As a student endeavoured to show me his crow pose last week, he lamented, 'I can't stay up in crow. I keep falling out, and I'm not sure what I need to do to stay up'. Looking at his pose, I suspected he had all the elements needed to maintain it. I gave a somewhat unsatisfying answer (but an honest one!) - 'I think it's just practice!'

Practice and all is coming, as the phrase goes (Sri K. Pattabhi Jois).

We all have yoga poses that we love and hate. Ones that come easier and make sense and others which test and elude us for the longest time. Have you ever wondered about your relationship with the poses you find challenging?

Here I share some of my own nemesis poses:

Uttanasana (standing forward fold) When I started yoga, I couldn't touch my toes. I was frustrated and felt inadequate compared with other bendy bodies - stupid, I know.

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Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward dog) My arms and legs would tire quickly, I couldn't straighten my legs, didn't know where to put my head, and always had too much weight in my arms - five breaths in this was unbearable!

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Utkatasana (chair/fierce pose) how the hell am I meant to keep sitting back? My ankles feel like they're going to break. My thighs are on fire, my breath caught. This never gets easy.

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Urdhva Dhanurasana (wheel) I just couldn't get up. No matter what I did or how hard I huffed. With the help of props, grabbing a teacher's ankles...one day, I was up! A millisecond on the head, then down again. Pinch pinch pinch in the back.

Chaturanga Dandasana (yoga plank) AKA guaranteed belly flop to the floor. Either that or my bum would pitch up to the sky - cheating! 'I'm not strong enough', a frequent fleeting thought.

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Sirsasana (headstand) A neck injury. Fear. A weak core or an imagined weak core? I never know which does more to prevent me from getting up and staying up.

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Parva Bakasana (side crow) My current nemesis. I can't get the balance on one side, and my hip seems unhappy. It's curious; I'm working it out.

And many, many more. Too many to bore you with here!

These poses sort of arrived one day like a quiet gift; for me, usually on a day that didn't involve trying too hard. So it wasn't a miracle - it was just practice. And I wasn't practising the same poses incessantly to try to achieve them either. Plenty of modifications, props, trial and error and rounded work meant I somehow found my way to get to some version of the poses.

Relationships change and evolve. Now I sense the correct length between my limbs in down dog, now I distribute strength through my whole body (not just my arms) to hold me up in wheel and chaturanga, and now I fear less, knowing that I can always come down from headstand.

I have a little more patience to keep going and see what happens - side crow may never come, but so what? Now I know better than having to 'achieve' any pose. Just continuing to practice means that evolution is underway.

Practice and all is coming. What is 'all' anyway? That's a conversation for another day :p

How are you experiencing your evolution in yoga?

Let's practise.