One of the biggest misconceptions about yoga, and fitness in general, is that once we start, we'll experience dramatic changes almost immediately. While some people notice progress fairly quickly, many of us don't.
Like me, you may have seen TV infomercials and social media transformations that only show the finished product. They promise incredible results in just a few short sessions, making it easy to believe that's what progress should look like.
When it comes to yoga, I know I fell into the trap of thinking, I should be more flexible by now.
You might find yourself asking:
Maybe you've even wondered if all this stretching, moving, sweating, and bending is actually accomplishing anything.
If that sounds familiar, you're not alone.
In this post, I'm going to share 10 signs that yoga is working and that you are becoming more flexible, even if you still can't touch your toes or reach the floor. And honestly, I wrote this as a reminder for myself, too. Just because my knees don't rest on the floor in Bound Angle Pose doesn't mean my practice isn't making a difference.
Before we dive in, take a moment to reflect on your own yoga journey. Since you started practicing, what have you noticed about yourself?
It's important to step back and look at how your practice is benefiting you off the mat just as much as it is while you're moving through the poses. You may discover that the greatest signs of improved flexibility aren't found in how deep your Forward Fold is, but in how easily you move through your everyday life.
To me, that's a far more meaningful measure of progress than achieving any particular pose.
Ready to see how far you've actually come?
Let's get started.
Recently, I was speaking with one of my yoga students after class, and she mentioned how much easier it had become for her to play tennis, especially after she started practicing yoga regularly.
Her knees handled the stress of running after the ball better. Her serve felt less restricted, and when reaching for a ball that at one time would have been out of her reach, she was able to rotate just enough to make contact and return it.
I was so thrilled to hear this because that is the power of a regular yoga practice. We don't hit any tennis balls in class, but we do twist, stretch, reach, lunge, and sometimes even change direction. Those movements translate into the activities we do every day.
Maybe you've noticed that since you started practicing yoga, getting out of the car, buckling your child into their car seat, or reaching back to hand them a snack has become easier. You feel more in control, and the aches and pains that once came with contorting yourself into awkward positions feel less like a hassle and more like just another day in the life of being a mom.
When you start moving more fluidly and have the freedom to move with greater ease, you're less likely to strain your body during everyday activities. For example, because you have better range of motion in your shoulders from practicing Sun Salutations, you can confidently reach for something on a high shelf without feeling like you're going to pull a muscle. Your muscles and connective tissues have become more pliable and are familiar with that movement. You have greater range of motion, which means less stress is placed on your joints because your muscles move more efficiently.
Maybe you've noticed that your knees aren't as sore after a day of deep cleaning the house. After holding Warrior I and Warrior II, your thighs are stronger, the muscles surrounding your knee joint are stronger, and you have the endurance to better support the load you're placing on them throughout the day.
That's the thing about yoga; it doesn't train your body to move in isolation. It teaches your body to move as a unit, just as it does throughout your day. When you reach for something on a high shelf, you're not using just one muscle in your shoulder. You're using multiple muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints working together. You're not simply lifting your arm; you're also rotating it through the shoulder joint so you can reach the object from the angle you need.
Now think about your yoga practice. When you reach your arms overhead in Warrior I or lift one arm up and back in Reverse Warrior, your shoulder is moving through multiple planes of motion. You're strengthening those movement patterns and building mind-muscle connections, so your body learns to move more effectively and efficiently, both on and off the mat.
As I sit here writing this post, I can feel my shoulders and chest getting tight. My hips and lower back are gently reminding me that when I get to number five, it's time to take a quick walk and stretch break.
What does your typical day look like?
When I'm not sitting in front of a computer, I'm standing and teaching multiple classes at a time. And teaching yoga does not mean I'm doing yoga all day, that's a separate practice! When I'm not teaching, I'm bending down to pick up toys, making beds, running errands, or driving in the car. That's a lot of stress and tension on the body, and we do these things day in and day out.
The one practice I know I can turn to after a long day to help me lengthen, move through the stiffness, and release some of that built-up tension is yoga.
Yoga helps counteract many of the positions and repetitive movements I'm doing throughout the day. Shoulders rounded forward and chest feeling tight from sitting at the computer or driving? Yoga opens me back up with Bridge Pose, Fish Pose, and Camel Pose, all poses that stretch and lengthen the front side of my body.
Or maybe it's been a long day of standing while teaching or running errands. Legs Up the Wall, Reclined Pigeon, and Cow Face Pose help open my hips and release some of the tension I've been carrying in my lower back.
But yoga doesn't just help in the moment.
Maybe you've noticed that since you started practicing yoga, you can go a little longer before you begin to feel stiff. You have the flexibility to move around for longer periods of time because you're not holding on to as much tension. Your body feels more relaxed because your muscles aren't tightening up on you as quickly.
These are the changes we don't always think about when measuring our flexibility. The long-term benefits of this practice go far beyond achieving one goal of being able to touch your toes.
As your flexibility improves, you begin to understand and recognize when your body is tight or tense. Once you know what it feels like to be relaxed and your muscles have more freedom to lengthen, you become much better at noticing when your body is starting to get tied up in knots.
You see, over time and with a lack of movement, the body adjusts to the way you move, just like it adjusts to so many other things. If you hunch over when you walk and you’re not aware of it, eventually your body begins to assume that shape. You might feel a twinge here or an ache there, but nothing that immediately makes you think, Hmm, maybe it’s my posture.
However, when you begin to practice yoga, you start to become aware of places that have been closed off, unused, or neglected. As you continue to practice, those areas begin to open up, and your muscles start to loosen. You feel more freedom in your body as you move and go about your day.
Things that once caused pain or discomfort, like tight hamstrings pulling on your low back or tightness in your chest contributing to an achy neck and shoulders, can start to become pains of the past.
More importantly, you begin to recognize when that tension is creeping back in.
You know when you’ve been sitting too long because you now recognize the signals your hips are giving you. You know when you’ve been slumping your shoulders because you feel that familiar heaviness or ache in your upper back.
This is your body talking to you, and now you’re better at listening.
Instead of waiting until discomfort becomes something you can’t ignore, you recognize the signals sooner. You know when it’s time to get up from your chair and stretch, adjust your posture, move around, or simply give your body what it’s asking for.
That awareness is one of the benefits of becoming more flexible that we don’t talk about enough. You’re not just changing how far your body can move. You’re getting better at understanding how your body feels when it moves well, and recognizing when something is getting in the way of that.
One of the biggest benefits that came to me through yoga was how much it improved my strength training technique. It also made it possible for me to move through exercises that once felt too challenging to perform while maintaining good posture and form.
Some of the strength training exercises where I experienced the most benefit were on leg day, which, for me as a mom, was so important. I was hauling baby carriers and diaper bags, picking up toys, carrying kids, and constantly moving from one place to another. Strength in my legs was critical because lifting car seats and picking up kids required me to use my legs to support my upper body.
Sure, strong arms, a strong chest, and a strong back were important, but it was my legs that got me from the car to the door, room to room, around the store, and everywhere in between.
Exercises like squats and lunges became easier as I gained more range of motion in my hips and ankles. That extra mobility gave me more room to move, allowing me to squat deeper, maintain better form, and eventually lift heavier. It also allowed me to challenge my muscles through a greater range of motion instead of being limited by tightness.
Another exercise I loved but struggled to do was the deadlift. My glutes were weak, my hamstrings were incredibly tight, and my lower back would try to compensate for what those muscles weren’t doing.
Thanks to my regular yoga practice and the increased flexibility and mobility I gained through my hamstrings and hips, I was able to engage the muscles I needed more effectively. Now I can utilize deadlifts as part of my strength training to keep those muscles strong and better support my lower back, not only during my workouts, but when I’m picking up kids, lugging laundry baskets to the washing machine, loading the dishwasher, and doing all the other lifting that comes with everyday life.
Even though I know there is still work to be done, the fact that I can get more out of my strength training motivates me to stay with my yoga practice. It also reminds me that flexibility isn’t separate from strength. The better my body can move, the better I can use the strength I already have and continue building more of it.
And that doesn’t just change what I can do during my training sessions. It changes what my body is capable of doing in everyday life.
Not all flexibility in yoga comes in the form of physical benefits. Oftentimes, the biggest benefits come from the lessons you learn as you practice poses, try new ones, and test your limits. One of the things yoga teaches you is how to recognize when it’s time to let go of the push and embrace the rest.
In a world where everything is go, go, go, yoga gives us the opportunity to be still. This is no easy feat. To be perfectly honest, I think learning to accept stillness, and eventually becoming comfortable with it, can require more flexibility than being able to twist yourself into any yoga shape.
Another word for this type of flexibility is adaptability: your ability to adjust when situations change, whether you are ready for them or not.
Are you able to find a sense of stillness when the world around you is throwing curveballs? Are you able to let yourself just be without fixing anything or thinking about what you need to do next? When everyone is demanding something from you, are you able to hold the boundaries you’ve set for yourself?
You can start becoming aware of this during your yoga practice.
Let’s say you move into Warrior II. This is a demanding posture. What is your attitude while you’re there? Are you rushing to get out of it and move on to the next pose? Are you able to find somewhere to soften even while your body is working hard? Do you push yourself to go deeper, past your edge, until you struggle to maintain a steady breathing pattern?
These small choices are where adaptability begins to show up.
Each time you choose to relax your shoulders even while your legs are working hard, you teach yourself that effort and ease can exist at the same time. Each time you choose Cobra instead of pushing yourself into Upward-Facing Dog, you practice the flexibility to respond to what your body needs rather than what you think you should be doing.
And every time you step onto your mat and stay with your practice instead of running off to check every ping of your phone, you are choosing to give yourself rest. You’re practicing the ability to hold yourself accountable to the boundaries you want to have.
That is flexibility too.
It’s knowing when to push and when to soften. When to keep going and when to back off. When to respond to what is happening instead of automatically reacting to it.
And the more you practice those choices on your mat, the more familiar they become when life asks you to make them off of it.
I will never forget how frustrated I would get with myself when I was first learning yoga and all the poses. I would attend classes and see everyone else flowing and moving with what looked like complete confidence. I, on the other hand, was looking around the room thinking, Did she just say Virabhadrasana? What’s that? Or the teacher would cue, “Just flow through your vinyasa.” What did that even mean? Was I doing it right?
And don’t even get me started on inversions or arm balances. Those would send me over the edge. The self-loathing, the shoulds, the frustration, all of it would come erupting to the surface like an active volcano spewing hot lava down the side of a mountain.
However, as I kept returning to my mat, I started to see parallels between how I reacted to challenges on the mat and how I responded when I came head-on with frustration in my life. I would get easily frustrated, agitated, and mad at myself when I couldn’t do something I thought I should be able to do.
Then one evening, during a class I attended, the teacher said something that really resonated with me. It was nothing earth-shattering. In fact, it was simple, almost too simple, but it was profound. It shifted my perspective on how I approached my time on the mat and, eventually, how I reacted in situations where I felt like I should be able to do something, but it wasn’t happening the way I wanted it to.
Simply put, she said:
The destination isn’t the pose or the outcome. There is no destination. It’s about the journey and what you make of it.
So, whether I was moving backward while everyone else was moving forward, or I missed a Chaturanga during a vinyasa flow, that wasn’t what was important. It wasn’t about being perfect, doing it “right,” or knowing everything right away.
What mattered were the lessons I learned each time I fell out of a pose.
Could I be kind to myself, learn something from it, get back up, and continue? Or was I going to condemn myself and allow frustration to keep me from seeing what I could have done differently, or stop me from trying altogether?
Each time I stepped onto my mat, I had a choice.
I could focus solely on the destination, only to reach it and immediately start searching for the next one, constantly feeding my impatience. Or I could embrace the journey without worrying so much about when I would finally “get there.”
Over time, that taught me something bigger than how to do a yoga pose. It taught me how to give myself the time and space to learn, struggle, fall, adjust, and try again without expecting myself to have it all figured out right away.
That is where patience started to grow.
Not from finally mastering the pose, but from learning that I didn’t have to master it in order to keep going.
Before I dive into this section, I want to make sure I'm clear that we are not talking about getting comfortable with pain. If you feel pain, that is a sign that something isn't right. Discomfort is different. It's knowing that something isn't going to be easy. You might feel sensations that are unsettling or make your muscles shake and burn a bit. It might even make you doubt yourself, but it shouldn't aggravate a previous injury or cause you to become physically hurt.
Okay, now that we have some clarity on that, let's move forward.
I want you to take a moment and think about a time when something felt uncomfortable. Maybe it was something you felt in your heart that you needed to do or wanted to pursue, but in your mind, you had doubts. Rather than seeing it through, you backed away because the discomfort felt like too much and you didn't think you could keep going.
One of the greatest gifts our yoga practice can give us is the opportunity to practice doing uncomfortable things. It helps us build confidence and recognize that we may be stronger than we give ourselves credit for.
The posture I think of every time I think about wanting to back out of something uncomfortable is Chair Pose. Not because it's painful or hurting me in any way, but because it's uncomfortable, and the teacher usually talks for what feels like hours on end while I hold myself in the posture. My legs are trembling, my shoulders are crying from exhaustion, and the urge to Forward Fold before the instructor gives the cue is taking precedence over just about everything else in my mind.
I find myself thinking, how much longer? I don't know if I can hold this. Maybe I'm just not strong enough. I mean, if I Forward Fold, what's the harm? Everyone will be there in a few moments anyway.
So instead of completely giving up, I unbend my knees a little. I sit a little less deeply in the posture to give myself some relief. In that moment, I'm reinforcing the idea that maybe I'm not capable of seeing something through when it gets uncomfortable.
And I started to notice myself doing the same thing off the mat.
It was a cycle, and yoga brought it to my attention because as I became still, I also became more aware of those internal conversations.
Interestingly, I always seem to end up in classes where the little nuggets of information I need to hear somehow find me.
There I was again in Chair Pose. Legs shaking. Mind racing. But for just a moment, in the pause between thoughts, I heard the teacher say, Change and growth only happen when you lean into the discomfort and trust yourself to be strong enough to endure what you think you can't.
The thought of Forward Folding before my teacher's dissertation ended quickly left my mind. Instead of letting up, even a little, I sat a little deeper. I tested myself. I moved toward my edge.
Over time, Chair Pose felt less and less intimidating. Now, it's just another yoga pose that I embrace.
But that lesson didn't stay on my yoga mat.
When I find myself in a situation where I have to wait and it feels unbearable, I remind myself that I'm strong enough to stay until the end. When I come up against something new and immediately doubt my ability, I'm more likely to at least give it a try and lean into the experience rather than completely back away because I don't think I can do it.
That, too, is flexibility.
So, as you move through your practice, start paying attention to the subtle shifts in your own thoughts. What poses have you been avoiding because they make you uncomfortable or cause you to doubt yourself? Which poses have you been phoning in rather than challenging yourself to stay present and ask a little more from your muscles?
Once you've identified where you've been allowing yourself to stay comfortable, see if you can find your edge, not by forcing yourself deeper into a pose, but by noticing where you tend to back away simply because something feels challenging.
Stay there a little longer. Trust yourself a little more. Notice what happens.
Because as your body becomes more flexible, you may just discover that your mind is becoming more flexible and adaptable, too.
As a yoga teacher, one of the things I find extraordinarily painful is watching my students struggle. Now, you might be thinking, Why am I letting them struggle? To answer that, let me share a little story.
When I worked at a studio, At the beginning of each class, I always encourage my students to grab whatever they need to feel supported and successful in their practice. I welcome them to take yoga blocks, straps, blankets, or anything else they might need. Some students walk back to their mats with their arms full, while others take nothing.
As class progresses, I often see things that make me wonder: Why do some people take all the props but never use them? Why do others take nothing when they clearly could benefit from a little extra support? And why, when I walk over and hand someone blocks while quietly saying, put these under your hands; they'll help, do they sometimes push them off to the side?
It puzzled me for a long time. Eventually, though, I began to recognize a common thread.
Props were seen as less than. Modifications were viewed as a sign of weakness. There seemed to be this idea that if you used props or modified a pose, you weren't doing "real" yoga.
Now, as a teacher, I knew better. But as a student, I had fallen into those same thoughts.
I would walk into open-level classes or more challenging Power Yoga classes and notice that no one was using props. I didn't want to be the odd person out. I didn't want to look weak. Ego had me tied up in that mindset for years.
It wasn't until I started teaching yoga that I truly began to understand that blocks and other props are very much a part of the modern yoga practice. They offer a safe and practical way to make postures more accessible and supportive. Using them didn't make me less capable than the person next to me who wasn't using them, and it certainly didn't mean I wasn't practicing "real" yoga.
But the stigma is still there, and I want to use this section to help dispel that myth.
If anything, using yoga props and realizing that there is more than one way to reach your goal is the essence of flexibility. To get the most out of your practice, you have to be willing to adapt and look at things from a different perspective.
Triangle Pose is still Triangle Pose when you place your hand on a block. The pose doesn't suddenly become less valuable.
What changes is your perspective.
What once felt like a struggle and made the yoga journey seem impossible can suddenly become accessible and enjoyable. Props can help you find better alignment, feel more supported, and experience the posture in a way that works for your body. They can help you deepen your practice, and over time, you may begin to recognize that the lesson extends far beyond the mat.
There is more than one way to get where you want to go. For example if you are struggling at a family gathering because you have one child who wants to eat dinner and the other child who needs to go to the bathroom, but neither child is capable yet of doing either on their own, it is not a sign of weakness to ask a family member to help your child with their food selection why you help the other child navigate the bathroom situation.
Asking for help doesn't make you less capable; it makes you resourceful. It takes strength to recognize when you need support and be willing to accept it so you can keep moving forward.
When you let go of ego, both on and off the mat, and choose a different path, it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. It means you're willing to adapt. You're being creative, innovative, and resourceful all, important qualities of someone who is flexible enough to recognize that there may be another way.
And that is what yoga is truly about.
So, use the props. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. When the teacher says, "Help yourself to blocks," grab them. When the teacher walks over with a prop because they see you riding the struggle bus and realize you could use a little assistance, don't push it away.
Take it. Use it. Embrace it.
Because sometimes becoming more flexible isn't about getting your hand closer to the floor. It's about becoming flexible enough in your thinking to realize that the floor doesn't have to be the goal in the first place.
One of the hardest lessons I had to unlearn was the idea that things needed to be a certain way.
Maybe you’ve experienced this too.
From a young age, you’re expected to go to school. You should do well in school so you can get into college. Once you finish college, you should get a job in your field or continue your education so you can reach your next destination.
By your mid-twenties, you’re being asked why you aren’t married yet because your parents were already married with three kids by your age. Shouldn’t you be there too?
By your early thirties, you’re being asked about kids. Maybe you feel like you should have had them by now because that’s what is expected. You should own a house. You should have a 9-to-5 job. Or, if you’re a mom, maybe you feel like you should be able to stay home and raise your kids.
There are so many shoulds that eventually we start believing there is only one right way to do life.
I don’t know about you, but after years of shoulds, those expectations transferred pretty quickly onto my yoga mat.
I should be able to hold Tree Pose. I was a college athlete.
I should be able to do a handstand if I’m going to be a yoga teacher.
I should be able to do a split if I practice yoga every day.
I should practice yoga every day, or I’m not a true yogi.
But here’s the thing: gravity does not care that you were a college athlete. If you’re not balanced in Tree Pose, gravity is going to step in and take you to the floor. That’s how it works.
If you’re in yoga class and the teacher asks you to bind your hands behind your back, but you just had shoulder surgery and have physical restrictions that limit your range of motion, your body is going to tell you, Nope. Not happening.
And sometimes you walk into class expecting a Power Vinyasa only to discover there’s a substitute teacher who has decided you’re doing Yin.
Well, Yin it is.
As I deepened my study of yoga, I started to realize something: many of the shoulds I was placing on myself were self-imposed. I had grown up in a society that taught me I should always know what my next step was. I was supposed to have a plan and follow that plan exactly as I had laid it out. There wasn’t supposed to be room for error, redirection, or an unexpected detour.
But yoga has a funny way of showing you that your body, your practice, gravity—and life—sometimes have other plans.
To grow in your yoga practice, eventually you have to start shedding some of those shoulds. You have to loosen your grip on how you think things are supposed to be and become willing to try something different without worrying that one step off the path means you are eternally lost.
In yoga philosophy, this loosening of the grip is known as Aparigraha, which is commonly translated as non-attachment, non-possessiveness, or non-grasping. While it is often discussed in relation to material possessions, I think it can also teach us something about our attachment to expectations, outcomes, and ideals.
It asks us to recognize what we can control, what we cannot, and how tightly we are holding onto the things we think should happen.
When we take Aparigraha onto the mat, it might look like not stressing out when everyone around you is sliding into a split while you’re struggling just to scoot your foot forward into Half Split.
It could mean allowing yourself to fall out of a pose without attaching failure or a lack of success to the attempt.
Or it could simply mean letting go of the idea that one style of yoga is superior to another when you walk into class, discover your favorite teacher isn’t there, and realize the substitute has something completely different planned.
Each time you let go on the mat, you give yourself an opportunity to practice another kind of flexibility.
And eventually, you may start to notice it happening outside of yoga too.
Pay attention to how you react now when something doesn’t go according to plan compared with how you might have reacted in the past. Are you more willing to bend? Can you shift gears without immediately feeling like everything has gone wrong?
That’s flexibility.
Maybe you’re at work and you should have been out at 4:00, but your coworker is 20 minutes late to relieve you. Now you’re going to be late for an important gathering.
You can’t control when your coworker arrives. You can’t undo those 20 minutes. And you can’t completely control how the person waiting for you will react.
What you can control is what you do next.
Instead of allowing the situation to completely unravel you, you can explain what happened, do what you can, and let go of the rest. If someone else has a hard time with it, that is their reaction to manage. You cannot control other people. You can only control how you choose to respond.
And when you begin to realize that, the shoulds start to lose some of their power.
Maybe flexibility isn’t always about how deeply you can bend, how far you can stretch, or whether you can finally touch your toes.
Sometimes the greatest flexibility is being able to look at the path you thought you were supposed to follow, realize life has taken you somewhere else, and say:
Okay. I can work with this.
That is a level of flexibility that touching your toes pales in comparison to.
As you can see, the benefits of yoga, especially when it comes to flexibility, extend far beyond the physical. When we take the time to dig a little deeper, we begin to recognize that rigidity isn’t isolated to our muscles. It can inhabit our minds, our expectations, and even the way we respond when life doesn’t go according to plan.
The more we practice yoga and deepen our understanding of it, the more we realize that flexibility takes many forms. Physically, yoga can improve range of motion, support better posture and overall strength, ease everyday aches and pains, and help us become better at listening to our bodies and knowing when to push and when to rest.
But that flexibility also begins to extend into our lives.
We practice being patient with ourselves. We let go of expectations and loosen our need to control everything. We stop forcing outcomes. We become more willing to sit with discomfort, adapt when things don’t go as planned, and challenge ourselves to see what might be possible when we stop believing there is only one way forward.
So, if someone were to ask me how important it is to be able to touch your toes in order to practice yoga, my answer would be: It isn’t.
And if they asked me whether there was one particular pose that held the key to unlocking flexibility, my answer would also be: There isn’t.
Because yoga isn’t about reaching a particular destination. It isn’t about achieving one pose or chasing a specific outcome.
It’s about breaking free from the rigidity that keeps you stuck, both physically and mentally. It’s about stepping onto your mat and beginning the process of stretching yourself beyond the limits you may have unknowingly placed around what your body can do, how you respond to challenges, and what you believe is possible for yourself.
Because over time, you may discover that the most meaningful flexibility you gain from yoga has very little to do with how far you can stretch.
It’s the flexibility to bend without breaking, adjust without believing you’ve failed, and keep moving forward even when life doesn’t unfold the way you thought it should.
And that kind of mind-body flexibility will always be more valuable than simply being able to touch your toes.