I started yoga when I was nineteen. Now, with my fiftieth birthday in sight and thirty years of daily yoga practice behind me, I have anxiety, stiffness, joint pain and knees that sound like Rice Krispies when I walk up the stairs. Yet, I need my yoga more than ever—and what’s more, I feel better in my body than I did when I was younger.

After more than thirty years of practice, I think I can say with some confidence that yoga absolutely can become boring. Even the most skilful of practitioners’ yoga can lose its lustre from time to time.

Sometimes the world needs you to be something you don’t feel ready to be, or don’t know how to be. Here is why "fake it till you make it" is the truest way to your authentic future self.

You’ve planned the sequence. You’ve lugged your props across a car park in the rain. You’ve lit a candle that immediately sets off someone’s asthma. And then you stand there wondering whether the whole thing is doomed.