“I Can’t Do Yoga Because…” — The 10 Biggest Myths Keeping You Off the Mat

Here’s a question I hear all the time, in the studio, on Instagram or from pretty much most people I come across who have never tried yoga… :

“I’d love to try yoga, but… don’t I need to be flexible / calm / bendy / a certain type of person first?”

The short answer is no. The longer answer is this blog.

Walking into your first yoga class takes courage — I know, because I remember the first time I started anything that I wanted, but was unfamiliar and new. And what makes it feel scarier than it needs to be are the stories we tell ourselves about who yoga is “for”. Most of those stories aren’t true. They’re myths, picked up from social media, films, and that one impossibly bendy person we all seem to know.

So let’s take the ten biggest ones and gently take them apart, one by one.

Yoga Myth 1: “I’m not flexible enough to do yoga”

This is the big one. If I had a pound for every time someone told me they couldn’t come to class because they can’t touch their toes, I could probably retire to an ashram.

Here’s the thing: saying you’re too inflexible for yoga is like saying you’re too dirty to have a bath.

Flexibility is not a requirement for yoga. It’s one of the many results of yoga. Nobody arrives flexible — every single bendy person you’ve ever seen in a class started somewhere, usually with tight hamstrings and a stiff lower back, just like everyone else.

And honestly? Yoga was never really about flexibility in the first place. The physical postures (asana) are just one part of a much bigger practice that includes breathwork, meditation and philosophy. The shapes are a doorway, not the destination.

At Inner Lifetime, every class comes with props — blocks, straps, bolsters — and adaptations for every body. Can’t reach the floor? The floor comes up to meet you. Knees don’t like kneeling? We’ll pad them. Your version of a posture is the right version, because it’s happening in your body, today.

The truth: You don’t need to be flexible to start yoga. You need to start yoga to become flexible. And even then, depending on your anatomy, joint set up, and level of natural elasticity in your connective tissues – depends on how flexible you become. We are all different – and that is something to be celebrated.

Yoga Myth 2: “I can’t sit still or switch my mind off”

So many people believe meditation and stillness are for people with naturally quiet minds — and that their busy, whirring, to-do-list brain disqualifies them.

Let me reassure you: nobody can switch their mind off. Not me, not the person on the front row who looks serene, not the monks in the Himalayas. The mind’s job is to think, the same way the heart’s job is to beat. Yoga has never asked you to stop thinking.

What yoga teaches instead is something far more achievable — and far more powerful. You learn to notice your thoughts rather than being swept away by them. To watch the mental chatter with a bit of curiosity and a lot of kindness, and to keep coming back to your breath. Every time your mind wanders and you bring it back, that is the practice. You’re not failing at meditation — you’re doing it.

And here’s the part beginners are rarely told: the movement helps. In a yoga class you’re not asked to sit motionless for an hour — you’re moving, breathing, balancing. Your mind quietens because your body is occupied. Stillness sneaks up on you. Most people are amazed at how settled they feel by the time we reach Savasana (the lovely lying-down bit at the end).

The truth: A busy mind isn’t a barrier to yoga. A busy mind is exactly why yoga exists. Yoga is not about switching off thoughts, it’s about strengthening the ability to watch them, and remember that ‘you are not your thoughts’.

Yoga Myth 3: “I don’t look like someone who does yoga”

Ah, Instagram. Where yoga apparently means a size-8 twenty-something in matching pastel activewear, balancing on one hand on a cliff edge at sunrise.

That’s not yoga. That’s marketing. And it is bloody toxic.

Real yoga — the kind that’s been practised for thousands of years — has absolutely nothing to do with how you look. It doesn’t care about your size, your age, your weight, or whether your leggings are from Lululemon or the supermarket. Yoga is an internal practice. The only person who ever knows what your practice feels like is you.

Walk into any class at Inner Lifetime and you’ll see what a real yoga class looks like: all ages, all shapes, all backgrounds, all levels. People in their twenties and people in their seventies. And here’s a secret — everyone is far too busy wobbling in their own Tree Pose to look at yours.

Your body, exactly as it is right now, is a yoga body. It became one the moment you decided to step on a mat.

The truth: There is no yoga “look”. If you have a body and you can breathe, you’re fully qualified. That very sentence  “I don’t look like someone who does yoga” isn’t really your thoughts at all, it’s programming.

Myth 4: “I’m not that kind of person”

Maybe you think yoga is only for the spiritual types. The crystal collectors. The people who use words like “manifest” or”universe” in everyday conversation. Maybe you’re a builder, an accountant, a rugby player, a sceptic — and you’ve quietly decided yoga isn’t for people like you.

I understand – and fully accept that as a yoga teacher, these words are big in my vocabulary. But… this might be my favourite myth to bust, because “the kind of person who does yoga” simply doesn’t exist.

Yoga is practised by athletes and NHS workers, farmers and grandparents, teenagers and total sceptics. Some come for a bad back. Some come for stress. Some come because their partner dragged them along (and then quietly became the more dedicated of the two — I’ve watched it happen more than once).

You don’t need to believe anything to do yoga. You don’t need to chant if you don’t want to, adopt a new lifestyle, or leave your sense of humour at the door. You just need to show up, breathe, and move. Take what serves you and leave the rest — the practice meets you exactly where you are.

And that belief — I’m not the kind of person who… — is worth being curious about anyway. Where did it come from? Who decided it? Often these stories aren’t really ours; we inherited them somewhere along the way and never thought to question them. Yoga, gently and without any fuss, gives you the space to do exactly that.

The truth: There is no “kind of person” who does yoga. There are just people who’ve started, and people who haven’t yet.

Yoga Myth 5: “Yoga is a religion — it might conflict with my faith”

This one deserves a clear, respectful answer, because it stops a lot of people before they’ve even considered a class.

Yoga is not a religion. It has no god you’re asked to worship, no doctrine you’re asked to accept, and no membership beyond turning up. It’s an ancient practice and philosophy — a set of tools for working with your body, breath and mind — that grew up alongside various spiritual traditions in India, but was never confined to any of them.

In our classes you’ll practise postures, breathing and relaxation. Nothing in a yoga class asks you to believe anything, and nothing about it conflicts with practising a faith. People of all faiths and none share our mats, and in my experience the practice tends to deepen whatever already matters to you — your faith, your values, your relationships — rather than compete with it.

If anything in a class ever doesn’t sit right with you, you’re always free to simply breathe and skip it. Take what serves you; leave the rest.

The truth: Yoga is a practice, not a belief system. You bring your own beliefs to the mat — it doesn’t hand you new ones. It can open your mind however, and help you to believe in yourself.

Yoga Myth 6: “I’m too old to start”

Tell me — too old according to whom?

Yoga is one of the very few practices you can genuinely begin at any age. Not a watered-down version of it: the actual thing. Because yoga has never been about achieving shapes; it’s about breath, awareness and moving your body in a way that serves it today. That’s as available at 75 as it is at 25.

In fact, the older you are, the more yoga has to offer: balance work that protects against falls, gentle strength that supports joints, mobility that keeps everyday life easy, and breathwork that calms a nervous system that’s been running on alert for decades. Some of the most dedicated yogis in our studio came to their very first class in retirement— and they’ll tell you their only regret is not starting sooner.

Every posture can be adapted, supported with props, or done from a chair if needed. Your practice is built around your body, whatever its age and history.

The truth: You’re not too old to start yoga. You’ve simply been ready for longer than most.

Yoga Myth 7: “Yoga is just stretching — it’s not a real workout”

This is the myth I hear from the other direction — usually from gym-goers and runners who think yoga would be a “nice rest day activity” but not real training.

I’d gently invite anyone who believes this to a Power Vinyasa class. Come tell me afterwards it wasn’t a workout. (Bring water.)

Yoga builds serious strength — the functional, full-body kind. Holding your own bodyweight through planks, lunges, balances and slow, controlled transitions works muscles that machines never find, especially the deep stabilisers through your core, hips and shoulders. Add in stamina-focused flows and you’ll sweat, shake and be quietly humbled in the best possible way. There’s a reason professional athletes and rugby teams build yoga into their training.

And the stretching part? That’s not a soft add-on either. Mobility is what keeps strength usable — it’s the difference between a body that performs and a body that’s simply tight in every direction.

But here’s the deeper point: yoga trains something the gym doesn’t touch. Breath control. Focus under discomfort. The ability to stay calm while your legs are burning. That’s a kind of strength too.

The truth: Yoga can be as physically demanding as any workout you’ve ever done — and it strengthens the one muscle the gym ignores: your mind.

Yoga Myth 8: “Yoga is for women — men don’t do yoga”

Here’s a fun bit of history: for most of its thousands of years, yoga was taught almost exclusively to men, by men. The image of yoga as a feminine pursuit is barely a few decades old — an accident of Western marketing, not anything to do with the practice itself.

Some of the strongest practitioners in the world are men. So were most of the teachers who brought yoga to the West. And the physical practice — the strength, the balance, the control — rewards exactly the kind of training many men already enjoy, while quietly fixing the things that decades of gym work, football, cycling or a desk job tend to leave behind: tight hips, stiff hamstrings, grumbling lower backs and shoulders that live somewhere up by the ears.

More importantly, the deeper benefits don’t discriminate. Stress, poor sleep, an overloaded mind — none of these check your gender before moving in. Men are statistically less likely to seek support for any of them, which makes a practice like yoga more valuable, not less.

Men are always welcome at Inner Lifetime — and the ones who come through the door tend to stay.

The truth: Yoga was built by men, for men, for most of its history. It was never a women’s practice — it’s a human one.

Yoga Myth 9: “I need to get fit (or fix my injury) before I start”

This might be the sneakiest myth of all, because it sounds so sensible. I’ll come when I’m a bit fitter. When my back settles down. When I’ve lost a bit of weight. When life calms down.

But waiting to be ready for yoga is like waiting to be well-rested before you go to sleep. Yoga is the thing that builds the fitness, eases the back, steadies the mind. It’s not the reward for getting there — it’s the road.

Every class at Inner Lifetime is taught with options, props and modifications, so the practice scales down (and up) to meet exactly where you are. Working around an injury? Tell me before class and we’ll adapt together — often, gentle, intelligent movement is precisely what a recovering body needs (do check with your GP or physio first if you’re under their care). Feeling unfit? There is no fitness entry requirement. You rest whenever you need to, in a class where resting is treated as wisdom, not weakness.

There will never be a perfect moment to start. There is only the moment you decide to.

The truth: You don’t get ready for yoga. Yoga gets you ready — for everything else.

Yoga Myth 10: “I tried it once, and it’s just not for me”

I’ve saved this one for last, because it’s the myth I understand most personally.

In my very first yoga class, years ago, I was uncomfortable. Not dramatically — I didn’t run out of the room — but something in me felt awkward, exposed, out of place. And because I didn’t have the words for what was actually happening, I did what most of us do: I explained it away. It’s just not for me.

It took me a long time to understand what that discomfort really was. It wasn’t a sign that yoga and I were a bad match. It was the feeling of a nervous system that had spent years in “doing” mode — busy, braced, always on — being asked, possibly for the first time, to simply be. Stillness felt strange because stillness was unfamiliar. Being present in my own body felt uncomfortable because I’d spent so long living from the neck up.

Here’s what nobody tells you: that discomfort is information, not a verdict.

Yoga works with the nervous system directly. Through breath, movement and stillness, consistent practice teaches your body how to shift out of fight-or-flight and into “rest and digest” — the state where your body heals, your digestion works properly, your sleep deepens and your mind settles. But if you’ve been running in high gear for years, that shift can feel odd at first. Almost wrong. Like silence after a loud party.

The practice also slowly changes something even more powerful: how you speak to yourself. Every time you meet a wobble with patience instead of criticism, every time you rest without calling yourself lazy, every time you come back to the breath without judgement — you are quite literally rewiring old patterns. The voice that once said you can’t do thissoftens, on the mat first, and then, quietly, everywhere else.

None of that happens in one class. One class is just the introduction — and often an awkward one, like the first day at a new job. It’s the consistent practice that changes things.

So if you’ve tried yoga once and felt uncomfortable, restless or out of place, I’d offer you this — gently, from someone who’s been there: if your first class doesn’t feel right, that’s often the biggest sign you need it. The discomfort isn’t yoga rejecting you. It’s yoga showing you exactly where the work — and the freedom — is.

The truth: Discomfort in your first class isn’t proof that yoga isn’t for you. It’s usually proof of how much it has to give you.

So What Do You Need Before Your First Class?

Ready for the full list?

A body.

Breath.

Comfy clothes you can move in.

That’s it.

Not flexibility. Not calm. Not the right look, the right age, the right gender, the right fitness level, the right beliefs or the right personality. Everything else — the strength, the ease, the quieter mind, the confidence — comes from the practice, not before it.

At Inner Lifetime, we’re a beginner-friendly studio in the truest sense. Every class includes guidance, encouragement and props, and nobody will ever ask you to be anything other than exactly who you are when you walk through the door.

Your First Class Is On Us

Still nervous? That’s completely normal — and it’s exactly why your first class at Inner Lifetime is completely free.

No pressure, no commitment, nothing to prove. Just come along, roll out a mat, and see how it feels. The hardest part of yoga genuinely is walking through the door for the first time. After that, we’ve got you.

Book your free first class at www.innerlifetime.com or send us a message on Instagram [@innerlifetime](https://www.instagram.com/innerlifetime) — and if you’re not sure which class to start with, have a read of our guide to which yoga class is right for you, or just ask. We love helping people find their starting point.

See you on the mat.

Jade x