>>4159
>I feel like I would be able to do a lot of things with my mind without having to do a routine mechanical yoga practice every day for a long time or something like that
I can't speak for others, but it's a common thing for learners that they watch something, read something, and then they think "oh I get it, it's this way, I don't actually need to practice to understand this".

But if later asked about it, they can't even explain in their own words what the topic was about. It's a mental illusion where you followed along with something and never tried to apply it, so you maintain the idea that you "know this and don't need to study more". I've had this happen over and over, and at times like this I have to remind myself that thinking about a yoga position is not to perform it. The physical strain is not there from the thought of it, and any sensory input matters. Even that if just standing or sitting for a certain period of time in a set position. It's been, I think 2 years since I started focusing on Hatha yoga, after doing the Ashtanga variant for a few years. I just this week realized that following the sitting instructions concretely exactly as described in the Pradipika, not ignoring any small detail, changed the tension level in different parts of the body and also effected my mindset for the better. But it took a year of doing this position before I even realized that this mattered. I had tried it before, I would just have felt tensions all over and not noticed this slight difference.