Headstand for beginners | Salamba Sirsasana | Yoga Pose Tutorial

Transcript

[Music] hey you guys this is Michelle Goldstein with heart Alchemy yoga and today I'm going to teach a quick tutorial on how to practice headstand so before we get started I'm going to recommend two things the first one is that you are sure that you can hold dolphin pose first before you attempt to do headstand so I suggest that you practice dolphin pose and be sure that you can hold it comfortably for about eight breaths before you even try to go into a headstand so first of all make sure that you're doing that and I'll teach you dolphin right now so you're going to come onto your hands and knees and then just lower your forearms to the floor and allow your forearms to be about shoulders distance apart there's a tendency for the elbows to splay out to the sides so you want to hug the elbows in and work the inner hands down okay your butt lifts up in the sky and you're going to tuck the toes under and lift the hips up just like in down dog but you're on your forearms here so you can walk the feet in a little bit as Christian is doing that's fine usually the heels don't touch the ground in Dolphin they may they may not but don't worry too much in fact Christian hamstrings are very open so his are pretty low if your heels are way up high that's fine so as you're in Dolphin you want to pushup out of the shoulders you want to feel the stretch big time up in here right feel the forarms draw in towards each other isometrically and work the thumb and the pointer finger down okay so that upward lift up out of the shoulders that's the really important thing that you're really going to want to be able to hold when you're in a headstand okay so go ahead and come on down and take a child's pose okay so I'm going to have him rest his arms for a moment while I tell you this next trick that I recommend I suggest you take a block a yoga block or a book and take it and put it on the crown of your head like this just find a spot where you can start to balance the block or the book on the crown of your head and just feel that point of contact where the block touches your head because a m morize it because that is the spot that you're going to want to plant on the floor in your headstand so it's very common when people come into a headstand to start to either roll towards the back of their head or try and balance on their forehead and both of those two things can be very Tweaky on the neck and we don't want to be Tweaky on the neck so here we go when you set up for your headstand you're going to take your elbows down and interlace your fingers so you can measure about how far the elbows go apart by just grabbing onto your elbows with your opposite hands and just right about that distance that's how far you want the arms to be from each other then re interlace the fingers make sure that you have a cut between your hands you're not making fists like this you want to have a cup to Hold Your Head the back of your head you're going to lower the head down to the ground right find that point of contact where the block was touching and then tuck the toes under just like you were in Dolphin but now your head is on the floor I also suggest by the way if you've never done this before definitely do it against a wall okay I'm assuming that you're doing that but be sure to do that so as you come into your headstand the first time you do it maybe you just lift one foot up off the floor and maybe you even just bend the knee and draw the heel in towards your bottom good so that's a good place to start start to feel how you lift up out of the upper back and then maybe you bend the other knee and draw both heels in good so you can hang here or if you're feeling it you can start to straighten the legs up continue to get that activation in the upper back it's really important to feel the shoulder blades lift up and you'll start to take the legs up a little higher and back even just a little bit good breathe make sure you're breathing and you want to press down so much through the forearms that you almost lift the crown of your head up off the floor so there's very little pressure on the neck really truly and in a proper headstand I would say and then to lower down you can either bend the knees or you can straighten the legs down and come to child's pose always after a headstand to rest for a moment um headstand really raises the blood pressure while you're in it it accelerates the heart rate it's extremely heating pose pose very therapeutic but you want to come down and rest in a child's pose when you're done so that you can cool cool down so keep trying keep trying against the wall try to get that lift up as opposed to kicking up against the wall but keep practicing and with practice you know it's kind of amazing what you can accomplish in a short period of time so good luck to you guys let us know how it goes please comment on the video I would really love to hear thank you very much follow us on hard Alchemy yoga for more offerings of amazing classes with a an awesome community of teachers so thank you [Music] namaste