“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
>”,”name”:”in-content-cta”,”type”:”link”}}”>Download the app.
Last semester, a student turned in an essay in a writing class I teach. The assignment was to write an opinionated piece, rich in perspective, but as I read more, I realized there was no eye behind the “I.”
“Did ChatGPT write this?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got to admit it did,” he said, somewhat brazenly. I wasn’t shocked—people everywhere are using AI to do a lot of their writing and thinking—but I was as speechless as he apparently had been. The project had asked him to use his voice, his tension, his particular way of being in the world. I’d been hopeful the essay was an opportunity for him to spend time with his own thoughts and feelings. Instead, I got syntax.
In that moment, I was grateful that I also teach and practice yoga. AI might be able to structure a yoga class or point out new poses, but it can’t take your place on the mat.
At the end of the day, you can’t outsource your Downward Dog. You can’t copy-and-paste embodiment. No one’s going to hit “generate flow” and disappear from their own breath. Sure, someone might use ChatGPT to explore yoga, ask questions, or get tips—but no one, not even a bot, can do the work of returning to yourself—the work of staying human. I’m so glad for that.
Yoga is the opposite of content—it’s contact. With yourself. With tradition. With sensation. Yoga demands presence. There’s no way to shortcut it. Not really. You have to find a way to unplug from your feed and plug into what can only be felt.
For me, the more high-tech life gets, the more I need the highly tangible to balance it out. I need to feel my seat on a yoga mat, block or blanket. To notice how my breath moves my body. To watch my thoughts as much as I do screens and connect my spirit to stillness. I think this practice is more than a counterbalance to the high-tech. It’s a resistance to it. It’s a way to stay human and connected to others.
I need this practice now more than ever. Do you?
I predict the more artificial intelligence seeps into everything, the more we’ll need the real intelligence of the body, accessed through yoga. Yoga offers its own technology—an ancient one—that will keep us connected to a wholeness beyond the screen and in touch with each other.
As time has gone on, I’ve started to sneak more moments of meditation and breathwork into my writing classes. I’m hopeful that a direct experience of the self might help my students write more fully from it, too.
People are asking if writing teachers—and other jobs—will be replaced by AI. Right now, I don’t have an answer. All I know is this: yoga won’t be replaced. As we work to find the things that make us human, that make us feel, it will only be needed more.
