Stop. Reading. The. Internet.

First, let's get the irony out of the way. Yes, this is a blog on the internet and we are posting it with the intention that you might read it. Now for the point of the blog...

When we are trying to learn about yoga, we often turn to whatever resources we have available to us. Friends, teachers, books, and of course, the internet.

​As the internet becomes more and more available and now, with the prominence of AI, this becomes the easiest go-to source for "information". 

However, the internet and especially AI will tell you a lot of wrong information. (By wrong information, we don't mean a "wrong" opinion. We mean that the information it provides does not correspond with reality in the form of textual, archeological or scholarly evidence that is available to us.)

​It is becoming clear that AI lies. However, even without resorting to lying, the internet and AI do not have the ability to sort good information from bad information.

​The good news: you do! 

The human mind can think about what source their information is coming from and from there, decide how useful it is. Someone who devotes their entire life to studying a subject will have a better understanding of the subject than someone who doesn't. A business who wants to sell something will have a different approach to information than a person without financial stakes. 

Scholarly publications on yoga are a useful place to start if you want to learn more about yoga. Yes, they can be dense and hard to get through. But they are scrutinized heavily by others in the field of yoga who know about the same information, by the publishers and by reviewers. This makes the quality of information not perfect, but more reliable than what Google will tell you (unless of course, Google is sourcing a high quality piece of information). 

Easy access to information does not make the information true. ​Sadly, we have seen a pretty substantial increase in the acceptance of misleading or untrue information around yoga in the last year. Let's all do our part to check the validity of our sources, and when in doubt, try to choose a book written by an expert, over Google or AI.