How to do Shoulder Stand Safely | Shoulder Stand Yoga Pose Tutorial | Salamba Sarvangasana

Transcript

hello my friends I'm BR Lin and in this video I'm going to show you how to do shoulder stand so you can practice it at home you may have noticed that I don't teach a ton of inversions in my classes on YouTube and that is because I feel like inversions are just best suited to be taught when you can really be in the room with an instructor because of course there is the chance of falling that being said it is fun to practice inversions at home as long as you're aware of the risks and willing to move slowly and safely and I have a tutorial on handstand which I think is the safest inversion especially if you do it at the wall um for beginners so check that out and now I'm doing this shoulder stand tutorial which I think is the second safest inversion that you can practice at home on your own very very important about shoulder stand is that you do not want to move your neck once you are in shoulder stand meaning that you do not want to look at me or your computer or screen while you're in the pose so how we're going to do this is that I am going to demo shoulder stand for you and I'm going to ask you to please just watch me first so you can pick up on all the little details and then we'll do it again and we'll do it together how I like to get into shoulder stand is I like to go into plow pose first so the safe way to do that is to just press your hands onto the ground and then take your legs overhead now the very first thing I'm going to do so I'm not resting my weight on my neck is to start shimmying my shoulders down the mat so my shoulders are folded underneath me like little origami um it's like origami so see how I'm just waddling my shoulder blades towards one another good and then here I am in plow and this is the pose where you do not want to ever look at the screen so I work on straightening my legs and pressing through my heels and then I take my hands to my low back and if you have a slippery shirt I'd suggest pulling down your shirt so you can have your weight on your hands and not slip and I really set the weight of my seat into my hands so that the weight is really on my biceps as opposed to even my shoulders and then I curl up into a little ball and I lengthen my tailbone high and then from there I straighten my legs and then I Barbie the feet so I spread my toes apart and I have my feet pointed but the top of the foot is flexed and then you can stay here for 10 or 15 breaths you can practice lowering one leg to the floor or towards the floor let's see if I make it oh May okay and then the other one all right you can practice taking the soles of the feet together if you want to try that variation and eventually you can practice doing like Lotus or half Lotus all sorts of fun stuff but for now just um and when you do it with me in a minute we'll just keep the leg straight I just wanted to show those as things you could do and again the big thing here is that the weight is not back here I think a lot of people in shoulder stand have their legs back here and they don't realize it so the weight is in their neck and their head which is really dangerous so you really want your ankles to be directly above your elbows if that makes sense cuz my elbows are the tripod that's hanging me up holding me up so even though it's called shoulder stand it's almost more like bicep stand cuz I'm really balancing on my biceps with my shoulders having been folded in like origami underneath me to come out I'm going to come back into pose I'll make those like the bridge position with my hands um and if you want to do a sequence I have called journey into back bending I go a lot into how to fold the shoulders underneath you and then I like to bend the knees and press my temples with my knees like a little brain massage and then I gently roll down okay and then I take a counter pose a lot of people suggest fish as the counter pose and full fish to me is 2 intense um like I don't like to do fish after um if you do go for it I find that I think it puts unnecessary pressure and risk on my cervical spine so instead what I do is I just take my um elbows underneath my shoulders and I just Arch my heart up and I let my head just hang back so it's sort of like a fish variation but I'm not actually putting pressure on my head like you would in traditional fish or my head's not on the ground like in traditional fish and I take a a couple breaths there and then I'm very careful to come out of this because it's a lot of pressure on my neck so I very gently bring my chin back into the chest and then lie down and relax so if you want you can almost find um a bridge position first right and like find that sensation of your shoulder shimmying underneath you yeah and then you can let that go I just like to sometimes show that because it is the same movement so come into your plow so you roll the feet over the head but then right away right away start folding the shoulders underneath you and walking the shoulders down the mat interlace your fingers into a clasp so there's no weight at all on your neck so really really waddle the shoulders in and up and down the mat it's going to be goofy and not graceful and that's okay cuz I want you to be protected and then if your feet can reach the floor with straight legs do that if they can't it's okay to have the knees bent just do the best you can if the knees are bent just energetically work on straightening the legs and then take your hands to your low back so you bend at the elbows pull down your shirt if you want to grip onto your back which I find is really helpful bend your knees and place your low back into your palms and really feel the weight of your body on your elbows now take your knees directly towards the sky good and now take your feet above above your knees so you're really feeling your elbows pressing down into the ground to hold your weight here in the shoulder stand Barbie the feet spread the toes apart so your feet are pointed but the ball of the foot is flexed just hang out here and breathe if you feel any pressure on the neck at all you want to move your feet towards the back of the mat so there's more weight in your elbows and no weight in your neck keep the legs active so you can rotate your thighs in towards one another so you have an interior rotation of the legs keep the toes lifting towards the ceiling so notice if you're legs have a tendency to just kind of go limp and hang out see if you can really push up through the legs almost like your kneecaps are lifted your quads are engaged and this is such a great pose it really resets the nervous system and does really great things for all the hormones in your body you can stay here a little bit longer or you can begin to bend the knees now come back into your plow as the safe way to exit the pose again if you're doing plow with bent knees that's totally fine you can purposely bend the knees now if you like and just squeeze the knees towards your temples for a little head massage and then gently roll up as you're ready if you're still in shoulder stand that's totally cool and then if you want to try my little fish variation you're going to take the elbows underneath your shoulders Point your toes so the legs are active and just lift up through the chest and if it feels okay on your head to have it drop back have it drop back just a few [Music] breaths now very very very very gentle with the head to bring it up so think of elongating the neck drawing the chin in being very gentle good and then push yourself up I hope this video clarified and give you some tips on how to get in and out and enjoy shoulder stand safely so do it now on your own as much as you like and please leave me your comments and your feedback in the comment section below this video be sure to like this video if you found anything I said helpful giving me a thumbs up right here will help me a lot and of course if you haven't already you definitely want to go to my website and get on my mailing list so I can email you new classes as soon as they come out completely free and if you want to study with me in person I have some upcoming Retreats and things which you can check out at Bret l.com Retreats from my heart to yours namaste e