If you’re anything like me, your favorite yoga pose isn’t technically a yoga pose.

If you practice yoga, you know that it’s not so much about the postures, but how you feel in the postures. I would go one step further and say how you feel in between the poses – positioning your arms in Warrior 2, lifting your hips in Downward Dog and rolling into fetal position from Savasana – are what create so much of the feel-good, sparkling, inner sensations of ahhh making coming to the mat feel like the best decision you’ve ever made.

That’s why I think it’s special when yoga teachers draw out those transitions according to their own moments. Shaking out your legs after Seated Forward Bend, rocking back and forth as you enter Happy Baby, and my personal favorite, Windshield Wipers.

Windshield wipers aren’t technically a yoga pose, although it’s done so often in classes that you might think it is. You sit on your back, after Bridge or draw your knees to your chest, and a teacher guides you to place your feet flat on the mat and move your knees back and forth so that your thighs literally resemble the stretch’s namesake.

There’s something about the erratic, swinging motion that catches my lower back muscles off guard, causing them to soften—just enough so that the pressure of the floor through the mat feels like a mini massage during a yoga class. The best thing about windshield wipers, as with any yoga pose, is that there is no perfect way to practice. Even the subtle movement of my knees back and forth is a release from physical tension and enough to shake my mood and get it out of my head.

In fact, I think you can judge my mood solely by how I practice windshield wipers that day. Knees that move slowly, just a few inches to each side? I’m probably in my head and need a minute to warm up. A fast pace where my outer thighs make contact with the mat? I have energy and am ready to go! A long pause on either side before returning to the center? I need divine intervention in the form of extracting every last ounce of goodness from that hip piece.

So yeah, my favorite yoga pose isn’t technically a pose. And yet it delivers the same nourishing vibrations that keep me coming back to my mat.