After spending about five years without a fixed exercise regimen, I sat back on my couch one night about a month ago, grabbed my laptop and decided to change things.

Yoga always interested me with its reputation for relieving stress and increasing flexibility and strength. It seemed so simple with its lack of equipment and even shoes.

But it was always equally intimidating as well, given that I am less flexible than a tree trunk and devoid of any gymnastic-like skill, like handstands or somersaults. Could yoga be beneficial if so much of it didn’t seem possible?

So for several weeks I whipped out some YouTube videos and moved from my couch to the living room floor. I skipped the really hard stuff and laughed every time I needed to extend my legs and reach for my toes. And by “toes” I mean halfway down my shins.

I did also get a nice workout that left me sweaty and a little sore the next day, too.

I enjoyed it in my living room, but yoga can be quite a refined discipline, and learning the finer points, like knowing just how much you should “drop your hips” or when to “press your thigh bones back,” can be hard to get down without a real life instructor evaluating you.

Not getting those little things right that can lead to injury, said Jay Hester, a yoga instructor at the Yoga Center of Lawrence.

I participated in one of Hester’s beginner courses, and it went about as expected. Every time we reached for the toes, I stopped noticeably shorter than everyone else. Several times, Hester corrected my alignment. And several other times, as he walked around, he said I pulled off a pose well.

That didn’t stop him from mincing words when I asked him later what I needed to work on.

“Everything,” he said.

I always wondered if I was somehow not capable of performing yoga because of my inflexibility and gymnastic squeamishness. But Hester said I was about what he expected out of a beginner yogi.

“Usually the first thing is short hamstrings. You’ve got short hamstrings,” he said. “(Inflexible) people are the ones that need it the most. They should be here.”

Hester, who is around 6-foot-3 and weighs 215 pounds, explained he was once as rigid as I was, palms left to dangle high above the ankles during a stretch. But after about 12 years of regularly practicing, he can rest them flat on the ground.

What got him into yoga all those years ago was a back injury. He said it still causes him trouble, but without yoga, “it’s a wrath of pain.”

“A lot of the people that come in here, they’re old, they’re broken, whatever,” he said.

At the class, we did one position that I imagine isn’t all that tough for veterans, but still made me nervous. Imagine your torso bent over your legs at a 90 degree angle, with your neck bent so you’re looking at your thighs.

Now imagine your body in that position, only the back of the neck is on the ground and your feet are on a wall behind your head. That’s the kind of contortion and balance that will take getting used to for me.

But even if I shy away from those types of poses, Hester assured me that non-advanced yoga is still a beneficial exercise. He explained that the simpler poses only build strength and improve balance so that over time, the advanced stuff can come more naturally.

“It’s all about improving your own health,” he said. “Just the simple poses, you’re using muscles that you don’t usually (use).

“Yoga is a journey. You can never tell where a journey is going to take you.”

It’ll be a while until I’m standing on my head or bending like other human beings, but my yoga infancy beats my pretzel-legged pose on the couch.