Why do some people practise yoga for years with ease, while others always seem to tweak something? After twenty years of teaching, my honest answer is that it is rarely about flexibility, and it is almost never about talent. It is about how you practise.
Most of the pain I see in students did not arrive from one hard pose. It arrived from a small habit, repeated a few hundred times. That is good news, because habits are easy to change once you can see them. Here are the eight I watch for most often, and the small correction for each.
1. Chasing the shape instead of the feeling
The most common mistake is practising with your eyes instead of your body. You see a deep pose in a photo, you copy the outline, and you miss the part that matters: what the pose is asking a specific joint to do.
The fix is to slow down and name the sensation. Where do you feel the stretch? Where do you feel the work? If you cannot feel anything, or you only feel a sharp pull in one small spot, the shape is lying to you. The right pose is the one your body understands, not the one that photographs well.
2. Holding your breath through the hard part
Watch a room of beginners in a long hold and you will see most of them stop breathing. The body reads a held breath as a warning, so it tightens the very muscles you are trying to free.
The fix is simple and it changes everything: keep the breath moving, especially when a pose feels difficult. A slow exhale tells the nervous system it is safe to soften. If you cannot breathe smoothly in a pose, you have gone too far for today. Come back to where the breath returns.
3. Letting the knee fall inward
In any standing or lunging pose, the knee wants to drift toward the midline. Over hundreds of repetitions, that small collapse loads the joint at an angle it was not built to carry, and the knee starts to complain on stairs and slopes.
The fix is to track the knee over the second toe, and to feel the work in the hip and the foot, not the knee itself. The knee is a hinge. It does its best work when the hip above it and the foot below it are doing theirs.
4. Forcing a pose your body is not ready for
A pose is not a target you are owed. It is a conversation. When you push past what the joint can offer today, a nearby part of the body quietly compensates, and that part is usually the lower back.
The fix is to meet your body where it is. Use a higher hand position, a bent knee, a block under the hip. A supported pose done with control teaches the body far more than a deep pose held with tension.
5. Pushing through sharp pain
There is a difference between the warm, broad feeling of a stretch and a sharp, bright, specific pain. The first is information. The second is a request to stop.
The fix is to treat sharp pain as a full stop, not a challenge. Ease off until the sharpness goes, then explore gently around the edge of it. Pain that you push through does not make you stronger. It makes you careful in all the wrong ways.
6. Refusing the props
Many people treat a block or a strap as a sign that they are behind. The opposite is true. A prop brings the floor closer so your spine can stay long and your hips can do their job.
The fix is to use the support that lets you feel the pose correctly. The goal was never to reach the floor. The goal was to load the body well. A block under your hand in a forward fold can teach better alignment than years of straining toward your toes.
7. Skipping the joints, going straight to the stretch
Most people arrive on the mat and reach for a deep stretch while the joints are still cold and closed. A tight hip is often a joint that has not been asked to move through its range, not only a muscle that needs lengthening.
The fix is to open the joints first. A few minutes of gentle, controlled movement through the hips, shoulders, and spine prepares the body to stretch safely. Mobility before length. The stretch will go further, and it will hold.
8. Practising against the mat next to you
On a screen or in a room, it is easy to measure yourself against someone else's body. But their hips, their history, and their spine are not yours. Copying their depth is how good intentions become injuries.
The fix is to make the comparison internal. Is this side easier than the other? Is today easier than last week? Your only useful reference point is your own body, observed honestly over time.
The thread that runs through all eight
If you read back through the list, the same idea keeps appearing. Almost every mistake is a case of asking the wrong tissue to do the work, or asking the body for a shape before it has the range to make it safely.
This is why I teach the joints first, then the muscles, then the breath that ties them together. When the joint can move, the muscle can support, and the breath can stay calm, the pose takes care of itself. You stop chasing shapes and start building a body that feels better the day after class, not worse.
Where to start
If any of these felt familiar, you are not practising badly. You are practising without someone watching the details, which is the part that is hard to do alone.
That is the whole point of the live online classes. They are small enough that I can see your alignment through the camera and correct it in the moment, the way these eight fixes are meant to be learned. The first month is unlimited and there is no commitment, so you can find out whether this way of practising is the one your body has been waiting for.
