Community Spotlight: Yoga

^{image source: Yoga Practice Videos - Yoga Vidya/YouTube}

Community Spotlight is an ongoing exploration of the various communities that exist on YouTube. To determine which channels make up any community, we analyze a variety of signals, including titles, tags and other metadata, to form a pool (excluding artist channels and channels that are not relevant). Community stats are derived from that grouping.

What: Last year, the Culture & Trends team explored YouTube’s fitness community, a massive (8,000+ channels) group of creators offering a wide array of workouts to audiences around the world. To kick off 2021, we take a closer look at a subset of that broader community: the yoga community.

This group is made up of yoga practitioners who share workouts, as well as a diverse range of healthy living practices, including guided meditations. While views of this community have grown every year for the past five years, there was a significant bump in 2020 — views increased over 165% from 2019 to 2020 — as pandemic-affected audiences transitioned to at-home workouts and looked to yoga creators to help them regulate their physical and emotional needs.

Where: The yoga community is made up of creators based around the world. However, among uploaders who share their country, the majority come from the U.S. and India, followed by the U.K., Spain, France, Canada, Vietnam, Germany, Brazil, and Italy.

By the Numbers:

• There are more than 2,000 channels in the yoga community.
• Global views of videos from the yoga community increased over 165% from 2019 to 2020.
• Average daily uploads of videos from the yoga community increased more than 10x over the last five years.

Popular Creators:

Yoga With Adriene, U.S. (9.5M subscribers) - With her calm demeanor and step-by-step instruction, Adriene Mishler has helped make yoga more accessible to the masses. In addition to sharing popular 30-day workouts, she also offers emotionally-centered exercises, such as yoga for vulnerability and yoga for uncertainty.

MalovaElena, Chile (2.5M subscribers) - Vinyasa instructor Elena Malova has been uploading videos since 2011. She shares guided meditations along with exercise classes.

Boho Beautiful Yoga, Canada (2M subscribers) - Juliana and Mark Spicoluk started their channel in 2014. Their most popular videos are morning workouts and practices for beginners.

Xuan Lan Yoga, Spain (1M subscribers) - Former marketing and banking professional Xuan Lan now teaches a range of yoga styles on her channel. More recently, she has released a series of videos — yoga for telework — that address current remote work conditions.

Mady Morrison, Germany (1.5M subscribers) - German yoga teacher Mady Morrison began uploading vlogs in 2015 and quickly transitioned to yoga and meditation classes. Her most popular videos are morning yoga routines and a 15-minute full body stretch routine, posted in 2020.

Popular Videos (2020):

Mady Morrison, 15 Min. Full Body Stretch: Daily Routine for Flexibility, Mobility & Relaxation: This short stretching routine is meant to be built into one’s daily routine, helping to create structure.

MalovaElena, Yoga Para Principiantes: Dia 1 Todo cuerpo - 25 min: The first part of a larger series for those just getting started with yoga.

sonal sharma yoga, Core and shoulder strength through yoga: This video, from a channel with fewer than 100K subscribers, received more than 4 million views, with audiences marveling at the yogi’s physical control and flexibility when moving through a sequence.

Yoga With Adriene, Day 1 - Invite: Breath - A 30-Day Yoga Journey: The first part of Adriene Mishler’s most recent 30-day yoga series has received more than 3.6M views

Trends:

Yoga for ____: Many creators within the yoga community differentiate their yoga classes by framing them within various contexts, from emotions (ex. Yoga for Uncertainty), to times of the day (ex. Yoga for Sleep), experience level (ex. Yoga for Beginners), and physical conditions (ex. Yoga for Back Pain).

Among these, videos sharing yoga routines for beginners are especially common, speaking to a broader trend of developing new skills that has emerged over the past year.

30-Day Challenges and Practices: Popular creators like Yoga With Adriene and Yoga With Tim, build a sense of structure and accountability for viewers with their 30-day challenges and yoga journeys. In 2020, there were more than 89M views of videos with “30 day” in the title from creators in the yoga community.

The power of a common aesthetic: Yoga With Adriene can be credited with helping to develop a visual identity for the yoga community: Her minimalist home set design has been adopted by many other creators. This common aesthetic is a strong tool for establishing a sense of familiarity and community, and is at the root of other trends from cottagecore to dark academia.