Yoga is for all body types - whether you are "tight and stiff" or "bendy and flexible". It's a fairly common misconception that you need to be flexible to do yoga. A lot of people hesitate to go to a yoga class because they can't touch their toes without bending their knees. But Yoga is about much more than flexibility. In fact, just being "super bendy" really doesn't make you better at yoga.
If you are a student of mine you will have heard me say "It is easier to work with a stiff body rather than a very loose(flexible) one." I recently read an article in yogainternational.com - Joint Hypermobility Syndrome: Yoga’s Enigmatic Epidemic? - which gives you some insight as to why.
For those who eye with envy, flexible fellow yogis and yoginis, may I remind you of one of the yamas - ASTEYA(non-stealing: the desire to possess and enjoy what another has; not that you can steal flexibility but it extends to coveting). However, after you read this article, I think those who are not flexible, will be more inclined to practice one of the niyamas, SANTOSA(Contentment). Patanjali states in his sutras about Santosa, "that this has to be cultivated". A mind that is not content cannot concentrate.
This leads us to another of the niyamas, SVADHYAYA(broadly, means self study or education; education is the drawing out of the best that is within a person). The main purposes of yoga is to bring balance to the body, to help us soften where we are stiff, and to help us strengthen ourselves where we are weak. The ideal way to do that is to study our selves and find out how our own body works and perhaps doesn't, and work to improve, understand or at the very least maintain and in the process we are most definitely "concentrating."! For those who are overly flexible, it will help you to understand what is at play, giving you some insight as to how to work to strengthen your body and bring balance .
