Two years of following along and I could not run a session on my own: how do people build their own practice?

How to actually make the switch, because going from a video to a blank mat in one step is what produces standing there doing nothing.

Start with ten minutes, not thirty. Pick five poses you know well and put them in the shape above. Warm, one thing, counter, rest. Ten minutes and it will feel thin, which is fine - you are practising building, not practising yoga.

Keep a written sequence at first. A card or a note on the floor. There is no rule that self-guided means from memory, and the note is what stops the standing there.

Alternate. Video one day, self-guided the next. The video days become research: notice what the teacher does and in what order, and steal it.

Repeat the same short sequence for a fortnight. Familiarity is what frees your attention to notice how you feel, which is the thing you said you wanted. New sequences every day keep you focused on what comes next.

Grow it slowly. Ten minutes becomes fifteen becomes twenty-five over a couple of months.

The thing that surprises people is how quickly the anxiety goes. It is not knowledge you are missing, you have two years of it in your body, it is the experience of choosing, and that takes about three sessions.

There is a structure underneath it, and once you see it you stop needing to memorise sequences because you can build one.

Almost every session, in most styles, follows the same shape:

Arrive. A few minutes of stillness or simple breathing. You are not warming up yet; you are noticing what today is like.

Warm the spine gently. Small movements in every direction, forward, back, side, twist. Cat and cow, gentle side bends, easy twists. This is the part people skip and it is what makes everything afterwards available.

Build heat. Something repetitive and flowing. Sun salutations are the standard answer and any repeated sequence works.

The main work. Whatever the session is actually for, standing poses, hips, backbends, balance. Usually one theme rather than five.

Counter and unwind. Something that undoes the main work. Twists after backbends, forward folds after almost anything.

Rest. Non-negotiable, and the first thing dropped when short of time.

That is the whole grammar. Once you have it, a session becomes: pick a theme, choose three or four poses for the middle, and fill the rest from the shape. Videos have been giving you this every time without naming it, which is why the transition feels bigger than it is.

One argument for occasionally going to a class, aimed specifically at people who practise alone.

After two years of following videos you have almost certainly drifted into some habits, and you cannot see them. Nobody can see their own alignment, and a video teacher cannot see you either - that is the one thing the format cannot provide. A class every month or two, or even a single private session, is mostly about someone telling you the two things you have been doing slightly wrong for a year.

What you tend to find out: which side you favour, that one shoulder does something the other does not, that a pose you thought you were doing is a different pose.

It also gives you material. Teachers sequence in ways you would not think of, and one class often supplies a month of ideas for your own practice.

If classes are not available, the home version is to film yourself occasionally. Set the phone on the floor for one sequence and watch it back. It is unpleasant and it is the same information - the gap between what you feel you are doing and what you are doing is usually large, and it is invisible from the inside.

Neither is a reason to keep following along. Build the practice; use the outside view to calibrate it.