The chin tuck is the single most important exercise nobody at your shala has demonstrated to you. It is also the simplest. Stand with your back against a wall. Heels on the wall. Butt on the wall. Shoulder blades on the wall. The back of your skull is probably not on the wall.
The gap between the back of your skull and the wall is your protraction. That gap is what every yoga pose has been working from.
To retract: slide the back of the skull back toward the wall without lifting the chin. Eyes stay level. Shoulders stay down — and this is the part that will fail first. The brain wants to shrug. The upper traps want to substitute. They cannot. Restart. Slide the skull back. The chin draws toward the throat. The deep neck flexors fire. The suboccipitals lengthen.
Hold ten seconds. Release an inch forward. Restack. Ten reps.
Do this every time you stand up from your desk for two weeks. Three times a day, ten reps each. By the end of two weeks retraction is no longer a drill — it is the position your nervous system has chosen as default. And when retraction is your default, every pose you practice begins from a stacked, neutral cervical spine, instead of from the protracted starting point that has been quietly compromising every pose for years.
This is the prescription. It is unsexy. It will change your practice.