Here’s what a bad practice actually requires. It requires you to show up with an idea of who’s practicing — how much energy they have, what their hips are doing, how steady their attention is — and then find out, somewhere around minute fifteen, that you were wrong. The gap between the person you expected and the person who arrived is where bad practices live. Most people don’t know they’re doing this. They schedule a session, walk to the mat, and start practicing the practice they planned for a version of themselves that may not have made it to Tuesday. The person who actually showed up — the one who slept badly, has something slow-burning in the lower back, is half-distracted by a conversation from…

There is a student I have in mind. She’s been practicing for three years. In class, she’s steady. She follows the sequence. Her breath is mostly even. She adjusts when I adjust her. When I watch her, I see someone who knows what she’s doing. Then I find out she hasn’t practiced at home in six months. “I just can’t get myself going without you there,” she says. She means it as a compliment. It isn’t one. This is the method problem that doesn’t get talked about. Not: is the teacher ethical. Not: is the lineage healthy. Those are real questions, but they’re not this one. This one is simpler and more embarrassing for everyone involved: I have been teaching this person for three years,…

There’s a student I’m thinking of. Not one student — a type. She’s been practicing for six years. She can do things most people can’t. But she cannot make a single decision about her practice without first asking her teacher. Not because the questions are genuinely hard. Because she was trained that way. Her teacher built a system — maybe a real one, maybe not — and wrapped it in mystique. Progression criteria existed only in the teacher’s head. Why a pose was given this month and not six months ago: never explained. The student learned to read the teacher’s mood. To make herself legible to someone else’s judgment rather than developing any of her own. Six years of practice. Still can’t trust herself for…

Most people don’t actually choose which version of a pose to do. They notice which version they end up in. The difference matters. Choosing means you weighed something, decided something. Noticing means you started moving, arrived somewhere, and called it good — or not good, usually with a story about why it’s not the version you wanted. The story is the problem. “This is the version I can do” sounds practical. It isn’t. It’s a statement about identity. It describes a ceiling. It’s self-critical information dressed up as pragmatic information. The person saying it is usually apologizing. “This serves me better today given what I’m working with” is different. It’s a statement about intelligence. It describes a choice made from understanding. The person saying it…

You already know what you should do. That’s not the problem. The problem is that knowing doesn’t hold. You mean well, right up until there’s something at stake. A competitive moment. A conversation that matters. A situation where the right thing is expensive. And then some other mechanism takes over, and you do the thing you didn’t quite mean to do. You have a story about it afterward. Everyone has this experience. The interesting question isn’t why — evolution explains that clearly enough. The interesting question is whether there’s a different foundation for ethics. One that doesn’t depend on willpower in the moment. Here’s what the yoga tradition actually says about this, which is not what most teachers say. Ahimsa — non-harming — shows up…