Yoga - just for the young and skinny people?

And other inaccurate assumptions...

When I was forty something I joined a Gym, and in my enthusiasm to experience everything the place had to offer, I signed up for several classes. I happily attended boxercise, aerobics, and circuit training, because they helped me to feel like I was getting fit again, and were quite sociable and fun. They also entertained me a lot more than exerting myself with clanking bits of metal in an atmosphere infused with the odour of Lynx, and speakers squealing endless melodies from the likes of Mr. Timberlake, Jay Zee, Kylie, and their fellow popsters of the noughties.

I must confess that I’m in no position to judge music, as I have the musical ability of a 6 year old learning to play a recorder (remember those woodwind instruments resembling a flute?) I also accept that the gyms of today may be far more interesting places with their high tech machinery measuring all manner of bodily functions, plus the technology to listen in to our own spotify playlist. Nevertheless I stay away from gyms as they hold little interest for me, so I can’t really give an informed opinion of a 2025 gym experience.

Back to my forties at that Gym, I remember my delight at spotting an ‘all levels’ yoga class on the schedule, and signing up with great enthusiasm, looking forward to being in a room with other people practicing this wonderful activity. My previous experience of yoga had been in my thirties, when I bought a book describing a number of yoga poses and sequences. I recall using the book many times to practice the poses. It was quite a challenging feat, because trying to remember if I was meant to be breathing in or out, meant a lot of stopping mid pose, squinting at the book, and getting back into the shape. Then I would have to remember if my foot was meant to be facing forward or to the side, hips facing forward or sideways, and which arm was in the air, and so on, therefore I’d have to stop and squint at the book again, and so on.

Despite the difficulties I experienced learning yoga from a book I had enjoyed my practice, until a house move meant the book was forever lost to the black hole that appears every time I move house, and was never seen again. Of course, nowadays there are no end of excellent yoga classes to be found on YouTube, but back then in the 90s, living in a rural area, unless I bought a video (yes, I know), or a DVD, then the learning of yoga poses came from a book.

Apologies I digress again. Returning to my 90s Gym experience, I recall arriving at the class with aplomb, certain that I would remember the shapes I had worked so hard at in my thirties, and excited at the prospect of doing a whole class without having to squint at a book to find out how I was meant to be breathing, and where I should be putting my arms and legs. I arrived early, so that I could bag a spot at the back, rolled out my mat, and sat down with my legs painfully crossed. Sitting in cross-legged position never came easy to me, and having not practiced for a few years, I was particularly inflexible, but I felt it important that I give the right impression to the arriving class members.

The cross legged sitting position is called Sukhasana, or ‘easy pose’. It may be easy for some, but for me it hurt like hell! Still, I remained in this position trying my best to give off a zen-like aura to anyone who cared to notice me on my mat. My zen-like composure began to slightly crumble as I looked up and saw my fellow class members slinking into the room, wearing their trendy on-brand yoga gear, looking very serious, beautifully manicured, young, and decidedly lithe!! This included the men. They were all seriously willowy-looking, and I immediately felt intimidated and out of place.

My weight had never been something which concerned me a great deal, other than the time after giving birth to my second child, when I had briefly succumbed to an unhealthy relationship with food, leading to a period of time living on lettuce and celery, whilst breastfeeding my daughter constantly in order to get her sufficiently satiated. The baby’s need to be fed almost hourly could have been due to my inadequate diet, but I’m no nutritionist so unsure if that was the effect, or whether she was just one of those babies who required continuous nursing. But other than the celery period, I had a reasonably healthy diet, and was generally happy with my overall health, well into my forties.

Back to the Gym yoga class, (I promise I’ll get there in the end), the teacher introduced herself to the whole class, most of whom I assumed already knew her, and asked us to put our hand up to say if we had never done yoga before, or if we had an injury. There was no way I was going to mention that my knees hurt, or that I was new to practicing in class, so I said nothing. And so began the class. There was no settling into our body, no connecting to our breath. Just straight into the class sequence of various yoga poses.

I was beginning to regret my decision to sit cross legged at the back, as I struggled to muffle my cries of pain whilst trying to uncross my legs to get into a kneeling posture to begin the class. It was then that I discovered that I could not sit back on my heels with my knees bent (I still can’t), so I immediately looked out of place because it was the start of class and I was already in a different position to the rest of the people there. From that point, the class only got worse. I recall little of the content of the class, other than being asked to get into pretzel-like shapes, whilst balancing on one big toe and breathing like a bee!! My abiding memory is of feeling like an imposter, utterly inadequate, and staring at the clock wishing that hour to pass as quickly as possible so I could run away from the class, never to return. This experience marked the start of my long hiatus away from yoga.

Then, something incredible happened when I was 58. I was a few months into my sober life, and was fortunate enough to be at a particular online sober community meeting, when one of the guests was Alexandra McRobert (https://substack.com/@alexandramcrobert). Alexandra inspired me and I immediately followed all of her social media, and began to do her free classes. This led to me becoming a member of her online community The Mindful Life Practice, and eventually taking part in her live Zoom yoga sessions.

There was still a part of me that had been so deeply affected by my gym yoga experience that at many of the Zoom classes I would practice along with my camera off so that no-one could see me dripping with sweat, and red in the face whilst practicing a 3 legged downward dog (Tri Pada Adho Mukha Svanasana), or falling over in Tree posture (Vrikshasana). However, as my practice continued, and my intentions changed from not needing to fit in, but to really experiencing the power of asana, I found myself not minding how I looked, but focussing on how I felt. This led to me keeping the camera on, engaging fully in class, enjoying the thoughtful and non-judgemental approach of the teaching and the other students in the community. It also led to me booking myself onto a yoga retreat in Bali (as a celebration of my sober life, and a nod to my impending 60th birthday).

In truth, it matters less what we do in practice than how we do it and why we do it. The same posture, the same sequence, the same meditation with a different intention takes on an entirely new meaning and will have entirely different outcomes.

Donna Farhi "Bringing Yoga to Life: The Everyday Practice of Enlightened Living"

It was during my time with The Mindful Life Practice Community that I began to learn more about yoga, and understood that what I assumed that Yoga consisted of, ie doing poses, was in fact a small part of it. There was so much more to it than just getting into certain shapes. Asana is a Sanskrit word meaning “posture,” “seat,” or “place.” Asanas are the physical positions we assume during a yoga practice. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras was one of the first yogic texts to mention the word ‘asana’. Patanjali includes it as one of the eight limbs of yoga and in sutra 2.47 he notes that asana should be “steady and comfortable.” I had been far from steady and comfortable in my previous yoga practice, but this opening up of my learning about yoga was like a gift from the Universe.

Little did I know that yoga would become one of the key tools of maintaining my sobriety, and my practice would support me through the toughest of times of my life. After the death of my mother in 2023, when my husband and I separated and were living apart for 12 months, I felt that the two rocks which had supported me, kept me safe and grounded, had disappeared. During my darkest days I practiced, I meditated, I chanted mantra. Yoga provided me with such peace, comfort, joy, love, and a thirst for more knowledge. Yoga supported me in order that I could lead my first Bali retreat and provide my guests with the best version of myself. My love for yoga grew so much that I would go on to complete a 200-hour yoga teacher training course in 2024, and start a journey towards a lifelong learning path.

"Yoga explains all the unanswered questions that we ask ourselves throughout life on a mental and spiritual level. As we delve deeper into the practice, we find out more and more about ourselves and others. It’s a huge journey of self-discovery, self-awareness, and consciousness."

Nikita Desai

(yoga instructor, educator, and author of ‘A beginner’s guide to the roots of yoga’ 2025)

One of my passions, as a newly qualified yoga teacher, is to help everyone in my class feel like they belong there, no matter their age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, body type, religion, or experience. Secondly, I will strive to ensure that my classes pay homage to the roots of yoga. I have just finished reading the excellent book 'A beginner's guide to the roots of yoga. This book is a practical and accessible guide to incorporating traditional yoga into a modern practice, by an Indian yoga teacher and educator Nikita Desai . Yoga in its traditional form is a practice focused on inclusivity, inner work and peace, and Nikita’s work will go a long way in helping me to understand and establish a respectful and authentic practice, and help me to share this practice with other students.

I will end this piece today by confessing that I have an internal struggle with calling myself a yoga teacher, as I know that I will forever be a student of yoga. So, for the purposes of trying to ensure that the students practice safely I call myself a teacher; for the fact that I’m the one in the front giving the cues I call myself a teacher; for the fact that I put together the sequence I call myself a teacher; and for the fact that I try to share my learning I call myself a teacher. I am, however, a student of yoga, with so much more to learn. Currently I am almost at the end of a 100-hour course on Patangali’s Yoga Sutra, and have just commenced a further advanced course on Pranyama and Meditation. It is food for my soul, and I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to learn and share. In 2 weeks, I will be in India with Alexandra on a yoga retreat, and in September I will co-lead my third retreat in Bali, Soulful Discoveries Retreat with Alexandra as our teacher. The retreat is almost full but if this is something you feel that would benefit you, there are 2 private spaces left.

I have not spoken about my work as a sobriety coach, I will talk about it in a future post, but if you would like to talk to me about this aspect of my work you can book a free 20 minute discovery call at Carolyn Clark Coaching.

Always love x