I Don’t Teach Yoga Because I Think Everyone Needs to Become More Flexible

September is National Yoga Month, and as we prepare to begin another season of Life Fit Yoga, I have been thinking about what yoga has meant to me over the many years I have practiced and taught.

My answer has changed.

Or perhaps more accurately, it has expanded.

When I first came to yoga, I was drawn to many of the things that initially attract people to the practice: the physical challenge, the poses, the feeling of discovering what my body could do. Over time, however, yoga became much more than that.

I began to understand something that has continued to shape me as both a practitioner and a teacher:

Yoga is a practice.

It is not a destination.

It is not a particular pose.

It is not the ability to touch your toes, balance on your hands, or make your body look a certain way.

And it is certainly not a requirement that everyone become more flexible.

Yoga Is a Practice

The word practice matters to me.

A practice is something we return to.

Again and again.

Not because we have perfected it, but because there is always something more to explore and enjoy. This is empowerment!

Some days, yoga may challenge us to become stronger.

Other days, it may ask us to slow down.

It may help us explore mobility, balance, breath, attention, or rest.

Sometimes it teaches us something about our bodies.

Sometimes it teaches us something about our habits.

And sometimes, perhaps, it simply gives us a place to pause and remember that we are more than the demands placed upon us that day.

The practice changes because we change.

And that is one of the reasons I have remained devoted to yoga for so many years.

My Yoga Has Always Been Shaped by Movement

My approach to teaching has also been shaped by the fact that yoga has never been my only movement practice.

My background in kinesiology and exercise physiology has given me another lens through which to understand the body and movement. I am interested in how we build and maintain strength. How mobility supports the way we move through daily life. How balance changes over time. How gait, posture, physical activity, and movement confidence influence our ability to continue doing the things that matter to us.

So when I teach yoga, I bring those questions with me.

I am not interested in separating yoga from the rest of life.

I am interested in asking:

How can this practice support the way we live?

How can movement help us feel more capable?

How can we build strength while also cultivating awareness?

How can we improve mobility without assuming that more range of motion is always better?

How can we challenge ourselves while still honoring the body we have today?

These questions have become part of the signature of my teaching.

There Is More Than One Way Into a Pose

My yoga roots were deeply influenced by teachers who taught me to pay attention.

To alignment.

To action.

To sequencing.

To the value of staying with something long enough to learn from it.

That influence remains with me.

But over the years, my teaching has also continued to evolve.

I have worked with people of different ages, abilities, experiences, goals, and life circumstances. I have taught in studios, universities, community settings, therapeutic environments, and places where yoga needed to meet people exactly where they were.

That experience reinforced something I believe deeply:

There is no single “right” body for yoga.

And there is rarely only one way to explore a pose.

This is one reason I love props.

A chair can offer support, but it can also offer challenge.

A block can bring the floor closer, but it can also change how we experience strength and stability.

A resistance band can provide feedback.

A wall can become a teacher.

A massage ball can help us explore sensation and awareness.

And sometimes adding a little weight to a yoga practice gives us an entirely new opportunity to build strength.

For me, props are not an afterthought.

They are part of the exploration.

They give us more ways to ask:

What happens if I try this differently?

Functional Fitness Meets Yoga

I sometimes describe my approach as bringing a little more FUNction into functional fitness.

Yes, I want our classes to be enjoyable.

We should laugh.

We should be curious.

We should not take ourselves so seriously that we forget movement can actually feel good.

But the “function” part matters too.

As an exercise physiologist, I think about the categories of movement that help us move through life.

Strength.

Mobility.

Balance.

Coordination.

Gait.

The ability to get up and down.

The ability to reach, carry, push, pull, rotate, and respond to the changing demands of our lives.

Yoga gives us an incredible framework for exploring many of these things.

But sometimes yoga can also be enhanced by borrowing from other movement traditions and evidence-based exercise principles.

That is why you may find us using a chair, a wall, resistance bands, massage balls, or hand weights.

You may find us practicing a familiar yoga pose and then exploring what happens when we change the relationship to gravity, add resistance, or focus on a particular movement pattern.

We are not abandoning yoga.

We are practicing it.

And practice leaves room for curiosity.

The Practice Is About More Than What We Can Do

Over the years, I have become less interested in asking:

“How advanced is this pose?”

And much more interested in asking:

“What can we learn here?”

Sometimes a simple standing pose can teach us more than a complicated one.

Sometimes the most challenging practice is slowing down enough to pay attention.

Sometimes strength looks like doing more.

Sometimes strength looks like choosing to do less.

The goal is not to collect poses.

The goal is not to achieve the perfect shape.

The goal is to develop a relationship with our bodies that is grounded in awareness, curiosity, and possibility.

To notice.

To experiment.

To adapt.

To return.

That, to me, is what it means to have a practice.

And Then There Is Community

There is one more part of my teaching that has become increasingly important to me over the years:

We do not have to practice alone.

Yoga is personal, but it can also be profoundly communal.

There is something powerful about arriving in a room filled with people who have come for different reasons and discovering that, for the next hour, we are going to practice together.

We move.

We breathe.

We learn.

We occasionally wobble.

We laugh.

We try again.

And over time, a class can become a community.

For me, that sense of connection is not separate from the practice.

It is part of it.

A New Season of Practice

As we celebrate National Yoga Month and begin another Life Fit Yoga season, I am not inviting you to come to class because I think you need to become more flexible.

I am inviting you to practice.

To explore what movement can teach you.

To build strength.

To improve mobility.

To challenge your balance.

To become more aware of how you move through the world.

To try something new.

To use a prop.

To laugh when things do not go exactly as planned.

And to discover what can happen when you practice in community.

Because yoga is not something we have to master before we belong.

Yoga is something we practice.

Again and again.

And each time we return, there is another opportunity to learn.

🍂 The Life Fit Yoga Fall season begins September 8.

This September, in celebration of National Yoga Month, I hope you'll join us.

Whether you are returning to your mat or stepping into a class for the very first time, there is a place for you here.

Let's practice.

Together.