Handstand Prep - Using the Wall

Transcript

we're giving everybody the 
opportunity to speak their voice welcome back to your mats everyone welcome back 
to my channel thank you so much for being here i   am grateful you are here and if you can do me a 
favor give me a thumbs up like follow    all the things leave a comment because it really 
helps my videos out and also helps me figure out   what kind of content you might want me to create 
all right so let's get down to business now that   we have all that out of the way i'm going to do 
some strength practices so when i used to own   my studio east side yoga studio so long ago we 
used to do challenges at the beginning of every   year and we used to do something called the wall 
challenge and what we did is we set up a timer   and we tried to do l at the wall for as long as 
we could and what was really interesting about   the strength challenge is it made a lot of other 
poses a lot easier i was able to learn how to   hold my body better in chaturanga which is like 
our half push-up pose with your elbows hugged in   i really find if we want to do complicated 
arm balances or we want to be able to kick   up into handstand if you if these are some 
of the goals that you have for yourself   you have to be able to put weight in your hands 
because i'm finding that's pretty much the only   way that these things are going to happen so you 
could do push-ups i'm going to show you out at   the wall you can start lifting weights i find that 
you're going to have to get weight in your hands   in order to get your body up because you're going 
to be putting weight in your hands when your body   comes up into the air right you're going to be 
holding all the weight of your body onto your   hands so let's get our upper body strong so that 
can become a reality for us so i get stronger by l   at the wall in case you're maybe not under weights 
or you want to find a way to do this with body   weight l at the wall is a great place to go i have 
locks with me because sometimes i'll play with   using blocks as a opportunity to you know 
um do l at the wall so what i'm going to do   um as a drill i should say to do alcohol so what 
i'm going to do is i'm going to bring my blocks   on either side of my mat and again you don't 
really have to use blocks i'm going to use blocks   in this first one and i'm going to start out just 
with the downward facing dog at the wall so find   where your downward facing dog is at the wall with 
your heels pressed into the wall soften between   your shoulder blades and just kind of notice 
weight and from here you can come forward keeping   your heels at the wall pressing into your hands 
into a variation of plank pose so coming forward   and back in your plank so really just starting 
to warm up the shoulders starting to feel what   it feels like to have weight into the hands which 
is what this practice is going to ask us to do   now i'm going to take one leg up the wall push 
up through the heel and again i've done a yoga   practice before i've come to playing at the wall 
so you can play with pressing out through your   heel and then the other side just getting used 
to taking a little bit of weight into your hand   then from here pushing down into your hands 
maybe see if you can lift one toe off the floor   so when i lift that one toe off the 
floor i'm squeezing my low belly in   and i'm squeezing up my pelvic floor and i'm 
thinking about bringing my femur or my thigh   bone into my hip so i'm thinking about squeezing 
up lifting up so the floor i'm pushing away from   i'm pushing that supporting leg into the wall 
and i'm lifting with my belly and my leg upward   so that's a lot of things to think about but 
i consider that the mind-body experience what   is my mind saying i can do and what is my body 
capable of doing so thinking about those things   so let's play on the other side i take my leg 
pretty high up the wall and you'll see i'm kind   of tilting back and that's giving me that feeling 
of getting weight in my hands so i'll do a couple   drills like that maybe four side or five aside 
but you can kind of figure out how you want to   play with this so let's do four on the right 
side meaning taking your right leg up the wall   as far as we'll go lift up tap the toe one two 
three and four one thing i did notice the minute   i started doing more weight training these things 
became a lot easier my yoga practice became a lot   more functional in the ways that it 
helped me build strength in my body   so let's go ahead and do the second side now 
lifting up and we'll just tap right over four   three two and one so you can start with four you 
can start with two you can start with eight so it   really depends on what feels best in your body and 
continue to do those drills maybe every other day   and so kind of notice your body building strength 
and building awareness now i'm going to go ahead   and continue to use the blocks just because i 
like the way it feels in my hands and also when   i use the blocks it gives my wrist a little bit 
of a break because it increases the joint space   in my wrist as opposed to being here where 
my joint feels a little stressed here my heel   by hand feels a little stressed here the 
joint will be more open here and what i do   is i press the edge of my hand or the heel of my 
hand against the edge of the block here and that   way it gives me a little bit more um resistance 
to push into as i'm lifting up so the beauty of   doing this is my hands are actually getting 
stronger as well and this is something i'm   noticing in my own body as i age i'm watching 
where my mother was at my age in terms of pain   in her body in terms of her heart health and i'm 
trying to work with yoga and movement and exercise   and walking and running and all the things 
to see if i can either slow down that process   or avoid it all together so i think it's really 
important that we continue to build strength   as we age i i like to think of it as growing older 
so now that i've stalled enough let's get back   thank you for coming to my ted talk so let's get 
back to downward facing dog and it's going to be a   short dog okay so if you really want to measure it 
because we're going to come up into l at the wall   you can flip over take your feet against the wall 
so you'll see that my feet are flush against the   wall my hands are behind me by my hips so this 
is going to be a relatively short down knot   so let's go ahead wrap my fingertips around the 
block and like i said i'm going to press the heel   of my hand into the edge of the block because 
it just gives me a little bit more resistance   to brush up with lifting the hips up and back 
and now stepping the right foot up the wall   and then the left squeezing between the shoulder 
blades pressing the floor away from me and this   got a lot easier when it started lifting weights 
squeezing between my shoulder blades and then when   you're ready coming down so that scares a lot of 
folks i get it if you're scared because you think   that your hips are going to roll over your 
shoulders and you're going to like somersault   away from the wall that would only happen if you 
really push hard off the wall what will actually   happen is if you don't have the upper body 
strength to do this the elbows are going to buckle   and the legs are going to slide down the wall 
so it's really important to push into the floor   to squeeze the shoulder blades behind onto your 
back to pull in your pelvic floor and squeeze   your belly and to squeeze your thighs all of these 
things need to happen in order for you to get up   into l at the wall okay does that make sense so 
pushing the floor away from you squeezing your   belly in your pelvic floor okay and squeezing your 
quads it'll help take some of the pressure out of   your hands it's a really interesting phenomenon so 
you'll find it and it can be scary don't rush into   it take your time i'm going to walk my hands out 
just a smidge to kind of mitigate the big curve   that i get my back i have a very curvy bendy 
low back and i tend to push when i shouldn't   so pushing into my hands stepping your right foot 
off the wall and you're going to push off and then   your left foot or vice versa then i'm going to 
slide my legs down so i get more more contact   with the floor now i am pushing the blocks away 
from me i am squeezing my thighs i'm softening my   chest to the wall you can hold that for as long as 
you want and then exhale and come down so that's   your precursor for getting your way into handstand 
so i want you just to work on that maybe for the   next month or so maybe set a goal for yourself i'd 
like to stay up for 10 seconds i'd like to stay up   for 20 seconds like i was saying before when we 
had this challenge in my studio the challenge was   to hold that pose for three minutes so let me 
just tell you 30 seconds feels like a lifetime   but the more you do it the stronger you get and 
we had one of our students named anne who got up   there for three minutes i think she was the only 
one in her studio who got up for three minutes i   think my record was probably a minute and a half 
or two minutes but the power and the strength   that i built in my upper body was remarkable 
and it built in a very short amount of time   so where i noticed this was really helping me in 
everyday life was you know picking up pounds of   laundry because i have kids picking up groceries 
uh shoveling the driveway like these things really   this whole pose really translated into building 
strength in my body in other ways so if it's   something you're interested in start with your 
feet at the baseboard pushing into the block then   as we did before one leg up lifting alternate toes 
and then eventually two legs up the wall so look   for part two of this video and we will explore 
like taking the leg away from the wall but i   want you to spend a little time playing with this 
before you move on to the next part so thanks for   joining me for this tutorial on building strength 
in half handstand it's been really fun i would   love to hear your thoughts please feel free to 
comment below please feel free to share this video   with anybody you think might find it helpful so i 
will catch up with you later and see you next time