obstacles  to our practice:  Except from the book The Heart of Yoga, "Developing a Personal Practice" by T.K.V Desikachar

illness, lethargy, doubt, haste or impatience, resignation or fatigue, distraction, ignorance or arrogance, overwhelm:inability to take a new step, loss of confidence

They are manifested in symptoms like feeling sorry for oneself, a negative attitude, physical problems and breathing difficulties

vyadhi  illness, disturbs the mind so much that one must first improve one's heal;th

styana, heaviness and lethargy.  can be caused by eating too much, by eating wrong kinds of food, by cold weather or by the very nature of the mind.   Tamas, one of the 3 gunas.  If tamas takes over we can hardly do anything, even things we are accustomed to doing. we can scarcely move.

 samsaya: Doubt, a regular and persistant feeling of uncertainty.  "how shall i go on?" is it worth it even for another day?  perhaps i should look for another teacher? or "perhaps i should try another way altogether".  This kind of doubt undermines our progress.

pramada, haste, can create problems; acting in haste, we slip back rather than make progress.  because we have not spent enough time analyzing and reflecting on what we are doing, we grind to a halt in our practice.

Alasya, a kind of resignation or exhaustion which manifests thoughts such as "perhaps I am not the right person to be doing this".  There is a lack of enthusiasm and very little energy.  When this happens we must do something to regain our motivation and enthusiasm.  Lack of enthusiasm is a very serious obstacle in our practice.

Avirati, distraction, can crop up when our senses gain the upper hand and begin to see themselves as masters rather than servants of the mind.  sometimes this happens w/o our even noticing it, which is hardly surprising since from birth we are trained to look here , see this, listen to that, taste this, touch that.  it can easily happen that the senses take over out of habit and little by little steer us imperceptibly in the wrong direction.

Bhrantidarsana, ignorance and arrogance is the most dangerous of all obstacles.  it occurs when we think we know everything.  we imagine we have seen the truth and have reached the zenith, when in reality we have simply experienced a period of calm that makes us say, this is it! i've found it at last

alabdhabhumikatva:  Just as we think we're making progress, we suddenly notice how much there still is for us to do.  We can grow very disappointed at this point and become fickle in mood.  We suddenly have no interest in trying again, in  finding another way to begin, in taking the next step.  We start by sying: "no more for me. IT thought that was it, but now i feel like a fool , even more stupid than before.  I just don't want to go on." 

Anavasthitatvani.

As you see, the obstacles can consist of ordinary reality such as physical illness, or they can be as subtle as an illusion of being better than you really are.  When you become aware of the illusion you have been harboring and look reality squarely in the  face, it is unfortunately all too easy to then view yourself as smaller and less important than you really are..  This leads to loss of confidence. You may have reached a point you  have never reached before, but  you lack the power to stay there and fall back, losing what you have gained.

These are the obstacles that may be encountered on the yoga path.  we do not necessarily meet them in the order I have described, and not every student has to deal with all of them. . At no stage on the yoga path should we think we have become masters.  Rather, we should know that the feeling of being a little better today than yesterday exists just as much as the hope htat we will be a little better ihthe future, These feelings will come and go until we reach the point where there is no betterm and no worse.