You can start stiff

People put off starting until they are in better shape for it. They will begin once they are a little more flexible, a little fitter, a little more like someone who does this sort of thing. It sounds reasonable, and it almost never happens, because the shape they are waiting for is the thing the practice was going to give them.

Flexibility is an outcome. So is strength, so is knowing what you are doing. You do not bring them to the door; you build them past it. Waiting to be limber before you begin is like waiting to be a good cook before anyone will let you near the kitchen.

Stiff is simply where the line is, and most people are standing on it. The one who has never reached their toes and the one who stopped a decade ago are in the same good spot, which is wherever they actually are.

What starting asks of you is smaller than getting ready. Show up. Pay some attention. Say when something is wrong. That is the whole list. The stiffness, the doubt, the long gap since the last time: none of it is in the way. It is what you will be working with.