Fabolous headstand crash!

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

I very rarely fall when I do headstands, but it does happen. because it happens so seldom I tend to forget and therefore don’t pay attention to what’s in front of me, in case I would fall.

Well, my advise to the rest of you is to not have two chairs and an oil lamp right in front of you, a burning oil lamps in fact… God, that was dumb!

I think I managed to stop the fall a bit against the chairs and I was aware of the oil lamps and perhaps I held my back up a bit so to speak. It missed my spine with an inch.

The lamp is made of glass but did not break but I drew a little blood… it could have ended much worse than it did and it was good reminder of two things. First of all to have enough empty space in front of me when I fall and if not to have somebody there with a camera so it’s not a complete waste.

#2

Terje,

What a scary moment for you! And what a lesson you learned! I too learned a lesson with headstand, as a teacher. When I was a new teacher I only had one student show up for an evening class. This was during the winter, so it was dark. I light candles for this evening class and turn off most of the lights. Well, this student wanted to practice headstand, so we did. She was in a beautiful headstand when suddenly she started to shake and before I knew it, she started to fall…right into the candles on the hardwood floor! It was like I was moving in slow motion and just watched this unfold without being able to do anything. Well, the candles shot across the floor in all different directions, but luckily went out as they went flying. Boy was I embarrassed and learned the same lesson as you…clear space first! Luckily my student was fine and found the whole thing very funny! And even more funny is that she came back the next week!

Thanks for sharing this with us! Glad you are OK too!

#3

AHIMSA:) SAFETY FIRST!

I ALWAYS do the headstand at the wall. Even when teaching a class… just in case…

#4

[QUOTE=CityMonk;39783]AHIMSA:) SAFETY FIRST!

I ALWAYS do the headstand at the wall. Even when teaching a class… just in case…[/QUOTE]

Actually, I’d rather fall towards an open space on the floor than towards a wall. I had a very hard time learning how to do headstand and at first I practiced without a wall. This was a bad technique for learning the pose but great for leaning how to fall gracefully. I think I spent almost a year falling a few times a day this way, I got pretty good at it.

It wasn’t until I started practicing at a wall that I actually learnt the pose :slight_smile: