The real reason I started yoga wasn't flexibility — and I'm glad I stayed

I rolled out a borrowed mat in my living room five years ago, convinced I was finally going to "get serious" about touching my toes. The truth is, I had no interest in my hamstrings. What I was actually chasing was a single, quiet breath — the kind I had not managed to take properly since my second child arrived and my nervous system decided to live somewhere in my collarbones permanently.

Looking back, the version of me who first stepped onto a mat would barely recognise the woman who now practises in a sun-drenched studio near Byron Bay, listening to magpies argue outside the window. I came to yoga for the same reason many of my friends in Australia came to it during those long pandemic years: I was looking for a way to feel safe inside my own skin again. The flexibility was, frankly, an afterthought.

The story I told at school pickup

For a long time, I told people I started yoga for the physical benefits. It sounded reasonable. Practical. The kind of answer a busy mum in Brisbane or Melbourne might give when asked what she does for herself. "Oh, just trying to stay bendy, you know."

Bendy. As if that was the currency I was trading in.

What I could never quite articulate in those school-gate conversations was that I had been living with a tightness that had nothing to do with my muscles. There was a knot between my shoulder blades that no massage could shift. There was a feeling of being constantly braced — for the next cry, the next mess, the next demand. My body had become a waiting room for everyone else's needs, and I had forgotten it was also a place I lived.

Yoga offered me the first invitation to notice that I had a body at all. Not a performing one. Not a producing one. A breathing, beating, here-one.

The afternoon my breath fell apart

I remember the exact afternoon I knew something had to change. The kids were finally down for their arvo nap, the house was quiet except for the fridge humming, and I sat on the edge of the couch trying to remember how to inhale all the way down into my belly. I couldn't. My breath kept stalling somewhere around my ribs.

It felt ridiculous to feel so defeated by such a small thing. But that was the point — I had been ignoring small things for years, and they had piled up into something I could not lift. I remember thinking, very clearly: if I cannot breathe properly in my own kitchen, I cannot keep going like this.

That night I booked my first online class. The teacher had a calm voice and a soft Scottish accent, and she spent the first ten minutes doing nothing except guiding us through simple breathing. I cried, which I had not expected, and which I am still a little embarrassed about. But the tears were useful. They were the first sign that something underneath was finally allowed to move.

Choosing stillness over splits

In the wellness world, especially the glossy version of it that fills feeds between Bondi and Bali, flexibility is often presented as the ultimate prize. Forward folds, splits, fancy arm balances. Everyone wants the photo. Everyone wants the proof.

I had no interest in any of that. My version of yoga was a slow, sometimes awkward, mostly unphotogenic practice of showing up to my mat in activewear I had owned for six years and simply being there. Some days that meant a long restorative sequence with bolsters and blankets. Some days it meant five minutes of seated breathwork before my coffee went cold. Some days it meant absolutely nothing more than lying in savasana and listening to the lorikeets outside.

The point was never the shape. The point was the return. Returning to the mat, returning to my breath, returning to the soft animal of my body that had been running on cortisol fumes for far too long.

The first time I unrolled the mat at home

I will not pretend that the first year was graceful. There were weeks when I did not practise at all, and then weeks when I guilted myself for not practising. There were mornings when I dragged my mat out at 5 a.m., only to fold it up ten minutes later because the day had already begun in my head and my body was left out of the planning.

The turning point came when I stopped trying to do yoga perfectly. I started to lay my mat down the way I might lay down a place setting for a friend. Welcome. Take your time. There is room here for whatever you brought with you today.

Once I gave myself that permission, the practice changed. It stopped being something I had to earn and started being something I could simply receive. I learned to notice how my shoulders dropped a fraction lower after a child's pose. I learned to recognise when I was holding my jaw like a clenched fist. I learned that even my breath, which had felt so broken in my kitchen, was willing to come back if I asked it gently.

Yoga for the messy seasons of motherhood

Motherhood in Australia is its own kind of weather. There are the bright, easy mornings at Bronte Baths with other mums and toddlers, and there are the long, lonely afternoons when the cicadas are screaming and the laundry never ends. My yoga mat became the one constant that did not require me to be cheerful, productive, or socially available.

Through pregnancy, through early postpartum, through the slow unfurling of perimenopause, the practice shifted with me. Some weeks it was a fierce vinyasa that made me feel powerful in a way I had not felt since my twenties. Some weeks it was legs-up-the-wall for twenty minutes while the pasta boiled. The mat never judged the version of me that showed up. It just asked me to notice her.

This is the part I wish more women were told before they walked into their first class. The mat is not there to make you better. It is there to make you visible to yourself.

Why flexibility was never the point

Here is what I have learned in five years of showing up, slowly and imperfectly, to this practice. The flexibility I was so sure I wanted did come, in a way. My hamstrings lengthened. My shoulders opened. I can, with a bit of effort, touch my toes.

But the flexibility I actually needed had nothing to do with my body. It had to do with how much grace I could extend to myself on a hard day. It had to do with whether I could bend around a difficult emotion instead of breaking in two. It had to do with learning that a practice does not have to be impressive to be useful.

Flexibility, real flexibility, is the willingness to be a beginner. To be soft. To be seen in the unglamorous middle of your own becoming.

I am not flexible in the way yoga magazines mean. I am flexible in the way a mother has to be when her plans fall apart. I am flexible in the way a body learns to be when it is finally, finally allowed to rest.

A gentle invitation

If you have been circling the idea of starting a practice but feel intimidated — intimidated by the aesthetics of it, by the bendy humans on social media, by your own inner critic — I want you to hear this. You do not need to be flexible to begin. You do not need to be calm. You do not need the right leggings, the right studio, or the right phase of life. You only need a small space, a few quiet minutes, and the willingness to notice that you are breathing.

There are beautiful classes tucked into neighbourhoods from Newtown to North Fremantle, from Adelaide Hills to Cairns, and most of them have at least one teacher who would love to help you start exactly where you are. Look for words like "gentle," "restorative," or "beginner" in the class names. Read the bio. Trust your gut. Or, if leaving the house feels like too much right now, there are wonderful online options that let you begin in your own living room, in your own clothes, on your own time.

And on the days when the practice feels impossible, when your breath is shallow and your shoulders are up around your ears, simply try this: place one hand on your chest, one on your belly, and say softly to yourself, "I am here. That is enough for today." Then, if you can, wander over to the kitchen and make yourself something nourishing. A simple meal is its own form of practice, and you can find gentle, slow recipes worth leaning into whenever the moment feels right.

Come back tomorrow. Come back whenever you can. The mat will wait. The breath will wait. And so, somehow, will you.