Everything below describes something you can do in Svayam today - what each part of the platform does, what it costs, and, in the last section, what it will not do for you. Yoga is a physical practice, and software has limits worth knowing before you start.
What you need, what the free trial covers, and what happens on your first day.
Svayam is a web-based yoga platform that combines guided practice with camera-based posture feedback. You can follow structured courses, run posture checks, practise guided breathing, and book live classes with reviewed teachers. It runs in the browser - there is no app to install. It is built to support a regular practice, not to replace working with a teacher.
A device with a camera, a stable internet connection, and enough space to practise. A yoga mat helps but is not required. For posture checks you will want roughly two metres of clear space and somewhere stable to stand your phone or laptop. Any modern mobile browser works, though a laptop webcam placed a few feet away reads posture noticeably better than a phone held close.
Three posture assessments, one live class, one course and one guided drill - free, with no card required. Each allowance is separate, so trying a posture assessment does not use up your free class. You only enter card details when you choose a plan.
Practice covers self-directed work: posture assessments, self-paced courses, drills, progress tracking and teacher Q&A. Full Access adds the teacher-led course library and the teacher-supported features around it. The full comparison, in four currencies, is on the pricing page.
US dollars, Australian dollars, British pounds or Indian rupees, billed monthly or quarterly. You choose at checkout, and the price shown on the pricing page is the price you are charged.
Yes, at any time, from Manage billing on your subscription page. You keep full access until the end of the period you have already paid for, and you are not charged again. Upgrades and downgrades work the same way and are prorated, so you are charged only the difference for the rest of the period. Our refund policy covers what happens when something went wrong at our end.
Start with onboarding, where you share your experience level, your goals and anything your body cannot do - everything else is pitched from those answers. After that, a mobility check is the most useful six minutes you can spend, because it gives your practice a starting level. Then pick a course, or run a single posture check on a pose you already know.
Multi-week programmes you follow session by session, at your own pace or with a teacher.
A course is a multi-week programme split into numbered sessions you work through in order. Each session is a sequence of timed steps - centering, warm-up, the main practice and rest - that the player takes you through one at a time. You can leave and come back; the course remembers which session you are on. My Courses in the sidebar opens the Course Catalogue, with anything you have started listed at the top under Continue learning.
A self-paced course you run entirely on your own, in the player, whenever you like. A teacher-led course is delivered with a teacher involved. Self-paced courses are included on both plans; teacher-led courses require Full Access.
Yes - a completion certificate becomes available on the course page once you have finished every session. It is a print-ready page you can save or print from your browser. Nothing expires along the way - a course lists a suggested pace, but practising less often simply takes longer to finish.
Yes. Some courses are built entirely from breathing practice, so a session is centering, breath preparation, one or more pranayama practices and rest, with no standing poses at all. They are a reasonable choice if you want to build a practice without much physical demand.
The pose library, teacher-assigned drills, and building a short practice of your own.
Yes. The pose library is public: every pose has its own page with the Sanskrit name, how to practise it, what it may support, and any cautions. You do not need an account to read it.
A drill is a short, focused piece of practice - usually a single movement held or repeated for a set number of seconds - aimed at one area of the body. Drills come from two places: a teacher can assign them to you, and the mobility check suggests them for the areas it measured. My Drills in the sidebar opens on a To Do tab with anything outstanding, alongside Done, All and My Sessions.
Yes. Design Session on the My Drills page opens a builder where you assemble drills into a sequence of your own and then play it like any other session. Your saved sessions live under the My Sessions tab.
How the camera-based posture check works and what it can and cannot tell you.
You allow camera access in your browser and your body landmarks are read as you move, then turned into simple alignment guidance for the pose you chose. The screen looks for you in frame, a raised hand starts a short countdown, you hold the pose for a few seconds, and the assessment runs on that hold. The analysis runs in your browser on joint positions, not on your face. It gives you cues to work with; it is not a measurement of your body and not a diagnosis.
Put your device at about hip height on something stable and step back until your whole body is visible from head to feet. Light should fall on you from the front rather than behind. Form-fitting clothes read more reliably than loose fabric. When you are in position, raise your right hand above your head to confirm you are ready.
Not unless you choose to save it. Frames are processed in your browser, and nothing is stored on our servers without an explicit action from you. If you do consent to a recording, it is encrypted in your browser before upload and can be reviewed by an approved teacher; withdrawing consent deletes the recording and its keys. The privacy policy covers this in full.
When alignment is flagged as unsafe, or corrections keep coming back after several attempts, the result screen offers to send that assessment to a teacher. It shows you exactly what would be sent - the pose, the result, the confidence and the correction areas - before anything goes. Sending is your decision, never automatic.
This is almost always framing or light. Step back so your feet and head are both in frame, move a lamp or turn to face the window rather than stand in front of it, and swap loose layers for something closer-fitting. If it still will not settle, the pose page itself has the alignment cues you can work from without the camera.
The movement check that helps pitch your practice at the right level.
Nine simple movements in front of your camera, taking about six minutes. It produces a reading for each area of your body, which is used to pitch your practice at a sensible level and to suggest drills for the areas that need them. You will need about two metres of clear space. Re-checking every few months shows how your range is changing; there is no requirement to redo it at all.
They come from a single camera and are a guide, not a diagnosis. What you told us during onboarding about what your body can do always takes priority over anything measured here. If a movement hurts, that is the answer, whatever the reading says.
Guided breathing practices, how they are paced, and how to practise them safely.
Svayam Prana in the sidebar. It lists traditional pranayama and guided breathing practices, which you can filter by what you want to feel or by the type of practice. Each practice has its own page explaining what it is before you start.
You pick a practice, then a programme within it, then how you want to be guided - voice with the animation, tone, visual only, audio only, or silent. The player then runs the practice on its own clock, with an expanding and contracting shape marking each phase and a cue telling you what to do. Your choice of guidance is remembered for next time.
Start with a natural breath awareness or deep breathing practice rather than anything involving retention or alternate nostrils. The practices are filtered by purpose, so you can choose by what you want - calm, focus, energy - instead of by a Sanskrit name you do not know yet. Short and regular beats long and occasional.
Gentle practices generally are, but they are wellbeing guidance rather than medical advice. Stop if you feel dizzy, unwell or breathless, and never force the breath or push a retention. Each practice page lists its own cautions and says where working with a teacher is advisable - and if you are pregnant, or have a heart, blood pressure or respiratory condition, ask a clinician before starting.
Yes. Some course sessions include a pranayama step, and it plays the same guided practice you would get on its own - the same programme, the same cues, inside the session. The session tells you which practice it is and why it is there at that point.
Asking questions, booking live classes, and when a teacher in the room is the right answer.
Yes. Ask a Teacher in the sidebar opens Community Q&A, where you write your question and choose which teacher it goes to. Answers appear on the same page, and you can browse questions other students have asked and mark answers helpful.
Teachers apply to join and every application is reviewed and approved by our team before that teacher can publish classes. Each teacher's profile shows the background and experience they provided, so you can read it before booking.
Live classes are scheduled by teachers and you book from what they have published. Booking lives inside My Schedule, and the classes you have booked appear there under Today and Upcoming. Availability depends on which teachers are running classes, so it varies week to week.
Office Hours is a schedule of the times teachers have set aside to be available, laid out by day. It is a way to reach a teacher at a known time rather than waiting on a written answer.
No, and it is not meant to. Software can time your practice, keep you consistent and point out that your front knee is drifting; it cannot feel how you are moving, adjust you, or understand your history. If you are working around an injury, are pregnant, or are learning something demanding, a teacher in the room with you is worth more than any feedback on a screen - which is why live classes and teacher review are part of the platform rather than an afterthought.
Planning your week, checking in, and reading what the progress screens show.
My Schedule in the sidebar shows your upcoming sessions and booked classes in one place, and it is also where booking happens. Anything you have booked appears there rather than in a separate list.
It is five short questions - how your body feels, your energy this week, whether the practice intensity is fitting, any new discomfort, and anything you want your teacher to know. It takes under a minute and gives your practice and your teacher something current to work from rather than what you said at onboarding.
Sessions completed, total practice time, your current day streak and how many styles you have explored, plus your activity over the last eight weeks and your next milestone. Breathing practice is totalled separately, and goals and readiness are tabs on the same page. The streak counts consecutive days you completed practice and resets when you miss one - it is a nudge towards regularity, not a score.
The honest boundaries of what software can do for a physical practice.
No. Nothing on the platform diagnoses, treats or cures anything, and it is not a substitute for medical advice, physiotherapy or an in-person assessment by a qualified teacher. A regular yoga practice may support general wellbeing, which is a different claim entirely. If you have an injury or a health condition, talk to a clinician before you start and follow what they tell you over anything here.
It can tell you, pose by pose, where your alignment is drifting and give you a cue to work with, which is genuinely useful and hard to get on your own. But it reads a single flat view, so it cannot judge depth reliably or see that you are compensating with a shoulder because a hip is stiff. Whether any of it changes how you stand depends on practising regularly over months, on your body, and often on a teacher seeing what a camera cannot. We do not promise an outcome.
Stop for sharp or radiating pain, dizziness, breathlessness, or anything that feels wrong rather than merely hard. Never force a stretch or hold a position that hurts. Discomfort that fades when you come out of a pose is normal; pain that does not is a reason to stop and ask someone.
It reads joint positions from a single flat view, so it cannot judge depth reliably, cannot see how much effort a position is costing you, and cannot know your history. It will not notice that you are compensating with a shoulder because a hip is stiff. Treat its feedback as one input and your own sense of the pose as the deciding one.
Yes - the platform is for adults, and the safety acknowledgement you accept before practising asks you to confirm you are 18 or over.
Yes. Session data, including any recordings you chose to save, can be deleted from Settings. Withdrawing consent for a recording deletes both the recording and its encryption keys.
Each part of the platform has its own page with the detail this summary leaves out, and the pose library is public - you can read it without an account.