Community photoshoots
At Nourish Yoga Training, we do one or two annual photoshoots where we invite members of the community to participate in a free yoga class that is photographed. Our hope is that a diverse range of people sign up to participate. We are still fighting the idea that yoga is for the privileged. It is important to us that the images we use show members of our community and are not stock images.
All participants of our community photoshoots have signed releases permitting us to use the images as we see fit. We endeavour to use them respectfully and within the context of the work Nourish Yoga Training does.
Use of images
We use images of our teachers to advertise their classes, workshops, or other offerings. In instances where we would like to use their image for blog post articles or posts not directly relevant to them, we will first seek permission.
Posting on social media
In our marketing we minimise the use of images that represent excessive flexibility or complex asana that are neither accessible nor inclusive. Exclusively representing yoga in this way can make people feel excluded because their body type, experience, and mobility. Physical challenge is really fun, and doing complex poses can be great, but it’s not the only way to experience yoga.
At Nourish Yoga Training, the vast majority of our classes are grounded in the philosophy of the Eight Limbs of Yoga, laid out by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras (c. 0-400 CE). Social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram (our main platforms) is a primarily visual channel, and the most visual limb of yoga is asana. Consequently our social media posts mostly display physical postures in their images, although wherever possible we strive to go above and beyond asana, post breathing & meditation techniques and ideas from the ethics of yoga.
Image use and posts regarding diversity/equity
When choosing images to post on topics regarding diversity/equity, we endeavour to check in with the individuals in those images to ensure that they are comfortable with the content bearing their image. We do not condone tokenisation in our image use.
Reposting on social media
When appropriate, we repost other people’s posts on our social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The things that we repost are relevant and appropriate for our audience.
We share work that endeavours to make yoga accessible to people regardless of gender, ethnicity, ability, age, religion, sexuality, health or wealth.
We do not repost or share anything that contains harmful or hateful speech including slurs or oppressive language. We do not repost or share anything that appropriates a culture. It is important to acknowledge that even if we do not intend to cause harm by the things that we post, reinforcing appropriation can be incredibly damaging. We should strive to be informed, educated and humble about our practice and our teaching.
Tags by others
We are tagged in many posts across social media. We cannot control who tags us, and whilst we welcome genuine engagement tags, some accounts use this as a strategy to ‘fish’ for a repost without actually being relevant to us or the work that we do.
We do not repost or share any post unless it is a genuine engagement with Nourish Yoga Training.
Race, gender & LGBTIQ+ inclusive language
Across social media platforms, we adopt a policy of using inclusive language, including gender- and race-neutral emojis (i.e. yellow variants). We avoid using gendered language to describe professions (e.g. “actress” for “actor”), gendered honorifics (“Ms.”, “Mr.”, etc.), and assigning gender to otherwise genderless phenomena. When referring to members of our community in the third person we use a person’s preferred pronouns. If this information cannot be obtained in time for publication, Nourish Yoga Training substitutes neutral pronouns ‘they/them’. When gathering information about people on social media – e.g. for campaigns, surveys, contests, etc. – we do not ask questions about race, gender, or sexual identity.
This policy was last updated on 2 September 2020.