From Practice to Performance: When Spirituality Becomes a Show

There is a moment in many modern yoga studios when something subtle, yet sacred, gets traded away.

It’s hard to name at first.

You walk in. The music is vibey. The bodies are toned. The flow is fast.

And everyone looks the part.

But something is missing.

You try to feel it in the breath, but the room is too loud.

You try to find it in the eyes, but everyone’s facing the mirror.

You try to drop into yourself, but the cues keep pulling you out.

And then it hits you:

This is not a spiritual practice. This is a performance.

When Did Yoga Become a Stage?

Yoga is taught as a path, not a brand.

I believe it is meant to be a personal sadhana, not a public performance. Shared in community with a collective intention that goes beyond the posture. 

Yoga is a sacred study of the self… not a 60 minute sweat sequence with curated music and cool leggings.

For too many western studios… teachers perform curated flows for Instagram before class. Students compete in silence for the deepest backbend, longest handstand or crow.

Music is chosen for vibe over energetic integrity and postures are held for the photo, not the presence.

When did we forget this is about breath, embodiment and returning home to our divine, innate nature? When did we decide looking “spiritual” was enough?

Performance Feeds the Ego. Practice Dissolves It.

Spiritual performance is seductive.

It makes you feel important. Accomplished. Seen.

But true practice doesn’t care what you look like.

True practice will undo you. It will strip away the masks. 

True practice will shake you to the ground and make you meet yourself.

Practice is not aesthetic. It is alchemical.

It’s messy. Quiet. Often invisible.

There’s no applause for nervous system regulation. 

There’s no Ig reel for emotional processing. 

There’s no badge for crying in savasana because you finally let go.

But that’s the point.

This Isn’t a Shame Game

Let me be clear: I’m not judging anyone for being new to the path. I’m not saying you can’t love a good playlist or a cute outfit.

What I am saying is this:

If we’re not careful, we’ll keep offering spiritual spaces that look beautiful… but leave people starving.

We’ll give students just enough dopamine to come back, but not enough depth to transform.

We’ll attract followers… but we’ll stop forming practitioners.

And that is a betrayal of what this work is meant to do.

We’re Teaching “The Look”
…But Not the Practice

A 200-hour training and a pretty flow doesn’t make someone a steward of the sacred.

Teaching yoga requires embodiment. 

Teaching yoga requires trauma-awareness.

It requires a lived relationship with breath, presence and humility.

True embodiment of yoga requires you to live the practice… not just “teach it” by calling postures.

But now we have 26-year-old “mentors” with no integration, movement teachers calling themselves trauma guides and spiritual coaches reading scripts instead of holding space.

There is a difference between charisma and capacity.

And we must stop pretending they’re the same thing.

So What Now?

Do we throw it all out? No.

Do we shame the influencers? No.

Do we retreat into gatekeeping or elitism? Absolutely not.

We lead by example.

We remember.

We return to the breath.

We take ourselves off the stage and back to the mat.

We teach from our scars, not our scripts.

We practice more than we post.

We slow down.

We breathe.

And we hold space for others to do the same.

Depth Is the New Rebellion

If you're still here reading, feeling, nodding, then you are part of the new paradigm. A sacred steward of a lineage that was never meant to be trendy… but transformative.

You are the one who longs for depth over display. For meaning over metrics. For embodiment over aesthetics.

You’re willing to do the quiet, unglamorous, invisible work of integration and that is radical in a world obsessed with performance.

You’re not alone.

May we rise remembering what is holy and sacred, leading with the courage and strength requires to authentically hold it.

So I ask you… How will you carry this message forward?

In your breath. Your body. Your classes. Your choices.

What will you stand for, when the world invites you to perform?