Fresh back from a phenomenal mini-tour of the Interior [Penticton and Kelowna] I am full of renewed trust in the practice and its efficacy. Sometimes when you’re dealing with a particularly fussy injury or recalcitrant family of poses you can throw up your hands and forget about the gifts hatha yoga has already given you. What has it done for you LATELY?!?!? When I started 
practicing it was not considered unreasonable to wait at least a decade before the Primary Ashtanga Series became intelligible to you. Now I get students bemoaning that Urdhva Dhanurasana [full backbend] is still *so* *hard*…they’ve been practicing for SEVEN MONTHS. My emotional gamut runs along the following spectrum: from
– deep joy and confidence that the student is so blessedly free of unnecessary fear and anxiety; pleasure to see the efficacy of instruction in such a short time
to
– bitter old-crone lip-curling disdain for their sprightliness in the face of the many hours I spent suffering through karma-burning misalignment
Making the radical assumption that pain is real, the corollary assumption that you don’t deserve to go through it [bold!] and the absolutely unprecedented statement that there’s something you can do about it IN THE PRACTICE ITSELF instead of retreating to Rolfing to lick your wounds is relatively new in my experience [although n.b. I'm a n00b with only 13 years of this stuff under my belt, and some of those years were very dilettante-ish] I was overjoyed to find out that yoga did not necessarily have to be the hair-shirt I wore to delve deeper into my past-lives’ transgressions, and actually had real-life, real-time solutions. Now I practice without pain [!!!] and I actually find the actions in an exuberant, active physical practice to be the most beneficial for my well-being.