Published September 11, 2026 03:33AM
Many pursuits in life come with built-in markers that help you understand your progress. With working out, you can determine if you are running farther or lifting heavier. With lessons in music or language, you can tackle increasingly complex compositions or conversations. Take up cooking or gardening, and over time you move beyond simple step-by-step instructions and might even tune in to your own instincts..
But how do you know you’re “getting better” at yoga?
Attend classes regularly and you might find your quads aren’t quaking quite as much in Chair or Fierce Pose (Utkatasana), or that Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana) actually does feel like a resting pose on some days. But these could also be the result of an unusually restorative night of sleep or skipping the gym the day before class. Similarly, perceived declines in your strength, balance, or mobility can be difficult to attribute to a single cause. So when you struggle more than usual in a familiar pose, resist assuming that your abilities have atrophied.
And actually, your physical performance on the mat is perhaps the least interesting thing about how you change in response to yoga. There are other, more profound ways to gauge your growth.
How You Know You’re “Getting Better” at Yoga
Familiarity with the basics creates space to notice other aspects of your practice.
1. You don’t need to constantly look at the teacher
When you begin practicing yoga, you need to look at your teacher—or maybe a student on a nearby mat—to help you figure out how to recreate the various shapes with your body. Over time, you learn the names of the most commonly repeated poses and no longer need to see someone demoing to know the shape you are being asked to make.
But familiarizing yourself with yoga poses is also about understanding more subtle adjustments in your body. Your teacher is likely to reference small things that either you haven’t experienced before or don’t yet have language to describe. Things like softening your gaze, releasing your shoulders down your back, or distributing your weight between the ball of your foot and your heel. When every nuanced suggestion is a novel one, it requires you to connect to and control a part of your body that doesn’t typically cross your conscious mind.
With practice, you not only become more aware of the movement of your eyes, the position of your shoulders, and how your weight is placed in your feet. You become fluent in deliberately directing these and myriad other detailsS. It’s as if your yoga practice provides a guidebook to your own body.
2. You become more interested in how a pose feels than how it looks
When you’re new to yoga, the appearance of a pose is the most obvious information as you learn to navigate it. It’s implied that the goal is to mirror the shape your teacher is making, so of course your thoughts tend to be focused on positioning your body “correctly.”
But as the outward shapes become more familiar and less thought and effort are required, there’s space for you to become aware of other information. Maybe you start to notice which poses and practices soothe and which energize. Or you realize where you hold tension that isn’t required by the pose. Or you recognize when you’re holding your breath without even knowing it.
You might still be interested in fine-tuning your alignment. But at some point, it’s no longer your only focus. Because whatever brought you to yoga class that first time, it was how you felt afterward that brought you back. That shift from outward focus to inward awareness is, arguably, when your practice truly begins.
3. You notice your breath
Remember when you wondered how on earth everyone was managing to position their feet, align their hips, engage their core, release their shoulders, and still remember to breathe?
That overwhelm doesn’t change overnight. But with practice, you will understand how to orchestrate all the varying parts. You will feel what the teacher means when they talk about feeling the expansiveness as you inhale and the release of your exhales. You will perceive subtle changes in your breathing pace, depth, and quality as you move through class. You will start to slow your breath even when navigating a physical or mental challenge on and off your mat.
As your practice progresses, you find yourself better able to string these moments together more frequently until your breath is as much your teacher as the person standing at the front of the room.
4. You change your practice to match your capacity
It’s easy to think that the intensity of your practice is determined by your teacher’s sequence pacing. Some days that feels right. Other days, you might not feel up to the challenge or, conversely, you might find yourself annoyed that class wasn’t more demanding.
In other words, you begin to notice that each time you came to class, you were a different version of yourself with differing needs, wants, and capacity. This is major progress. And what’s even more empowering is understanding that you have more agency when it comes to your practice than you think.
Most teachers state early in class that you’re welcome to take a break at any time, but there are more options than that, whether or not your teacher mentions it. You can decrease the bend in your knees to reduce the intensity of a standing pose or increase the bend to challenge yourself. Keep your hands on your hips or take any arm variation. You can make your movements smaller or slower, larger or faster. You can hold back from your full range of motion or lean into it. You can keep things simple or bring some spice.
Virtually every pose and practice is modifiable in some way to meet your needs that day. And a student who has the self-awareness to acknowledge what they need, and the ability to fine-tune even a guided practice to meet those needs, has moved well beyond the beginner stage.
5. You use your practice to understand your habits and patterns
Your yoga practice can be a valuable place for self-examination. There are patterns you can begin to see. Maybe you feel a little annoyed when your usual space in the studio is already claimed by someone else’s mat. Or you fight the urge to rush ahead to the next pose during the second side of a sequence before the teacher cues it. Or you find yourself fidgeting any time you are asked to be still, including Savasana.
These patterned tendencies on your mat can be easier to notice than everyday behavior in life because there are no stories attached. What you do every once in a while on your mat comes with a lot less baggage than your lifelong habits.
Rather than judge these behaviors, get curious. Why do I always hold my breath? Why is all my tension in my shoulders? Why am I taking too big a step? You’re probably more willing to ask yourself why the habit exists and what might happen if you tried it differently for a change. You can then extrapolate that question into your life and see if you engage in similar behaviors there. This self-study and exploration are signs that your practice has definitely progressed into vaster territory.
6. You apply what you learn on the mat to what you do off it
Yoga can feel like a refuge from real life. But the practice has always been intended as offering more than momentary relief. At some point, what you learn during class begins to transcend your mat and spill into your life, and that’s when there is a seismic shift in your life. You begin to notice how you feel and what you need. Maybe you start to ground yourself in your body before a work presentation. Or you remember to take some long, slow breaths instead of losing your cool in traffic or during a challenging conversation. Not all the time, but some of the time.
External markers of achievement can be appealing. They’re obvious. Objective. Validating. But they’re also not the entire story of your yoga practice. As nice as it can be to feel strong in Chair or steady in Downward-Facing Dog, yoga is a practice, not a performance. You progress not by making more “perfect“ shapes, but by remembering to truly show up to your mat and to your life.
