How to Practice Handstand (Adho Mukha Vrksasana) | Sarah Faircloth

Transcript

hi I'm Sarah Faircloth and I want to show you a few pointers for handstand so kicking up into handstand sometimes can be a big challenge I've had students who they practiced for a couple years before they learned how to kick up so take your time with handstand that's the first thing I want to say it can also be a pose that brings up fear and just take it step by step make sure you always feel safe when you do it and then once you feel that preparation you'll be able to take that LE into the unknown of handstand and flip yourself upside down in a safe way um I always recommend doing it with a well-trained teacher and then with Partners who know what they're doing and then once you have a good enough uh foundation in handing you can move to the wall those that good enough Foundation to me is representative that your shoulders are connected to your back the arms are straight and downward facing dog you can hold it for a couple minutes and that you're able to hold the Preparatory phases of handstand with confidence then you're ready to move to the wall and then once you have balance at the wall you can find it in the middle of the room so here's a couple things I want to show you if you're a beginner in handstand here's the the components of a handstand moving towards handstand okay so you'll place the hands and come into a short downward facing dog and then you pick one leg to step forward that's going to be your pumping leg and and then the other leg will be your swinging leg so The Swinging leg the key is to always keep it straight and you just swing it up and down and practice that swinging keeping it totally straight up and down when you start to practice this the tendency for beginners is to bend the knee at the top so keep it straight all the way up full swing the bottom leg the the the other leg is the pumping leg and so here I'll pull my pant leg up for you to see the ankle it pops the heel has to pop off the ground like that you're going to get a lot of power in the pumping leg okay so once you have the swinging leg you're swinging it up and then the pumping leg the next thing is to put them together so you have the pumping and The Swinging going together that gives you the power of the pumping the momentum of the swinging and then you put them together remember what I said in the beginning with the straight arms shoulders on the back that's key for a handstand and then we'll put it together and you just go for jumping the hips over the shoulders one two and three once you get one hip over the shoulder you wait to pull the second leg up and that's the road to anst stand