Our Community Rules

This is a working community, not a broadcast. People here are practising — some for forty years, some since last Tuesday — and the whole value of the place is that they are willing to say what actually happens when they do.

These rules keep that possible. They are short, they are in plain language, and they are enforced.

The short version

Stay on the subject. Be kind and be clear.
Never give medical advice, and never tell anyone to stop their treatment.
Do not post other people’s faces, names or messages without asking.
Do not sell to the room.
Practise inside your own body.
If something is wrong, press Report — do not fight it in the thread.

1. What belongs here

Our subject is sacred traditions and a sustainable future — yoga, ecology, conscious living, indigenous and classical wisdom, and the daily practice of all of it.

Welcome: insight, experience, questions, failures, half-formed thoughts, and disagreement about ideas.

Not welcome: party politics, unrelated current affairs, cryptocurrency, conspiracy material, and anything you would post identically on ten other platforms.

If you are not sure, post it. An admin will tell you kindly.

2. Write so people can read you

Please write in English — the membership is global and it is the shared language.
Write plainly, for a reader whose first language is not English.
Say the thing. Proofread before you post.
Length is fine when it is doing work. Ten short posts in a row is not.
Photographs are encouraged — your garden, your practice space, the plant you are asking about.

3. Other people’s privacy

Ask before you post a photograph of anyone else — including at workshops and retreats, including children, and including whoever is in the background of your own photo.
Never republish a private message, an email, or anything from a closed group — on this site or off it.
Never post personal details — address, phone number, workplace, health information. Not your own, and never someone else’s.
Selfies are not the point here. Post the practice, not the pose.

4. Health — the line we do not cross

This is the rule we hold hardest, because the harm is real and it is quiet.

Nobody here diagnoses anybody. Not admins, not instructors, not members. Describe your own experience in as much detail as you like. Do not tell another member what is wrong with them.
Never tell anyone to stop or reduce prescribed medication or treatment, or to leave the care of a doctor or a mental-health service. Yoga is added to a life. It does not replace anyone’s care. This is the one rule where a first breach can end an account.
Do not present yoga, herbs, fasting or diet as a cure for a named illness. Say what it did for you.
We are not a crisis service and posts are not monitored in real time. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency number. If a post worries you, press Report — an admin sees that faster than the thread does.

5. Practise inside your own body

Everything here is taught at a distance, with no instructor watching you. That puts the judgement in your hands.

Work at the edge of your capacity, never past it. Sharp pain means stop.
In breathing practice the danger is forcing, not depth. Pulsing in the ears, a tightening face, an agitated mind afterwards — those mean you pushed. What arrives on its own is a different thing from what you impose.
If you are pregnant, recovering from surgery or injury, or managing a heart, blood-pressure, eye or psychiatric condition — talk to your own practitioner before you begin, and tell your instructor.
Do not attempt inversions, strong prāṇāyāma or long fasting on the strength of a forum post.

6. Writing for the eMAG

The eMAG has its own categories, which are edited by us. Members also have their own avenue to publish — you can write and post an article from your own account without asking anyone’s permission.

Good member articles can be advanced into the main eMAG categories. We read what members publish. When a piece is strong enough it is reviewed and moved across, where it sits alongside our own editorial work and reaches the whole readership.

What we are looking for:

Experience over summary. Something you have actually practised, grown, built, sat with or lived through. What you learned from a book is welcome — what happened when you tried it is better.
Real specifics. A place, a date, a name, a plant, a text, a number. Detail is what makes a piece worth reading twice.
Honesty about sources. Credit the teacher, the book, the translator, the photographer. Say where a claim comes from.
Written for a reader who is not inside your head. Explain the term the first time you use it.
Your own voice. We are not looking for machine-written filler or a rewritten search result, and we can tell.

Who owns what you write:

You keep the copyright. Your article is yours. Publishing it here does not transfer ownership, and we do not sell or license members’ work to anyone else.
You give us permission to publish it on the Site and to promote it — including in the eMAG, in newsletters and on our social accounts — for as long as it is published here. This is the licence set out in section 7 of the Terms of Use.
Your byline stays on it if it is advanced into a main category.
We may edit for clarity, length, house style and accuracy. Anything more than light editing is discussed with you first.
You can ask for it to be taken down at any time — but you do have to ask. Closing your account does not unpublish it: your article stays where it is, with your byline, until you specifically request removal. Write to admin@ecology.yoga and we will take it down, subject to the practical limits in the Privacy Policy.
Only post what is yours to post. If you did not write it, or you do not hold the rights to the images in it, it cannot go up.

7. No selling to the room

No advertising, affiliate links, referral codes, multi-level marketing, or recruiting to other platforms.
No unsolicited direct messages selling anything — including spiritual services.
Mentioning your own work when it genuinely answers the question is fine: once, in context, and say that it is yours.
Instructors have their own channels for offering courses. The forums are not one of them.

8. Post what is yours

Credit anything you quote — the teacher, the book, the translator, the photographer. Full copyrighted books, paywalled papers and pirated recordings do not go up here; a quotation, a citation and a link is the way to share a text you love.

Scripture and mantra are handled with care: give the source, and do not reword a mantra.

9. Disagreeing well

Argue with the position, never the person. No contempt, no pile-ons, and do not carry a disagreement from one thread into another.

Lineages differ — often the older the practice, the more versions of it exist. “My teacher taught it differently” is a contribution, not a correction.

Nothing here tolerates racism, misogyny, homophobia, casteism, religious contempt, or mockery of anyone’s body, accent, income or level of practice.

10. Instructors

Instructors are members with extra publishing rights, and they carry extra responsibility:

Describe your training honestly. Do not imply a qualification you do not hold.
Do not present teaching as therapy. The word for what you do here is instructor — not therapist, not healer, not doctor.
Keep what a student tells you private.

11. Moderation, and what happens if a rule is broken

Admins may edit, move, close or remove posts, and may decline to publish a submission that is repetitive or off-subject. Not everything can be published — that is an editorial decision, not a judgement of you.

The usual order: a quiet word → a formal warning → a temporary suspension → removal.

Some things skip the queue and can end an account immediately: advising someone off their medication, posting another person’s private information, sexual content, threats, and spam operations.

If your post disappears and you do not know why, ask. If you think a decision was wrong, reply to the admin who made it and say so plainly — it will be looked at again.

12. How to report something

Use the Report control on the post, comment or profile. It goes straight to the moderators and the person you are reporting cannot see it.

For anything sensitive, or anything involving a member’s safety, write to admin@ecology.yoga.

Please do not moderate in the thread. It rarely helps, and it makes the mess bigger.

13. These rules sit inside the Terms

Your membership is also governed by our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. Where a rule here is more specific, this page applies.

We may update these rules as the community grows. Material changes are posted here, and where they affect your membership we will email you.

Thank you for being part of this. A community of practice is built by the people who show up and tell the truth about what happened when they sat down. 🙏