Yoga for the Rest of Us: What Mid-Life Movement Actually Looks Like

The yoga industry has a branding problem.

The images you see, and I say this as someone who loves this practice deeply, tend to feature young, lean, hypermobile bodies in expensive clothing striking poses that take years of daily practice to achieve. These images are not wrong. They are simply not the whole picture.

The majority of people I teach are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. Many of them have chronic conditions, back pain, arthritis, osteoporosis, hormonal disruptions, anxiety, grief. Some of them arrive saying 'I can't do yoga, I'm not flexible enough.' That sentence always makes me smile, because it's like saying 'I can't go to the doctor, I'm not healthy enough.'

At mid-life the shapes matter less and less. The work is learning what your body needs on a given day, and giving it that. For most bodies at this stage that means less bracing, more breathing, permission to rest without guilt, and movement sized to the day you've actually had.

The 3M framework I teach, Mindset, Mindfulness, Movement, exists because I've found that changing how people move is often the smallest part of the work. Changing how people talk to themselves while they move is where the real shift happens.

If you've been putting off trying yoga because you think you don't look the part, come to one class. There's a version of this practice for the body and the life you have right now.