The concept of being shit at yoga is going to tweak a few nipples. Because yoga is supposed to be non-judgemental, without failure, and all about you and your mat rather than what everyone else in the class is doing. I can tell you what everyone else in the class is doing: they’re buying US$16 BILLION worth of yoga stuff per year. “Western” Yoga is booming, with participation in the US more than doubling in less than a decade. Typing “yoga” into youtube will overwhelm you with young, flexible, well presented white women doing things that look fascinatingly impossible.
There are plenty of progress shots (there’s no “before and after” in yoga, my friends, it’s a JOURNEY) but they all start from a level of flexibility that most of us have not managed since we were four. Look again at that picture of me. Is that hand EVER going to touch that foot? There’s estimated to be 300 million people worldwide sliding or stumbling their way towards savasana. They’re surely not all as flexible as the 20-something vegan goddesses that rule the web. Some of them must be a bit podgy and stiff and tired and wobbly too.
Yoga is about more than just you and the mat. It’s also about pushing yourself, and feeling good within yourself, and getting to the point of not caring what others think about you and what you look like. You will know I’ve found how to be truly humble when I start posting the videos of me arranging myself into and out of the poses I’m so shit at.
Yogi still taken from:
https://www.doyogawithme.com/content/flow-yoga-energize
Stats taken from:
https://www.yogaalliance.org/Portals/0/2016%20Yoga%20in%20America%20Study%20RESULTS.pdf
https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/iayt.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/bibliographies-members/stats.pdf