What is Video Journaling?

Video Journaling is in some ways even harder to define than video blogging. By its nature it is personal and hidden from view. From my perspective, video journaling uses video to privately explore mind, body and soul – just as people have done with paper diaries and journals for centuries. Journal and diary keepers are in many ways the forerunners of autobiographical filmmaking which ultimately led to video blogging.

In Naked Lens I describe video journaling as being the “yin” to video blogging’s “yang.” Yin and Yang are the Taoist expressions of universal balance.

Taoist Symbol for Balance

Sometimes Yin and Yang are described as active versus passive. I’d rather think of them as being expressive and regenerative. In the Yang, expressive mode, we connect with others, we make our selves known, we share with the world. But to express something authentic we also need the regenerative stage where we incubate our thoughts and ideas somewhat protected from outside influence.

In our very Yang society we seem to lack the Yin mode, especially when it comes to media. Without Yin to balance it, culture becomes a giant fun-house mirror. Everything is rapidly reflected back and bounced around, sometimes true creativity can be lacking.

Video journaling is the opportunity to reclaim video as your own. It’s a building stage where you can step back, take a deep breath, let it out and just “be” on camera. There are no expectations, there is no one to impress. For some people this regenerative stage leads to video blogging, for others using video in this way by itself can be a healing method to reconnect to something deeper.