One question from a behavioral scientist that changed how I see you

I got an email this morning from the Finding Mastery podcast — a preview of a conversation between Dr. Michael Gervais and Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and his newest book, Beyond Belief.

Eyal draws a distinction I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

Facts are objective.

Faith requires no evidence.

But beliefs sit in the middle — they’re convictions that can actually be revised based on new experience.

And then he says this: beliefs aren’t truths. They’re tools. Old tools that no longer serve you can be replaced.

I read that and immediately thought of every person who has ever reached out to me, gotten genuinely fired up about starting, and then gone quiet. Because the gap between “I know I need to do this” and “I am actually doing this” is almost never about information. It’s about a belief — specific, personal, and usually unexamined — about whether this particular thing will work for this particular body.

With your history. Your age. Your previous experiences. Your well-earned skepticism.

That’s what I want to talk about today.

Let me be honest with you about what I see.

I can tell when someone is ready. I have consultations with people who have done their homework. They’ve read the research on spine health and aging. They’ve been through PT, tried generic yoga, maybe had a procedure or two. They know the off-the-shelf stuff isn’t cutting it. And when we talk, there’s a moment — I can feel it — where something clicks. They get why SAAL Yoga is different. They understand the clinical grounding. They’re not just interested.

They’re ready.

And then: silence.

No follow-up. No enrollment. Just gone.

I don’t say that with judgment. I say it because I recognize it. And because I now have a sharper framework for understanding exactly what’s happening.

Let’s actually look at what’s running the show.

Before I make any case for anything, I want to do something more useful first. I want to name what I actually hear in consultations, in emails, in the quiet spaces of conversations that end without a decision.

See if any of these land.

If you’re new to yoga, or returning after a long time away:

•  “I’ve tried yoga before and it wasn’t for me.”

•  “I’ll start when things settle down — after the summer, once my back feels a little better, when life quiets down.”

•  “I’m managing fine on my own.”

If you already have a practice you trust:

•  “I already have a yoga practice that’s working for me.”

•  “I’ve been doing yoga for twenty years. What could a fundamentals program teach me?”

•  “My instructor knows my body. I trust what we’ve built.”

•  “My instructor already knows I have back issues — my practice is already medically informed.”

•  “I don’t have a spine condition, so this isn’t designed for me.”

If you’ve already found me, maybe even talked to me:

•  “I need to think about it a little more.”

•  “I’m not sure I can commit to 28 days.”

If you read one of those and felt something — a flicker of recognition, a small defensive reflex, a quiet “well, yes, but…” — that’s the one worth staying with.

Not to talk yourself out of it. To look at it more closely.

Now let’s go deeper.

“I’ve tried yoga before and it wasn’t for me.”

This sounds like a conclusion. It’s actually a data point.

You tried a specific style, with a specific instructor, at a specific moment in your life. The fact that it didn’t work tells us something precise: that approach wasn’t built for your body. It tells us almost nothing about whether the right approach exists.

“Yoga didn’t work for me” and “that particular instruction wasn’t designed for me” are not the same belief. One closes a door permanently. The other leaves it open for the right key.

“I’ll start when things settle down.”

This one feels responsible. Realistic. Like you’re being honest about your capacity rather than making an excuse.

But here’s what I’ve observed over years of working with people in exactly this position: the settling down rarely comes. And the suspension of the decision has its own cost — not just physically, but psychologically. The longer we defer something we know we need, the heavier the inertia becomes. “I’ll start soon” quietly becomes “I’m the kind of person who doesn’t start.” That second belief is much harder to revise than the first.

The body you have right now — today, in this season, before things settle — is the one this program was designed for.

“I’m managing fine on my own.”

I believe you. And I need to share something very specific with you: the body is extraordinarily good at compensating. For years. Sometimes for decades. Before the bill comes due.

The absence of acute pain is not evidence of correct movement. It’s evidence of a body that hasn’t run out of workarounds yet. What looks like “managing fine” is sometimes a remarkably sophisticated system of compensations that has been quietly accumulating for a long time.

I’m not saying something is wrong. I’m saying that “fine” and “optimal” are not the same thing. And that the gap between them is often invisible until it isn’t.

“I already have a yoga practice that’s working for me.” / “I’ve been doing yoga for twenty years. What could a fundamentals program teach me?” / “My instructor knows my body. I trust what we’ve built.”

I want to take these three together, because they come from the same place.. You’ve invested in your practice. You’ve found something that feels right. You have a relationship with a teacher you trust. That’s not nothing. That’s actually quite rare, almost enviable, and I don’t want to minimize it.

But allow me to touch on the word “Fundamentals” — because I chose it deliberately, and not without some awareness of exactly this reaction.

Fundamentals does not mean easy.

Fundamentals does not mean beginner.

Fundamentals means the parts most often skipped.

Even by experienced practitioners. Especially by experienced practitioners. And here’s why: when you’ve been practicing for years, you develop fluency. Your body knows the shapes. Your instructor knows your patterns. And within that fluency, certain foundational elements quietly go unaddressed — not out of negligence, but because neither of you knows they’re missing. Your instructor doesn’t need to teach what their students don’t know to ask for. You don’t know to ask for what you’ve never experienced.

In every discipline — music, surgery, athletics — the return to fundamentals is not a step backward. It is the mark of mastery. The most advanced practitioners are often the ones with the most to gain from going back to the foundation. Not because they’ve forgotten, but because they’ve never actually been there in the way they think they have.

What I offer is not a replacement for what you’ve built. It’s a layer underneath it. The things that make everything else more stable, more precise, more yours.

“I don’t have a spine condition, so this isn’t designed for me.”

This one makes me smile a little — because it assumes that spinal health is a reactive concern rather than a proactive one.

Everyone has a spine. Everyone’s spine is subject to the accumulated effects of posture, movement patterns, decades of sitting, compensating, and loading. The question isn’t whether your spine needs attention. The question is whether you’d rather address those patterns now, while you have full access to your options — or later, when the options have narrowed.

SAAL Yoga is not a rehabilitation program for people who are already injured. It is a precision movement practice for people who want to stay ahead of injury. Both groups are welcome here. But the second group has a significant advantage: time.

“I need to think about it a little more.”

I understand this one. And the thinking loop, when it goes on long enough, stops being research and starts being protection. Protection against the possibility of trying and finding out it doesn’t work. Protection against hope.

There is usually a moment — and you will know this moment — when you have enough information to make a decision and you’re still not making it. That moment is worth examining. Not to pressure yourself. But to ask honestly: what am I actually waiting for? What would it look like to have enough information? And is that bar even reachable?

Sometimes “I need to think about it more” is true. And sometimes it’s a belief that keeps us safely in the space between intention and action — which feels like preparation, but is functionally the same as not starting.

“I’m not sure I can commit to 28 days.”

Good. Let’s talk about that.

Twenty-eight days sounds like a lot when you’re holding it all at once. It’s designed to be held one day at a time. The program isn’t asking for a 28-day block of your life. It’s asking for a daily practice — one that ranges from a few minutes to about an hour, depending on the day, depending on you.

But more importantly: the commitment isn’t to 28 days. The commitment is to showing up once. And then again. And again. The 28 days is the container. The practice is what happens inside it, one session at a time.

And if 28 days still feels like too much (even though you have lifetime access and can take as long as needed to make your way through the program) — I’d gently ask you to look at that closely. Because “I can’t commit to 28 days” is sometimes the most honest thing someone has said to me. And sometimes it’s a belief about the kind of person you are — a belief that deserves to be tested rather than accepted.

Small acts of agency are how hope gets built.

Hope isn’t a feeling you wait for. It’s something you build, through small things that prove to you, over time, that showing up leads somewhere. That effort has a return. That your body is more capable than the belief you’ve been carrying about it.

That’s exactly what the first week of SAAL Yoga Fundamentals is designed to do. Not just teach you something. Give you evidence. Evidence that your body is capable, that this approach is different, that you were right to believe it could be.

And now — if you walk away with nothing else other than this:

I hope, when you finish reading this, that you feel ready to begin SAAL Yoga. That is genuinely my hope.

But what I value more than the enrollment is whether this has been useful to you at all. If examining these beliefs helps you start something — anything — that you’ve been deferring out of doubt, then this post did its job. If it helps you have a conversation you’ve been avoiding, make a decision you’ve been circling, or simply see your own resistance a little more clearly — I’m glad it exists.

I’m a yoga teacher. But I got into this work because I believe movement is one of the most direct routes to feeling capable in your own life. That principle doesn’t begin and end on a yoga mat.

So use this wherever it applies.

And if it does apply to SAAL Yoga — if you’ve been circling this, if we’ve talked and you went quiet, if you’ve been on my list telling yourself “soon” — I want you to ask yourself honestly: what belief is running that show?

Because I suspect it’s not the one you think it is.

The door is open. It always has been.

P.S. "I’ll start when things settle down" has been said to me in January, April, August, and November. The seasons change. The belief doesn’t.