One of my teachers describes the ultimate expression of a pose to his mostly beginning students with the phrase: in a perfect yoga world. For instance he might say: in a perfect yoga world, your head would meet your foot.

On good days in a perfect yoga world helps me see how even with my head meeting my foot there is always a deeper place to travel to in a pose. But on bad days I can’t help but think: in a perfect yoga world I wouldn’t even be in this class.

I was lying in final twist, pulling my hip away from my ribs like a good little yogi, when the teacher, who didn’t know my practice that well, came over and gave me an adjustment.

My back cracked. His eyes lit up; I could tell he was very pleased with himself. My back cracked ten more times. His eyes shifted to panic. Being a people pleaser, I tried to quietly reassure him. But I was, in fact, on the verge of panicking about it myself.

I’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to remember when my right hip joint had started cracking so prolifically. But I could only conjure memories of lying on my mat, twisting deeper and deeper, feeling like it needed to crack but couldn’t.

That night, standing in the shower, I swayed—shifting my ribs ever so slightly in the particular way that causes my back to crack over and over again. I counted up to 100 cracks. (I know. Counting is another bad habit that we control enthusiasts fall into when chaos is looming.) But I couldn’t stop. I was trying, as I had been every night for some time, to crack it until it was all cracked out. One more crack. Just one more.