Headstand Question

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

I learned to do headstand as a kid just be practicing it myself without any proper training. After growing up and doing some research and watching so many video of people doing headstand, I realized that the way I was getting into the headstand pose is not correct.

Does it matter a big deal how one gets into the pose? When I get into the pose, I kind of push my legs up with a jerk. Once in the pose, I can straight and can stay that way for upto 2 minutes.

The benefits of headstand comes from being in teh pose or being able to get into the pose slowly without a “push”

I was also wondering how many of you do headstands and are able to get into the pose by slowly lifting the legs as oppose to giving hit a push?

#2

Gradually getting into the pose is less risky for your neck. So that is what I would prefer. Most benefits come from staying in the pose, but if you get injured, there will be no benefits at all. To avoid jerks as you move into the pose, bend your knees and bring them really close to your chest. Also keep you feet close to your butt before you straighten your legs. If you can’t bring your knees close to your chest, you may have to strengthen your hip flexors first. There are yoga teachers around to help you! In the absence of a teacher, there are some good internet resources, too. Check out the Yoga Journal site: http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/481

#3

[QUOTE=Willem;20650]Gradually getting into the pose is less risky for your neck. So that is what I would prefer. Most benefits come from staying in the pose, but if you get injured, there will be no benefits at all. To avoid jerks as you move into the pose, bend your knees and bring them really close to your chest. Also keep you feet close to your butt before you straighten your legs. If you can’t bring your knees close to your chest, you may have to strengthen your hip flexors first. There are yoga teachers around to help you! In the absence of a teacher, there are some good internet resources, too. Check out the Yoga Journal site: http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/481[/QUOTE]

Dear Willem

Thank you very much for your reply. This will really help me a lot to make progress in getting into headstand pose in proper way.

Regards
Yalgaar

#4

yalgaar buddy,

I’m copying a previous post I wrote some time ago about doing headstand and how to know if you’re ready. In it, I emphasize that headstand is really an arm stand and not to stack your weight on your head, or kick up. Even if you can do it, it’s not a headstand and can be very foolish. I hope it’s helpful.

Here is a link to the entire thread. Also, you really should only do this with the guidance of a teacher, although many would argue these points with me and feel they are not necessary. Just my opinion here.

It’s important to first differentiate “being in headstand” from “getting into headstand.” These are two separate exercises. The third is holding it, all asanas being comprised of these three parts. You build the strength and control from the ground up. Let’s first take a look at the setup, and then I have a test for you.

1 Measure the distance between your elbows (fingertips to opposite elbow) placed on the floor in front of your knees.
2. Clasp the hands in front, interlacing fingers. Place your head on the floor, cupping the back of the head with the hands, thumbs extended up along the the back of the neck. (And it’s important here to have placement on the very crown of the head and NOT the forehead. Ask your teacher to check it for you.)
3. Inhale as you straighten your knees and raise your bottom up. Exhale.
4. Holding that position, inhale, pushing the elbows and shoulders directly into the floor, lifting the upper-body, creating a slight gap between the floor and the top of your head. Hold and breathe. Can you do this? Can you maintain the gap without your elbows spreading? This is your first objective. If you can do this, you’re ready to go on to half headstand. If not, more leg lifts and dolphin pushups.

Half-Headstand

Steps 1-3 from above.

  1. Inhale, tip-toe feet along the floor towards head, raising the hips up. Exhale.
  2. Pull one knee into the chest. Inhale as you pull the second knee into the chest and hold it. Breathe.
  3. Come down with exhalation. Rest in child’s pose.

You want to time your inhalation with the moment the second foot leaves the floor. NO LAUNCHING! Don’t kick-up or jump. Doing so represents a gap in your strength and control which will be very difficult to fix from the top down. Take your time. Find the strength to leave the floor smoothly, come down the same. Like a feather. If you’re unable to pull the second knee in in this position, then practice alternating pulling in one knee and then the other, until the strength is there.

The majority of your weight here is on your arms. Focus keeping the elbows in place, driving them into the floor, lifting weight off of your head. Keep your knees into the chest. Resist the temptation to raise them and stacking your weight into your neck. This will build the strength and awareness.

Practice half-headstand for several weeks (or longer), along with leg-lifts and dolphin pushups. I can help you with more after then.

Good luck my friend. Don’t rush. Listen to you body.

Peace
siva

#5

You need strong abs to enter and exist headstand with grace. I would recommend strengthening the abs so that you can lift the legs up with control as opposed to jerking up.

#6

[QUOTE=lashannasmall;20669]You need strong abs to enter and exist headstand with grace. I would recommend strengthening the abs so that you can lift the legs up with control as opposed to jerking up.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your reply. How do you know your abs are strong enough?

#7

[QUOTE=siva;20659]yalgaar buddy,

I’m copying a previous post I wrote some time ago about doing headstand and how to know if you’re ready. In it, I emphasize that headstand is really an arm stand and not to stack your weight on your head, or kick up. Even if you can do it, it’s not a headstand and can be very foolish. I hope it’s helpful.

Here is a link to the entire thread. Also, you really should only do this with the guidance of a teacher, although many would argue these points with me and feel they are not necessary. Just my opinion here.

It’s important to first differentiate “being in headstand” from “getting into headstand.” These are two separate exercises. The third is holding it, all asanas being comprised of these three parts. You build the strength and control from the ground up. Let’s first take a look at the setup, and then I have a test for you.

1 Measure the distance between your elbows (fingertips to opposite elbow) placed on the floor in front of your knees.
2. Clasp the hands in front, interlacing fingers. Place your head on the floor, cupping the back of the head with the hands, thumbs extended up along the the back of the neck. (And it’s important here to have placement on the very crown of the head and NOT the forehead. Ask your teacher to check it for you.)
3. Inhale as you straighten your knees and raise your bottom up. Exhale.
4. Holding that position, inhale, pushing the elbows and shoulders directly into the floor, lifting the upper-body, creating a slight gap between the floor and the top of your head. Hold and breathe. Can you do this? Can you maintain the gap without your elbows spreading? This is your first objective. If you can do this, you’re ready to go on to half headstand. If not, more leg lifts and dolphin pushups.

Half-Headstand

Steps 1-3 from above.

  1. Inhale, tip-toe feet along the floor towards head, raising the hips up. Exhale.
  2. Pull one knee into the chest. Inhale as you pull the second knee into the chest and hold it. Breathe.
  3. Come down with exhalation. Rest in child’s pose.

You want to time your inhalation with the moment the second foot leaves the floor. NO LAUNCHING! Don’t kick-up or jump. Doing so represents a gap in your strength and control which will be very difficult to fix from the top down. Take your time. Find the strength to leave the floor smoothly, come down the same. Like a feather. If you’re unable to pull the second knee in in this position, then practice alternating pulling in one knee and then the other, until the strength is there.

The majority of your weight here is on your arms. Focus keeping the elbows in place, driving them into the floor, lifting weight off of your head. Keep your knees into the chest. Resist the temptation to raise them and stacking your weight into your neck. This will build the strength and awareness.

Practice half-headstand for several weeks (or longer), along with leg-lifts and dolphin pushups. I can help you with more after then.

Good luck my friend. Don’t rush. Listen to you body.

Peace
siva[/QUOTE]

Hello Siva

Thanks a lot for all the information. Very Very helpful!!!

Regards
Yalgaar

#8

[QUOTE=yalgaar;20686]Thanks for your reply. How do you know your abs are strong enough?[/QUOTE]

You will know that your abs are strong enough when you can lift your legs off the floor and smoothly come into headstand with no jerking or excessive jumping.

#9

Careful here,

Because of body proportions, alignment and balance, etc., some people may be able to lift their legs smoothly with minimal to moderate ab strength. The critical question remains how much weight ends up on the head once you’re up, how much force goes through the cervical spine? How much weight are you able to support in the arms and back? 10%? 50%? 100%?

When you master headstand, you can touch your head to the floor as gently as you touch the tip of your finger to a table top, and also lift it as gently. So even when you’re strong enough to get yourself up, with zero kicking up or jumping, remember this. You’re not done there.

Peace,
Siva

#10

I am surprised that more than a few in the yoga world seem not to know or at least believe what B.K.S. Iyengar, who literally wrote the book, Light on Yoga, on the headstand. On Page 187, under hints on sirsasana,#2, "The whole weight of the body should be borne on the head alone and not on the forearms and hands. The forearms and hands are to be used only for support to check any loss of balance " While it seems sensible to spread the weight on a seemingly vulnerable part of the body I’d have to go with The Authority here. For myself, I have never in the at least 20 years of headstanding I’ve done, hurt my neck. I will say I can’t remember whether in the first decade I put weight on my arms or not, I know in the second decade since reading the above I rest almost all the weight on the head and it is very calming- I could almost sleep in the pose. Perhaps until you are balanced and experienced enough the arms should play a bigger part. That could well be; but the goal should be for the head. Observe in the Yoga Journal magazine how some great old yogi is balancing without his arms at all, just his head. Namaste

#11

Hi Tony,

I wonder…it’s been a long time since I read that “BIBLE.” Does he imply at what stage a person should do this? As a beginner? It’s a good question.

In his book, he often emphasized points of “mastery” and perfection, and not always where a person begins. One thing we know for sure, is you don’t begin at the end.

I’m just cautioning those who are just starting out. You will never master a headstand by stacking all your weight into your neck. In fact, it’s only when you can take all of the weight into your arms and upper-body that the head and neck come into proper alignment. Then, you can start to increase the weight. But before then…it’s risky.

Peace,
siva

#12

You are probably correct, and I just got back from Barnes and Noble where ( and I suppose it wasn’t apocrypa ) a definitive book on Ashtanga by a David Scott said the headstand should have no weight on the head and all on the arms and shoulders. The point of agreement between two opposite statements seems like it must be the timing, as you say, and for my part I’ll say that I do get better alignment when I raise the shoulders into the push but overall my alignment is better served by the weight on my head. It feels more centered and I feel all-in-one piece and connected. Iyengar did not mention any stage that Hint #2 applied to. Namaste

#13

Inconsistency is a thing that often disturbs my peace. Reading in 2 definitive texts opposite things needs reconciliation attempts so here goes : Asthanga is a viniyoga and so emphasizes breath tied to movement to create a moving meditation. Hatha Yoga is more interested in ductless gland secretions and blood pressure differentials and generally controlling the inner body for health so that a headstand of 5 minutes or more is the expected goal so the differential blood pressure can do it’s thing and the pineal and pituitary glands theirs but in Ashtanga the headstand is more a transitionary posture and so arms are more appropriate. Ashtanga, types like Ashtanga and newer students unsure of balance. This is backed up by H. David Coulter in his Franklin Award winning book, Anatomy of Hatha Yoga; He is a yogi and Phd. in Micro-anatomy neuroscience and a few other things. Pages 450 and around that, say that you should use arms mainly to correct imbalances and that the balanced head can easily withstand the pressure of a headstand. Anyone beginning a headstand should certainly approach with all due caution and use arms at first and only gradually switch over to the head, or stay with the arms for ashtanga et al. Namaste

#14

Much better to move into postures smoothly, whatever posture that may be and what ever the style. For me good practice starts from immobility, moves into the position, holds the position, returns from the position and goes to a moment of immobility.
Before going into the position I find it good practice to briefly visualize the position mentally and feel yourself being ‘drawn’ into the position.
During the return from the position and the immobility after the position we get to feel the effect and benefit of the position, energetically, emotionally…
Getting in and out of positions slowly and mindfully we can learn to use less and less energy working with better harmony and more ‘internal’ force.

Every now and again probably good to be a little faster to work on other qualities of movement, always mindfully though.

#15

My first contact with Yoga (about 25 years ago) was at an Iyengar school. Unfortunately I moved after one and since then I only occasionally have run into a good Iyengar teacher.
But I have suffered through plenty of so-called Yoga teachers who let their students do very difficult poses without any guidance or assistance. It is a miracle that there are not more injuries .

For me Iyengar is still the bible. I am now 65 and I am able to do nearly all poses. The only pose I was never able to do is the full Lotus. Somehow my legs won’t do it.

#16

I am grateful for this thread, and all of the wonderful tips since the headstand is my next frontier! :eek:

Namaste

#17

About putting all one’s weight on the head:

While Light on Yoga indicates that all the weight should be borne on the head, I believe (can’t find my copy right now) that the photo also showed his back arched, vs. the straightened form popular today. LOY also says that in padmasana: “At the start they will feel excruciating pain around the knees. By perseverance and continued practice the pain will gradually subside…” It seems to me that Mr. Iyengar modified/developed his ideas about alignment over the decades since 1966, and that LOY might not be the final word.

Certainly, having perfect alignment will minimize damage to the cervical vertebrae. And some of us can tolerate more abuse than others: I once heard of a Chinese acrobatic who could not only balance completely on the crown of his head without his hands touching, but then hop up a short flight of stairs in that position, like a pogo stick. So, it can be done. But how many acrobats were crippled before they found the guy who could pull it off?

It seems to me there is no getting around the anatomy. The cervical vertebrae are designed to carry the weight of the head - about 8% of the body’s weight. Asking it to carry 92% (11 1/2 times as much) seems rather extreme, especially as the neck is very mobile, and consequently fairly unstable. By comparison, massive football linebackers slamming into each other generate a force of only about 7 times body weight on their low back, and 50% of them have low back spinal defects. An article in Yoga Journal years ago quoted a doctor as observing that while many yogis were in a general state of health that belied their actual age, their necks often had more degeneration than their age would suggest.

So, anyway, if you want to do headstands, and like me, you prefer not to sustain all the weight on your head/neck, here a couple of points on alignment that I rarely see mentioned (this is referring to the headstand I form, where the forearms are on the floor, forming a wedge/triangle).

  1. How much weight goes into your neck depends on a combination of your strength and your body proportions.

  2. Check the proportion of your upper arm to neck/head length by putting your arms overhead in the headstand position - hands clasped, forearms parallel to the ceiling. With the shoulders relaxed, and the head in middle of the forearms (half-way between the wrists and elbows) some people’s head will stick up over the edge of the arms, while others will not.

  3. If yours sticks up, you’re going to have to deal with more compression on your neck, when in headstand. You can compensate in a couple of ways. The most common is to press harder with your arms, which lifts your shoulders up toward your neck, as though lifting into a forearm stand. I don’t love this, but it works, if you are strong enough.

The other way is to change your head position. The closer you place your head toward the elbows, the greater vertical distance you will have between the shoulder and elbow/forearm. This gives more space for a long neck and/or short forearms. The trade off is that you need more open shoulders to do this. The closer you place your head toward your hands, the less space there is. This can be appropriate for a short neck/long upper arm proportion. It’s also easier for a lot of people because the shoulder does not extend so much when you are up in the handstand.

The shoulder limitation seems to be why some people who struggle getting into headstand I find headstand II (hands on the floor, forming a triangle with the head) so much easier. They can also “cheat” by putting more weight into the hands and don’t fear tumbling over so much. Unfortunately, in this pose, if the body is aligned vertically, pretty much all of the weight is in the neck again.

#18

I wanted to share my joy of making progress in my home practice with all you guys. All you guys have been very helpful in answeing so many questions I have had. There is no way I can thank you guys enough for all the help I get from you.

I wanted to specially thanks Baxton and Siva for your valuable replies that has made significant difference in the way I do headstand. When I had created this thread, I was not able to get into headstand slowly and gradually. I am very very happy to say that now I am able to very easily and slowly and grudually get into headstand. What a joy!!!

#19

yalgaar, you sound like a great student and a fast learner! You’re obviously paying attention internally, as well as absorbing ideas from others.

I’m new on the forum - finding it fun to read and learn, and enjoying the interaction with others. But… then I thought, how nice if we were all meeting up in a studio somewhere, sometime, to share our ideas in person and in real-time. Sigh… always a bit of a trade-off: I love being able to interact with people around the country and the ability write in at any odd hour of the day, but ultimately I suppose I still love hanging out with other yogis in the flesh!

Anyway, glad you are finding such satisfaction in your practice - always inspiring to hear from someone so clearly enjoying it.

#20

B.K.S. Iyengar produced a follow-up to Light on Yoga in 2001 ( his eighty’s ) called Light on Life. He says exactly the same thing about putting your weight on the crown of your head( pg.121 )as he did in Light on Yoga. According to a top Micro-anatomist with the award winning book " Anatomy of Hatha Yoga " David Coulter- the head can easily withstand the balanced weight of the body( pg 450 )- witness the huge weights regularly bourne by third world laborers et al. Iyengar also said , as I acknowledged, that until you acheive this balance , beginners should safe-gaurd the neck by putting weight on the arms as well. The goal remains to have the weight all on the relaxed head. I have been told my alignment is great and it feels great, and I feel no stress. I am relaxed and have been that way for decades. Iyengar style is most recognized for it’s emphasis on alignment and physical health as a priorty. I am all for everyone following whatever style suits them but I want the forum record to be right about what Iyengar says. You can find much support for this on various yoga websites. Namaste