Yoga is the same way. One does not need to be already flexible to try yoga. You simply become more flexible by trying yoga. Indeed, in our experience, usually the people who are least flexible when they first show up are the ones who make the fastest progress and see the most dramatic results in the shortest time. In this sense, yoga is similar to anything else you?ve ever tried: you see a lot of improvement when you begin, and as you become more experienced, it takes increasing amounts of effort and commitment to continue to see improvement. It's no big deal to learn to finger paint but quite another to create landscapes with watercolors.

Moreover, there simply isn't any absolute scale of flexibility that has any relevance to the real health benefits derived from doing yoga. Years ago while training to become instructors, we met an elderly man who would come to class and was barely able to walk. With his arms in front of him, elbows bent for balance, he took tiny steps as he sort of waddled down the hallway. It seemed as though it took him a full minute to travel the 50 feet from the studio entrance to the locker room. When he performed the various postures, one could see only the slightest hint of each pose in the shape of his body. Yet he kept coming every weekday morning. When we finally gathered the nerve to ask why he even bothered to come to class, he responded, "Because when I started doing this, I was using a walker. Now I don't." That certainly shut us up!

This man is never going to be flexible in comparison to anyone you think of as flexible. But so what? The benefit he received is obviously enormous. We have a friend who is quite overweight and has been doing yoga for years. Although he shed a lot of pounds during his years of practice, for whatever reason he remains quite overweight. Yet, during the early months of his practice, he discovered that he needed lower and lower doses of insulin to manage his diabetes. Ultimately, he stopped taking insulin altogether. Even more ironic is that he came to yoga to get help with his back pain; his break from insulin was an unexpected side benefit. He's still not particularly flexible. Even after years of practice, this man's gut keeps him from touching his toes. So what? His back doesn't hurt and he doesn't need insulin.

The point is that one need not be flexible to try yoga nor is becoming flexible the point of doing yoga. A consistent practice of yoga can result in all sorts of benefits, some intended and some a surprise. All one has to do is try it, notice the benefits that ensue, and decide whether those benefits are worth maintaining a practice for. Given the inexorable growth in the practice of yoga in America over the past 20 or 30 years, most practitioners apparently are deriving benefits they value. Believe us, they weren't all "flexoids" when they started. In fact, one of us could not even reach his ankles!