 

I want classes I teach or attend to feel like an escape and a haven.

There’s something a few of you raised that hadn’t actually crossed my mind - in some places, teachers and studios are actively encouraging this as a means of promoting their classes. 

This is more practical perspective as a teacher, and one that can definitely feel tempting.

Do I love students to shout about my classes? Absolutely. People trust people, and a positive ‘review’ or shout out can help immensely. 

Our classes are our raw material and the inability to share a direct, inside view of that can make us feel like we’re on the back foot from a promotional perspective so I can see how live action footage of what we do ticks a huge marketing box.

It’s not impossible to get class visuals - there are other ways, and when you’re thining about which route to take here, make sure you look at the alignment of you’re teaching vs your business.

Are you teaching with one message, and then contradicting that message in how you build and run your business?

Whether you do or don’t want to allow it in class, think about how you respond. You might feel like it’s a firm no, but consider the perspective of the student who is asking. How can you say share your boundaries without shaming that student for asking, or making them feel uncomfortable being in a space with you?

A final point to consider brings in a tactic that I use when I’m approaching how I set or hold boundaries, or T&Cs’s. It’s simple and it goes along the lines of ‘what would happen if EVERYONE did this?’.

It’s a question that works pretty well here.

You okay one student to film. Then next week there’s 2 of them. Well, you said okay to the first so you should probably be consistent…?

Then another asks, then another…

It’s not much of a stretch to look ahead and see a time when it’s a staple action for every student in class to roll out their mats, grab a block, and prop up their phone against it all set to press record.

When does it get silly? 

But what about the students and teachers who are a firm no still throughout all this. Those who want to keep going to class but don’t love the fact it’s starting to feel a bit Big Brother-like?

It brings out a deep, and perhaps more important question than any other…

three // what are your opinions of other people filming?

If the first question explored here was the most revealing, this one might just be the most confronting. 

When I opened up this topic on Instagram, there was some serious intensity and conviction in the responses. Whilst some of you were undecided, plenty of teachers felt incredibly strongly about this, and there was definitely emotional charge behind those feelings.

Even in the ‘no’ camp, the spectrum was huge….

From ‘I don’t do it/allow it, but people are entitled to do what they want’ right through to ‘No. End of conversation’.

Non-judgment is one of the cornerstones of our practice - we're taught (and we teach) to observe without attachment. But when it comes to the topic of filming in class, a pretty vital secondary issue is thrown up: are we, as practitioners and teachers, overstepping by imposing our views on others about what is ‘acceptable’ in this space?

It’s one thing to manage our own boundaries and the boundaries of students who come to our classes; it's another to start to come down on how others should engage with their own yoga practice.

Are we at risk here of dictating the form someone else’s practice should take? 

There’s the idealistic view of what yoga can or ‘should’ be vs the awareness of the world within which we actually live and practice.

Yoga has survived and thrived through centuries because of its adaptability but now we’re meeting a new kind of crossroad where the ancient practice of yoga meets the digital world.

We can fight social media and bury our heads in the sand, or we can approach it as something that’s here to stay and try to be a part of using it for the better. Coming at it from a view of ‘it just shouldn’t be like that’ and shutting down the conversation isn’t going to help us collectively move forward.

The ‘ego’ piece came up a lot too in the responses I read from folk critical of filming, but I personally see ego as the neat little bow of justification that some people use it as.

Isn’t ego part of almost everything we do as humans? I find ego can end up being an easy scapegoat for things we don’t like, or fully want to give the time to understand. 

From the length of this bloody post itself, you can see how complex it is and how much there is to dive into here beyond a simple ‘do it’, ‘don’t do it’, or ‘I don’t care what people do’.

Dismissing it as a non-negotiable issue solely by waving the ego flag is a massive oversimplification of a complex conversation.

Talking of easy flags to wave, another I see often is the ‘westerners are fucking it’ (I’ve paraphrased a little there). But interestingly, if you’re was thinking this is just another new western trend getting it claws into yoga – it isn’t.

I received feedback from teachers all over the world, from China, to India, to Indonesia, where it was becoming the norm, or where some teachers in group classes or even in YTTs are actively encouraging students to get their phones out and film as a way to promote their classes.

There’s a shift in how yoga is being marketed and practiced worldwide - not just in certain spaces.

I don’t even know where to start with concluding that mammoth review, so I’ll throw it back to you - what’s the norm where you are? Is filming yourself a way to connect more deeply with your practice, or do you feel like it it detracts from the essence of yoga? How would you feel from the standpoint of being both a teacher or a student in this situation?

Reading everything here (and thanks for sticking around to the end if you have!) is there anything that’s changed your perspective?

Your answers will likely vary massively depending on cultural contexts, personal preferences and your own experiences. Your opinion is allowed to be as varied and adaptable as your practice.

This is a topic goes much deeper than simply filming - it’s about awareness, boundaries, perception and consideration. Not just for yourself, but for everyone else around you.

Perhaps the challenge isn’t just about deciding if filming is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but being open to conversation around how we can adapt our practice and teaching to stay relevant and respectful in a world that’s becoming increasingly digital?

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