This common pose almost made me quit yoga. Then everything changed.

Beads of sweat drip from my forehead as I shift my weight between my hands and feet, lift my hips, sink my heels to the mat, pry my shoulders away from my ears, spread my fingers wide and breathing at the same time. The worst? The pain in my hands and wrists that finally forces me to surrender to Child’s Pose.

This is the clumsy, awkward, fussy, unintuitive dance that is my downward-facing dog.

If I were to describe my relationship with Down Dog, it’s as if the pose is an A-list Hollywood star and I’m the begrudged cinephile who leaves mean Rotten Tomatoes reviews on their films and says, “What does everyone see in them?” and “Take an acting class already.”

Every time I try it in class, I go through a similar list of criticisms and questions about the pose. Why is Down Dog cued so early in a workout that literally makes my body crack and pop from not being warmed up? Why are variations or prop suggestions for Down Dog rarely mentioned? Is the assumption that everyone is it good the way it is? I even scanned the room when the pose was indicated, expecting someone else to roll their eyes or hate the pose as much as I did… but to no avail.

Sometimes my near-constant frustration makes me wonder if yoga is something I should continue doing. The feeling of being the only person in the class who doesn’t—or can’t—practice Down Dog weighs on me mentally, like I’m boycotting a brand that everyone I know continues to proudly buy and wear in my presence.

Until suddenly everything I thought about Down Dog changed.

I recently took one of my favorite yoga classes. I knew I would hear the words “Come into Down Dog” just as clearly as I knew I would be annoyed by them. But I always leave this particular class a more satisfied, less mentally bogged down version of myself, so I forced myself to go anyway.

When the teacher gave the Downward Dog assignment, I ended up with Dolphin, my default alternative. “Nice, Laura,” she says. Shortly afterwards I got one of those aha moments – when answers to questions I didn’t even ask come softly into my consciousness thump.

The message is clear: I had lost perspective.

It’s quite easy to mentally blame yoga teachers and even the practice of yoga itself for seemingly not recognizing my personal discomfort with Down Dog. But when I venture below that, I experience the feeling of being overlooked and of being exceptional (not the good kind of exceptional). It’s triggering to feel my body aging and changing, to the point where I can’t just practice any pose with relative ease. It can be as much of a trigger for me to practice Dolphin as anyone else may do Down Dog. (My therapist has the extensive history of my struggles with dignity and social comparison. You get the gist.)

The result? I point the finger at the things that I think exclude me.

But the point is, I have the means to support myself, and I always to have. I practice Dolphin. I’m familiar with wrist stretches to make Down Dog a little easier. (Granted, I literally never do them.) So instead of leaving the class with an eye roll and a chip on my shoulder because I don’t feel fully cared for, I can reframe it. Instead of asking, “Why was I excluded?” I can ask, “How can I better support myself if I participate in this practice?” and “How can I give myself credit for showing up for myself already?”

It reminds me of unrealistic thought patterns that often crop up in relationships. You know that one. “Like this person Real loved me, they would have been on time,” or the all-too-popular dating advice recently trending on social media: “If he wanted to, he would.” There is a time and place to set boundaries and feel validated, just the way I want. But just because someone doesn’t do something to my utmost and voiceless specification, dictated by my (often compulsive) thoughts, doesn’t always mean, well, something.

I sometimes treat my yoga practice that way too. It’s like my love language is wrist support and the love language of yoga is literally everything else. But because I expect my instructor to read minds and publicly announce, “It’s okay to hate Downward Dog and why don’t we do something different?” I’m getting ready to wash my hands of yoga altogether. Yet that would deprive me of the indescribable, otherworldly, spiritual, sticky, warm, satisfying and nourishing everything that yoga offers every time I come for it.

Ironically, my teacher may have helped me come to this conclusion by praising me, not for doing a pose as instructed, but for fully showing up for my version of it. I need that sweet, sweet external validation from time to time to do the things I do can Doing. Now I realize I can do the same for yoga: I appreciate what it does for me and recognize what I need to do for myself.