Stretching is like a sugar habit: it takes a long time to break.
Dr. Sue Mayes

When I first read about the work of legendary physical therapist Dr. Sue Mayes, and the phenomenal results she was achieving in injury prevention with the Australian ballet, it was one of those aha moments. Soon into her tenure with the Australian Ballet Company she recognized that the traditional emphasis on passive stretching was not only leading to potentially career-ending injuries, it also required a complete overhaul of the way dancers and other athletes train. “Your body,” as she wisely advises, “should be like a spring, not a piece of floppy gum.” She replaced calf stretching with calf strengthening, passive muscle rolling with dynamic warm-ups and weight work, and most importantly, a new understanding of dynamic flexibility where a new range-of-motion is only introduced when the body has the strength to support it. Injury rates plummeted and many dancers extended their careers by another ten years.

Sadly, it appears that this understanding hasn’t fully reached our yoga community. Social media is awash with images of yogis flopping into passive forward bends, reclining into deep extensions over chairs, and propped into Bridge Pose with yoga blocks wedged into the sacrum. It feels good at the time but it’s perpetuating many problems; problems that I often see manifest as chronic tendonitis, low back pain, debilitating sacroiliac discomfort and in some instances, a contributing factor for early hip replacements.

Many of us long-time practitioners connect with Sue Mayes message because we were attracted to yoga for the very reason that it later caused us grief: we were naturally flexible. We were good at stretching. We did lots of it. We were rewarded for it.

Living on a farm and training horses helped me to realize that my body had to be more robust; and that practicing to maintain and improve mobility (which is about having a full-range of functional movement) is different than flexibility (which is about elongating muscle). This provoked a fundamental shift in my practice which has been guiding my instruction for many years. Now I rarely have neck, lower back or sacroiliac pain; all conditions that dominated my era as a yoga Gumby doll.

It's been my joy to share this information online through the Mastering Simplicity classes. And now I’m thrilled to share with others what I’ve learned in physical space through intensives like Evolving Towards Simplicity, Foundations of a Healthy Back and Yoga From the Core: Structural Balance for Enriched Living coming up in 2026. I’m excited to be returning to Auckland and London for the first time in over five years, and to be making my very first journey to Italy.

I hope you can join me at one of these events,

Donna