For beginners in yoga, it is certainly difficult to reach the levels of flexibility attained by someone who has been practising for a long time. One of the major benefits of yoga, in fact, is that it enables people who were previously relatively inflexible to reach positions that they would have found virtually impossible under other circumstances. Therefore, when you begin to learn yoga, it is handy to have certain aids to enable you to improve your ability to perform certain exercises. At a later stage it will become easier to achieve these exercises without the same equipment – so rather than putting you in an unhelpful comfort zone, they actually progress your abilities.

One of the most helpful pieces of equipment when it comes to performing yoga exercises is the strap. The reason that this is so beneficial is that yoga often requires you to perform exercises which are dependent on holding a position where your feet are unsupported by the ground, and are held in place, ideally, by your hands.

In order to make this achievable by someone who does not have that level of flexibility, a strap is used. While some people may consider this to be “cheating”, in actual fact it gets them to use the muscle groups that would be required by someone more flexible and allows them to develop muscle memory which will get them closer to not needing the yoga strap.

Although a yoga strap is not expensive, for a beginner there may be a resistance towards buying new equipment before they know how they will get on with yoga, and it is possible to fashion a makeshift strap by using a long, sturdy towel folded properly. This will provide the same level of support and the same amount of flexibility, and will allow them to perform standing exercises which require lifting one leg off the ground for an extended period of time.

It may help to think of a yoga strap as being like the training wheels most of us used as children before we could ride a bike as easily as we wanted to. It allows us enough latitude to get the basics right, and can be discarded the more proficient we become.