Myths About Yoga: Do You Need to Be Flexible to Practice?
Modern Yoga is rife with misconceptions. As a YTT facilitator, I encounter students with a wide variety of preconceived notions about what yoga “is” what yoga “isn’t”, and what they “should” be in order to be “good at yoga”. While the misconceptions vary, one theme seems to permeate – that yoga students want to know how to do yoga “right”. The purpose of this series is on the one hand to debunk common misconceptions preventing many from picking up a yoga practice, and even more so, to show that yoga isn’t a “one size fits all” and rather than trying to figure out how to do it “right” by someone else’s standards, we may use yoga as a tool in discovering what’s ‘right” by our own bodies, minds, and hearts.
Myths: Only Certain Body Types Can Practice Yoga
Myth: You need to be ”flexible” to practice yoga.
Picture this. You’re at a store, waiting in line, and you wind up engaging in small talk with the person beside you:
- Them: “Oh, what do you do?”
- You: “I’m a yoga instructor”
- Them: “Oh, I wish I could do yoga, but I’m so not flexible!”
Sound familiar?
We hear this ALL the time. This myths about Yoga is not limited to flexibility – variations on this theme include being in a bigger / smaller body, temporary physical conditions such as healing from injury, or chronic conditions, from arthritis to scoliosis to diabetes. You name the condition, and chances are, we’ve heard the assertion that this condition prevents said practitioner from practicing yoga. When did people start associating physical limitations such as inflexibility, body size, or even chronic illness as an impediment to engaging in yoga practice?
Truth: Yoga is for every-body
In fact, Yoga is, by design, a method to support the body and mind through life’s challenges, not a rigorous physical practice only to be performed by those in peak fitness. The limiting belief that underlies the misconception is that yoga is simply a sport like gymnastics, that you should be able to touch your toes, stand on your hands, put your foot behind your ears, and bend over backwards with ease, otherwise, you can’t practice yoga. This misconception likely stems from the fact that as yoga has popularized in the West, the primary focus has been on Yoga Asana. Particular interest has been given to vigorous practices like Vinyasa yoga. Add to this that with the rise of visual media, emphasis is often placed on a very narrow category of body types. Don’t get us wrong – we love us some complicated vinyasa sequences and acro-yoga! The point is that those are only a select few out of a multitude of Yoga styles to choose from.
It is said that many of the physical postures known today as “yoga”, are an amalgam of exercises borrowed from calisthenics and acrobatics, grouped together and presented as yoga only in the last few hundred years.
References to Yoga Asana can be found in the traditional Hatha Yoga Paradipika, but even then, those postures are primarily seated, simple movements, and the emphasis was on preparing the body for meditation by removing tension that would distract from a seated meditation practice and activating the energetics of the body to extend deeper into specific meditation techniques.
Does this mean we think you shouldn’t be practicing physical postures to do yoga properly? Wrong again! Modern yoga’s inclusion of body mechanics and athleticism is a wonderful addition to our toolbox. The point being made here is simply that we must turn to yoga’s roots to remember the why in our practice.
Why do we practice yoga? Yoga is a method for refining our senses in a way that increases our stamina and capacity. Seen in this way, not only would someone with limited flexibility or a physical alignment not be able to do yoga, but they would be more inclined to do so! Yoga is a path to understanding our unique bodies’ needs and the complicated inner workings of our minds. With yoga as a tool and ally, we may discover skills and strategies to work with life’s challenges, and maybe alleviate some of our suffering.
Yoga is an empowerment practice. Seen in this light, that overly stiff, inflexible person might see that gentle stretches, made accessible by props such as blocks and straps, are well within their abilities, and support their wellbeing. They might begin to learn more about themselves, and come to see that they lack flexibility because they have highly-developed muscle tissue, or even that an inflexibility of mind (rigid, black-and-white thinking) is mirrored in their body by holding tension and tightness.
They might turn toward yin yoga, a challenging practice of stillness and long holds, targeting deep connective tissues, and with consistent practice, patience, and curiosity, they may find both their mind and body loosen up over time. Or perhaps they turn to vinyasa yoga, finding a teacher who knows how to cue a variety of modifications, and they learn to make use of props and posture modifications to make the asanas accessible to their body’s needs.
Both paths are totally valid, and both paths are yoga. Perhaps the person healing from injury turns to hatha or vinyasa yoga, a practice they may have loved before getting hurt, which they feel disconnected from now. Maybe they learn to go at a slower pace, attuning to their body’s new needs, developing a new relationship with their body, offering it patience, and respecting it for its resilience and ability to heal. Or maybe they seek out yoga therapy and find a sequence that directly supports their healing, and strengthening against further injury. Or maybe they develop a seated meditation and breath practice, which allows them to feel safe in their body again. All of these paths are equally yoga.
The main takeaway here is that yoga, rather than something only a certain type of physically astute person can perform, is in fact, quite the opposite. Yoga is not something to perform. Yoga is a prescription, to be made accessible and individualized for each person’s unique needs. Yoga is not only a list of postures to be done in a particular order in an increasing level of intensity (some styles of yoga absolutely ARE this! – see “Ashtanga”). Yoga is a way to deepen our relationship with our own body and better understand our own needs. Yoga is not to be stopped when one’s body becomes old, rigid, or injured. Yoga is usually the exact medicine we need to know how to meet our body where it’s at, exactly how it is at that moment.
Om shanti shanti shanti. Peace peace peace.
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