Sequencing: The Body’s Report.
Compensations also point to joint mobility. If a joint can’t reach the range a movement demands, the body doesn’t stop. It borrows the range from somewhere else. A stiff ankle can change how load travels upward, and that can surface as tension in the low back or neck.
Mobility isn’t the only thing a compensation can be pointing at, and “limited range” itself has more than one source. A joint may lack range because of tissue stiffness, but it can also be held back by weak or unstable support around it, by guarding from the nervous system, by movement habits, or simply by bone shape that no stretching will change. The same restriction can have different causes in different people, which is why the one-variable-at-a-time testing matters.
Even so, restricted range is one of the most common things a compensation is working around, so when one appears, mobility is a good first question to ask. The compensation is the body’s report; joint mobility is often what the report is about.
Mobility is a useful starting question, but the teacher must resist turning it into the answer. That is the difference between reading a body and simply labelling what you see.
The body’s intelligence can make yoga sequencing and adjustments challenging, because we can’t really see which compensations are being made. The body prioritises completing a movement task with the least perceived risk, using whatever movement options are available. This has everyday value: we are designed to walk, climb, and run. But when injury or habit gets in the way, the body optimizes for “safe enough,” not necessarily “correct.”
So yoga teachers guess and test, changing one variable at a time (say, raising the arms) across all bases: standing, all fours, sitting, and so on. The base that feels hardest isn’t necessarily the weakest link. It’s often the one that removes your favorite compensation, which makes it a clue worth following up, not a failure.
The protocol is sound, but there may be many layers of compensation, so expectations need managing. Resolving one layer often makes a different compensation appear. That’s progress wearing a confusing costume.
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