You know the line, the one every yoga teacher’s heard a thousand times..”I’m not flexible enough to do yoga”. Well, those people saying and thinking that, they’re actually right!

But is this their problem, or is the real issue how yoga is taught and what messages teachers and studios are putting out there?

Most (probably more than 90% of) normal human beings do not have bodies designed to easily contort into the poses that have come to represent modern yoga. The naturally bendy and already flexible minority who dominate social media and yoga marketing are not necessarily ‘good at yoga’, they were simply born with the anatomy and the elasticity to make interesting shapes. 

It’s of course possible that someone can be physically able to make difficult gymnastic shapes and still be practising yoga - going within, practising awareness of their mental state as they move physically, working on stilling their mind - but I’d hazard a guess that the more focus someone is putting on achieving the ‘perfect’ (frankly unrealistic) shape, the less likely they are to be practising what I would consider real yoga. And the more that the industry of yoga focuses on this aspect, the more people who actually could really benefit are missing out. 

Do you, in your daily life, really need to put your foot behind your head, do a handstand on your fingertips, fall into the spilts at a second’s notice? 

It’s fun to make daft shapes, work the body, build up a sweat, feel our muscles getting stronger; that can be part of yoga. But if that’s ALL it is, it’s just an exercise class. 

Historically, the primary purpose of the practice of yoga was to work on the MIND, not the body. Maybe to do this most comfortably, we need to ease the physical body first, especially with our modern lifestyles spent slumped at desks or flopped on sofas. But the essential goal which will ultimately benefit us more, is to work within, not just to ‘work out’.

With focused movement of the body, focused observation of the mind, and with continued practice, we move ever closer to a state of pure awareness - of who we are, what we feel, why we react the way we do, how we can connect better to ourselves and to others. And maybe, bit by bit, we can make the world a nicer place..?!

THIS is my yoga philosophy.