I realized in class today (which wasn't very mindful, but as hard as I tried my head kept coming back here ) - anyway, I realized that what I was trying to say was that it's all about the fundamentals.

Yoga fundamentals are just movement fundamentals. But in most gym classes, nobody wants to take the time for the basics, if the instructor even knows how to teach them. By contrast, there were six people in my yoga class this morning, most of them were about at my level with one or two much more experienced yogini, yet the teacher took the time to have us all put two fingers of one hand on the distal forearm of the other, to imprint the feeling of lifting the wrist and hollowing out the palm - just as an example of how she cues and imprints the basics in every single class no matter how experienced the participants.

Between downward facing dog, handstand, and crow (either forward or side), there's very little difference in skill or alignment - and what difference there is, is mainly a matter of confidence. To an uninformed person, you can look like you're in downward facing dog when your hands are collapsed, but if your hands are collapsed in dog pose, you're risking a shoulder injury especially as you progress through a sun salutation, and you're pretty much guaranteed to struggle in crow. Handstand takes a little bit more core strength and a little bit better spinal alignment, but really, handstand shows you where your weaknesses and imbalances are when you're upright, much more than it requires anything that we don't need to stand correctly in one place right ways up.

Same thing, if the teacher isn't checking your pelvis tilt and your thigh rotation, or all three arches of your feet, you can look like you're in mountain with your feet collapsed, but you're going to struggle in tree.

If the teacher has moved the class through poses that people can look like they're doing them, without covering the basics first, well then there will be a problem getting into poses that you can't fake quite as easily. Sometimes it's because the teacher doesn't even know the basics, sometimes it's because they've given up on participants who don't want to learn them. Either way it's a recipe for injury.

But that's why I said that all the poses pictured, with the possible exception of the open wheel thing which I forgot to ask my teacher about today, are really intermediate poses, because they require very little beyond good hand and foot placement.