In response, our children are absorbing this behavior and now their selfworth is irrevocably tied to the impact of social media. Me and my people are strangers to ourselves. Our digital avatars become yet another mask atop our light.

We’re taking the edge off our constant repetition of lies and conflation. We tranquilize and intoxicate ourselves to dull what it feels like to be alive. We look outside ourselves for the home that already exists within. Me and my people are obsessed with what we look like. In social media, I’m embedded in the world of my people. Social media is an evolution of the show-and-telling that has pretty much always been a staple of human behavior. And if Instagram had existed in pre-Partition India, B. Frankly, I don’t think you can engage with social media at all without eventually arriving on this page.īut cave drawings and hieroglyphics were the original social media feed. I don’t think it’s possible to work in social media without these feelings eventually rising to the surface. It’s a never-ending state of comparison-no amount of work is ever enough and the idea of “good enough” becomes a fantastical myth. It means constantly thinking of ways to do better, to do more than the other guy. It becomes hard to see yourself without them.

The follower begins to color your inner sight. But always with the other person in mind, always with your followership riding shotgun. Praying that it doesn’t eventually swell so large that you turn into a blimp. Teaching yoga on social media means fighting with your ego every day. In an exclusive excerpt, Stanley writes about how social media has impacted her personal identity, as well as her work as a yoga professional and creative. Through a series of honest and hilarious essays covering race, sexuality, self-love, and more, we discover how the VOTY 100 honoree embodies this “yoga of everyday.” It may just transform the way you approach your own practice, too.

It’s taking the flexibility, strength, and grounding energy we create and channeling them in our most challenging off-the-mat moments. In her new book, Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance, Jessamyn Stanley reminds us that it’s more than a series of poses and disciplines. Like “self-care,” the word “yoga” has become so commodified, that we’ve forgotten what it actually means. Explore the entire BlogHer VOTY 100 digital issue.

Yoke by Jessamyn Stanley