Yoga as Healing Portrait Series: Beyond the Young, the Beautiful and the Fashionable. This series of portraits emerged from my collaboration with Cecilia Ferreyra, who was concerned with the over-saturation of social media in North America with an ever increasing amount of images of young, beautiful yoga practitioners in fashionable outfits showcasing advanced yoga poses in paradisiac locations. Y
oga is much more than advanced yoga poses, she said….yoga poses are only a means to an end. In her case, yoga played a fundamental role in helping her grieve and heal from the tragic loss of a loved one to cancer. I agreed and we decided to create images that didn’t involve ex dancers, gymnasts cheerleaders or other members of the “flexibility elite”. The personal healing stories that are captured in these portraits speak to real experiences with yoga in the context of challenging life circumstances, including addiction, emotional trauma, injury and illness. It is our hope that these beautifully bold and vulnerable images make a contribution to, and expand the prevailing North American paradigm about, yoga as merely a fitness-oriented activity for the body conscious. I am honoured to have had the opportunity to capture the stories of Drea, Bruce and Andrea to kick off this series. Their powerful images will be shared in the coming weeks together with their own personal reflections on their yoga journeys. Importantly, this portrait series is open for further collaborations with anyone and everyone who has a personal story with the healing aspects of yoga and would like to share it more widely (please send an email to [email protected]).
