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Although it's an ancient practice, yoga has become the exercise du jour in recent years. Everyone from A-list celebs to your coworkers are getting their om on these days—and for good reason. Practicing yoga has serious health benefits, from boosting your immunity​, helping you sleep better, fighting stress, and even improving your sex life.

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Plus, striking an impressive asana (yoga lingo for pose) looks ridiculously cool. The only problem? Sometimes it sounds like our yoga teacher is speaking in a different language, which makes it slightly difficult to follow along. With Sanksrit names like utkatasana and trikonasana, yoga poses may sound a lot more like spells you'd learn at Hogwarts than shapes you can actually get your body to make.

To help everyone from yoga newbies to experienced practitioners, we went to Chrissy Carter, a YogaWorks-certified yoga instructor, to help put together a definitive guide to yoga poses. Consider it your cheat sheet to finally mastering the common poses you're likely to encounter in most open-level classes.

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Basic Poses

1. Mountain
Tadasana
Mountain Pose
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How to do it: Stand with feet together. Ground down evenly through feet and lift up through the crown of your head. Lift your thighs. Lengthen up through all four sides of your waist, elongating spine. Breathe easy.

The benefits: It may seem like you're, well, just standing there, but bear with us—this is the blueprint for all other poses. It promotes balance and directs your attention to the present moment.

2. Chair
Utkatasana
Chair Pose Gif
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How to do it: Start in mountain pose. Raise arms and reach up through fingers. Sit back and down as if sitting into a chair. Shift weight toward heels, and lengthen up through torso.

The benefits: This heating standing pose (you'll feel the burn!) strengthens your legs, upper back, and shoulders.

3. Puppy Dog on Chair
Modified Downward Facing Dog
Modified Downward Dog
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How to do it: Place hands on the back of a chair with palms shoulder-distance apart. Step feet back until they align under hips, creating a right angle with your body, spine parallel with the floor. Ground through feet and lift through thighs. Reach hips away from hands to lengthen the sides of your torso. Firm your outer arms in and lengthen through