I'm not Flexible. (And other reasons not to try yoga)

I'm not Flexible.

I'm Not Flexible. (And Other Reasons Not to Try Yoga)

The number one reason people pass on yoga is "I'm not flexible."

This is like refusing to go to the dentist because your teeth are in poor condition. That's precisely why you might want to go.

In Western culture yoga has become associated with bendy twenty-somethings performing extraordinary shapes on Instagram. But traditional yoga is far less concerned with the shape of your pose than with what you discover about yourself while you're on your mat.

Yoga teaches you your baseline breath and how to deepen or vary it to change how you feel. It connects you to your body in a way that very little else does. You twist, flex and build strength, but more importantly you develop a moment-to-moment awareness of what is actually happening inside you. You learn to tap into sensation and body wisdom. And through that, you begin to make changes that affect your nervous, neuroendocrine and immune systems. Yoga also introduces you to meditation — beginning with physical sensation and gradually building your practice across different styles and approaches.

I attended my first yoga class in my twenties. One class was enough to put me off for over twenty years.

I came back at forty-three, when I was struggling to walk and had been offered a double knee replacement. As a last attempt to avoid surgery I tried Bikram yoga — 104 degrees, 90 minutes, 26 of the most physically demanding poses I had ever encountered. I was hooked from the very first class. For the next five years I attended at least five times a week.

I still have my own knees.

There is a saying I return to often, there is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. The human brain has built the extraordinary world we inhabit but it is the body that keeps us alive, heals us, and offers us the fastest route to genuine change. The breath alone can bring us back to ourselves in a heartbeat, at the very moment our minds are most overwhelmed.

The next time curiosity stirs and and that little voice of self-doubt whispers you are not flexible, notice it. Accept it. And then tell it to get the hell out of the way.