What’s one piece of advice you’d give to your past-self when you first started yoga?

I'm Michael Joel Hall. I've been practicing and teaching yoga for over twenty years. I've been the director of operations for a multistudio chain and have incubated my self practice yoga club for over a decade. I'm the founder of Ashtanga Tech — a yoga education platform for people who want to create a practice that serves them, not just the other way around. This is Ashtanga Tech Support. Every episode, I pull a few questions from the yoga and Ashtanga corners of Reddit, and I answer them. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff, but also kind of just answering off the cuff. Don't get it twisted, its serious business but we don't have to be. Ok, lets get into it.

Our Response

The OP's answer is great — flexibility doesn't matter, most poses can be modified. That's true. But my advice to past-me would be different.

Stop trying to be good at it.

I spent years treating practice like a performance review. Every morning I'd roll out my mat and grade myself. Did I bind today? Did I float? Did I hold it long enough? I was turning a contemplative practice into a competitive sport — and the only opponent was yesterday's version of me.

The whole system is designed to show you where you're stuck. Not just physically. The poses you hate? Those are the ones doing the most work. The days you don't want to practice? That's the practice.

So my actual advice: learn the system. Understand why the sequence exists, why the breath count matters, why the gaze points are where they are. When you understand the architecture, you stop worrying about whether you're "good" and start paying attention to what's actually happening.

There's a study guide on the count system at ashtanga.tech/study-guide/ashtanga-vinyasa-yoga-count/ that I wish someone had handed me in my first year. And the one on what asana actually means — ashtanga.tech/study-guide/asana-philosophy-purpose-definition-purpose-of-asana/ — would have saved me a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Past me needed to hear: this is a diagnostic tool, not a talent show. The practice is already working. You just have to stop getting in the way.