Do I Have to Be Flexible to Practice Yoga? | Eva Zee Wellness

I cannot tell you how many times someone has told me, "I'd love to try yoga, but I'm not flexible enough."

I always find this a little funny because that's kind of like telling me you can't take a cooking class because you don't already know how to cook.

Somewhere along the way, we've managed to convince people that flexibility is a prerequisite for yoga. Apparently, before you're allowed to explore breathing, movement, balance, and body awareness, you need to demonstrate that you can fold yourself into a pretzel.

I'm still trying to figure out who made that rule.

Here's something you might not know about me.

I have scoliosis, and I'm not particularly bendy myself.

My spine has its own structure, and my experience of movement doesn't always look like what people expect from a yoga teacher. Living in this body has given me plenty of opportunities to explore how movement feels rather than worrying about how it looks.

After more than ten years working in critical care and now teaching yoga therapy, I've become much more interested in what our bodies are communicating than what shapes they can make.

I don't teach people how to become human origami.

I teach physiology through movement, and you don't need flexible hamstrings to participate.

How did yoga become a flexibility contest?

Modern yoga culture has taken an ancient practice of living healthy and turned it into something that often resembles a gymnastics competition..

Open social media and you'll find people balancing on their hands, folding themselves in half, or casually placing a foot somewhere near their ear while looking completely unbothered.

Good for them. Seriously. Those movements require strength, coordination, mobility, and practice.

The problem begins when those images become our definition of yoga.

People start assuming that if they can't touch their toes, sit cross-legged comfortably, or get up and down from the floor without making any noise then yoga probably isn't for them.

This is absolutely a hill I will die on!

Your ability to perform a particular posture tells me very little about your ability to practice yoga.

Yoga includes movement, breathing, attention, awareness, and the relationship between what we're experiencing and how we respond.

None of those requires you to touch your toes.

Your body has a history, and that matters.

One of the things nursing taught me is that context matters.

When someone came into the ICU, we didn't look at one number on the monitor and decide we understood everything happening in their body.

We assessed. We gathered information. We considered medical history, medications, injuries, surgeries, symptoms, and the circumstances surrounding what we were observing.

I approach yoga therapy with that same curiosity.

Your body has been adapting to your life for decades.

Maybe you've spent years standing for twelve-hour shifts. Maybe you've had a knee replacement, back surgery, or a couple of pregnancies. Maybe you're navigating menopause, chronic pain, fatigue, or the accumulated effects of spending most of your working life taking care of other people.

My scoliosis is part of my own anatomy and movement experience. Someone else's experience might be shaped by arthritis, a previous injury, joint structure, or years of repetitive movement.

Our reasons may be different, but we can recognize something familiar in each other's experiences: the realization that our bodies don't necessarily move the way yoga is often portrayed.

Two people can perform what appears to be the same yoga posture and have completely different experiences.

Neither person is necessarily doing anything wrong.

Your body is responding to its own anatomy, history, and the information available to it.

I think that is far more interesting than deciding who can get their nose closer to their knees.

Can we please stop calling everything a modification?

This is one of those little language changes that matters more than people might realize.

In many yoga classes, there's the "full expression" of a pose, followed by modifications for people who can't do it.

Think about what that communicates.

One version is presented as the real thing, while everything else becomes an alternative for people who aren't quite there yet.

I prefer the word variation.

A chair-supported forward fold is a variation.

A standing forward fold is a variation.

A seated forward fold is a variation.

None of them is automatically more valuable than another.

Each creates a different experience of movement, muscular effort, balance, breathing, and sensory information.

As a yoga therapist, that's what I'm interested in.

What happens to your breathing when you change positions? Do your shoulders participate differently when you're supported by a chair? Does your balance change when your feet are farther apart? Does a smaller movement give you more opportunity to notice what's happening?

These are useful questions.

The goal isn't to work your way toward the version that looks most impressive.

The goal is to discover which variation gives you the experience you're interested in exploring today.

That may change tomorrow, and that's completely reasonable.

Your nervous system has a lot to say about how you move.

Now we get to the nerdy part, because movement is considerably more complicated than muscles stretching and contracting.

Your brain is constantly receiving information from sensory receptors throughout your body, including those in your muscles, tendons, joints, skin, and connective tissues.

One of the systems involved is proprioception, which helps your nervous system understand where your body is and how it's moving through space.

Your vestibular system contributes information about head movement, orientation, and balance. Your visual system adds another layer of information, and your brain integrates these signals to help coordinate movement.

Your nervous system also considers previous experiences, physical demands, fatigue, discomfort, and what it predicts might happen next.

All of this contributes to how you move.

This is why I don't assume that someone who feels stiff simply needs to stretch more.

The sensation of tightness doesn't automatically tell us what's creating that experience.

Maybe a different position changes the sensation. Maybe changing the amount of effort makes movement more comfortable. Maybe additional support allows someone to explore a range of motion they wouldn't otherwise choose.

We can investigate those possibilities through movement.

I like to think of yoga as a little physiology laboratory where you get to be both the scientist and the subject.

Fortunately, no lab coat is required.

Try this little experiment.

You can do this sitting in a chair, and it takes less than two minutes.

Sit in a way that feels reasonably comfortable and notice where your body makes contact with the chair and floor.

Slowly turn your head to look toward one side of the room, staying within a comfortable range of motion. Notice where the movement seems to happen and whether anything else in your body participates.

Return to center.

Now try the same movement while allowing your eyes to move in the direction you're turning.

Notice whether the experience changes.

You might feel a difference in the movement, the amount of effort, or where you notice sensation. You might not notice much difference at all.

Both experiences are useful.

You just explored how changing one piece of sensory information can influence your experience of movement.

We didn't stretch anything to its limit. We didn't attempt a complicated posture, and there was absolutely no need to purchase leggings.

You practiced awareness through movement.

That's one way we explore movement in yoga therapy.

You don't have to get in shape before you begin.

Another thing I hear regularly is, "I need to get in better shape before I start yoga."

I understand where that belief comes from, especially when yoga is presented as a fitness class requiring strength, flexibility, coordination, and enough endurance to survive forty-five minutes of moving between postures.

There are certainly athletic forms of yoga, and people who enjoy them should absolutely continue enjoying them.

That just isn't the only way to practice.

Yoga can provide opportunities to explore strength, mobility, balance, coordination, breathing, and body awareness at whatever level makes sense for you.

Some days that might involve standing and moving.

Other days it might involve sitting in a chair, lying comfortably with pillows, or spending a few minutes noticing how your breathing changes with movement.

Progress doesn't always look like a deeper stretch or a more complicated posture.

Sometimes progress is recognizing that you're holding your breath when you concentrate. Sometimes it's noticing that you use much more muscular effort than a movement requires. Sometimes it's discovering that changing your position makes something feel different.

Those discoveries give you options.

The more familiar you become with your body's responses, the more information you have available when deciding how you want to move, rest, or respond.

That is a skill worth developing whether you're twenty-five, fifty-five, or eighty-five.

Yoga For Non Bendy People exists for a reason.

Living with scoliosis has influenced how I think about movement, but it was meeting so many people with similar experiences, often for completely different reasons, that helped shape Yoga For Non Bendy People.

I've met people navigating injuries, surgeries, chronic pain, changes in mobility, fatigue, and years of feeling that yoga wasn't designed with their bodies in mind.

I've also met people who are simply not particularly bendy, like me.

We don't all share the same anatomy or physical experiences, but we often share the same question: Is there a way for me to practice yoga that makes sense for my body?

I wanted to create a place where the answer could be yes, without anyone having to prove what their body can do first.

A place where we could explore movement without comparing ourselves to the person on the next mat, where a chair or a wall is simply another way to practice, and where the experience of movement matters more than reproducing a particular shape.

My scoliosis is part of my story. Your body has its own history, and I think both deserve to be part of the conversation.

That's what I want Yoga For Non Bendy People to offer: opportunities to explore movement, breathing, balance, strength, and body awareness, with variations that recognize we're all bringing different bodies and different experiences to the practice.

Curious about joining us?

Yoga For Non Bendy People is an online membership where we explore physiology through movement, breathing, balance, and awareness in ways that are accessible to real people living real lives.

We use chairs, walls, props, and different variations because there isn't one way every body needs to move.

You don't need to arrive flexible, strong, coordinated, or familiar with yoga.

You get to bring the body you have today and discover what it has to teach you.

Membership is $25/month, and I'd love to have you practice with us.

Explore Yoga For Non Bendy People and join here

I'm not particularly interested in whether you can touch your toes.

I'm much more interested in what you learn about yourself along the way.

💜 Eva

Eva ZobianWolf, RN, C-IAYT
Eva Zee Wellness