If you think you’re too stiff for yoga
You are the perfect candidate and understanding your bones is key.
I still have people worried about joining my classes because they think they need to be flexible to start yoga.
It’s a shame that his myth is still around, but yoga is not about turning yourself into a pretzel, or chasing flexibility for the sake of it.
Understanding your nervous system first
Slow, mindful movement allows your autonomic nervous system to think its safe to go a little further in a stretch. If you rush or force it, your nervous system will respond by immediately contracting in an effort to ‘protect’ you.
As we age, this guarding reflex becomes more conservative, and it errs on the side of caution. By slowing down, your nervous system has more time to update its internal map, gradually allowing you to stretch a little further.
The Fascia That’s Everywhere
The vast intelligent web of fascia, which surrounds and supports nearly every muscle, bone, organ, nerve and blood vessel is now being understood as a bodily system for the circulation of fluids and a conveyor of sensory information.
Like the nervous system, fascia responds to slow stretching and helps you to feel whole body connection. Many of the fascia surrounding our muscles are organised along lines, such as the back fascial line which runs from the soles of the feet to the top of the head.
In a seated forward bending pose, you might feel the stretch not only in your legs and back, but even in your neck and soles of your feet.
So that still doesn’t explain why some people can go so much further than others?
This is down to the shape of your bones, your inherited skeleton, which can’t be changed, and is something that’s been overlooked in so much teaching…. For more about this, read my blog about flexibility and yoga here
Teaching yoga poses with the aim of reaching an aesthetic ideal is just not helpful, because yoga is not a performance like ballet!
The difference between functional and aesthetic yoga
Yoga an internal experience where you tune into your body and move in a way that your joints will allow, which is why I teach functionally, not to achieve perfect looking poses but with the intention or goal of a particular pose or movement.
So if you bend forward at the hips, it’s not about touching your toes, it’s about feeling the stretch in the intended areas of the hamstrings and the back muscles.
If I am teaching and everyone looks different in the room, that is simply an expression of human skeletal variety. We are even more different on the inside than on the outside!
So if stiffness is holding you back, please bring your stiff body straight into one of my one of my gentle flow classes and see how you feel afterwards.