Overcoming discomfort

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

I was just reading a thread about people’s favourite postures. One person had written shoulder stand.

I really dislike shoulder stand, and I’d love to overcome that. Any ideas?

Firstly, I will explain why I don’t like it.

  1. It hurts my neck. I get bruised on the back of my neck every time I do it, and I have a little lump there now. I get this whether I use padding or not.

  2. I don’t like inversions. I hate the compression in my throat on this one, and in other inversions I just don’t feel comfortable upside down. I don’t know why. I just don’t like it.

  3. It has an unfortunate side effect. Ladies might know what I mean. Maybe my mula bandha needs work. :oops:

Are there any postures you don’t like/ haven’t liked? How did you overcome that? Or did you just remove them from your practice?

#2

I’ve found the jalandhara bandha and hala/plough kinda put the neck in the same kind of position.

Viparita karani Asana is a similar form to the shoulder stand… the compression on the neck area is minimal at best. SOOOOO. You may want to give that a whirl.

No comment about the disruption of air . . .

I don’t like doing something I’m not comfortable doing either.

#3

I like Sarvangasana. It comforts my mind. Tip is that you should find exactly stable position not to be very tense to hold a balance. If it needs, work on flexibility of your neck. Halasana is useful for this. But be careful. )
Moving gradually every posture will be done.
For me a hard one was Pashchimottanasana.

#4

You may find a solution, or you may not. I know that some body types don’t allow one to sit in Lotus position, no matter how much effort is put in. I hope you find a solution, if not, don’t worry. Just work around it. Yoga should be challenging AND enjoyable. Keep working at it, but don’t hurt yourself, or torment yourself too much. I hope this helps.

#5

I’m working on Kurmasana and I have to say, this one creates a panic in me, sort of like I’m being trapped. I don’t dread this asana, but when I get there, I definitely feel panic rising. I don’t fear it physically. Instead it’s more like some kind of emotional response happening. I practice Ashtanga, so it’s there for me, waiting for me every time and it’s getting better with every practice. But yeah, this one for some reason really brings up issues in me.

Regarding shoulder stand, it’s one of my favorites, probably because I used to do this one as a kid (just playfully whenever the mood struck:) I just loved to see my feet go up in the air. I hope you can find a way to adjust the neck position so you can experience this pose without bruising your neck. You may have to try to keep the natural curve and not flatten the vertebrae into the mat.

#6

Hi Hanu,

I have no personal teacher, just books and DVDs!! And I don’t know anything about lady-stuff.

However, since it has not been mentioned: You should not rest on your neck at all. Rest on the shoulderblades. When you lie flat on the floor before going into shoulderstand, push the shoulderblades together, that will create some sort of “tunnel” with the spine going through it. When you lift the body up, the weight should be on the blades. The neck does touch the ground, but it should not hold the weight. I do quite some adjustment every time I do that posture, to get it comfortable. Padding is a good idea, but I guess a small padding that will only cover a small area is bad again, because you’ll push on it with your weight so it will become quite hard. I do the shoulderstand on at least a thick mat (foam rubber, 1.5 cm), often I have two of these mats + a regular blanket (cuz dat’s my sometimes-bed too :eek:). So it is a padding that covers my whole back equally.

I had problems with shoulderstand too, not only with coming up into it, but as well with all the blood flowing into my head. I had a feeling like my eyes would pop out (not so bad, but in that direction). I got used to it. When you click here, you’ll see different photos of the posture. Try the somewhat “half” version first, where the legs aren’t straight up. I did that a lot to get over the blood-in-the-head problem, and it is also less stressful for the neck.

Have a look at the video on this page, what she demonstrates beginning at 2:30 seems quite reasonable to me, just that I wouldn’t tie my arms, looks kinda scary. Around 3:40 you have a closeup of her neck and see that it’s not on the ground at all. I’m not so sure if the height-difference of shoulders and head is really a good thing, but I’d experiment with this setup if I had problems. Maybe start with only one blanket to raise your shoulder-area and see how it works out.

#7

I’m just plain bad at inversions…I think if I had regular assistance with them and weren’t sliding all over my mat I’d stop envisioning myself flipping over or landing on my nose… :wink: lol. They look super cool though and I actually liked the way my wrists felt after attempting a handstand…which was surprising since I tend to have issues with my wrists.

#8

[QUOTE=Hanu;33886]

  1. It hurts my neck. I get bruised on the back of my neck every time I do it, and I have a little lump there now. I get this whether I use padding or not.

  2. I don’t like inversions. I hate the compression in my throat on this one, and in other inversions I just don’t feel comfortable upside down. I don’t know why. I just don’t like it.

  3. It has an unfortunate side effect. Ladies might know what I mean. Maybe my mula bandha needs work. :oops:
    [/QUOTE]

  4. Have you tried to put the blanket about 2" thick under the shoulders so your shoulders would be on that blanker and your head would touch the floor. This should help. Do you do spine lengthening poses before shoulder stand?

  5. Inversions are essential, and they do not have to be difficult. Check out Viparita Karani. This is an inversion and it does not compress your neck. Inversions are also : balasana, uttanasana, down dog, dead bug, happy baby, makarasana(dolphin).

  6. The poses I’ve mentioned should not do that. And if you practice it at home - who cares? :slight_smile: