Red spots (petechiae) on my forehead after sirsasana

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

Hi,

Every time I try to do sirsasana I end up with small red spots all over my forehead. I searched a bit on the internet and found they are petechia - basically tiny internal bleedings caused by broken capillaries, probably due to the added pressure of being upside down.

They don’t seem particularly dangerous and disappear the next day, but I don’t feel comfortable doing sirsasana without some reassurance this is not
going to affect my health. Unfortunately it seems to be a fairly rare problem, because I’ve asked two very senior yoga teachers (one certified Iyengar, another Viniyoga) and they’ve never met anyone else with this problem. The internet doesn’t help much either: some forums mentioned this happens sometimes when doing hand stands (in gymnastics, not in yoga) but they don’t say much more.

Interestingly enough, this also happens to me when I do handstands or the peacock pose, but never with shoulderstands. I am fairly comfortable doing shoulderstands, although I don’t usually stay longer than 5 minutes.

I suspect the red spots might just be because my body is not very used to sirsasana yet, and they will eventually disappear with practice. Recently I’ve been trying to do very short sirsasanas (where I stay for only 20, 30 seconds tops) and I don’t get any red spots then. Might be that with consistent practice and a very slow, gradual increase in the time I stay with the pose this might go away. But again, I don’t really want to get into this without more information.

I’ll probably go and ask my doctor about this as well, but as he doesn’t know much about yoga he will probably tell me to stop doing it without checking further.

Has anyone ever heard of this before? Any advice? Thanks!

1 Like
#2

Hi. I have this, too! I finally isolated it to either shoulder stand, plow, or head stand (sirsasana). There is no doubt that is what it is from. I spoke with my physician who named a bunch of possible diagnoses, all of which were scary. But because I feel fine otherwise, I did some investigation of timing and found it has to be from some of my yoga postures. It was great to see your post!

#3

No much advice :stuck_out_tongue: just ?

Alignment should be straight if not perpendicular.

My point of contact to the floor is my top of my head, not forehead.

The Movement of Breath Should be Very Free, No Breath Control, Try to Feel The Breath Friction in Any Area i.e. chakra and in that 10-20 secs, your inner will awaken to instruct you for the next.

Automatically the seconds will multiply; you & you will be embracing the Lord of Lightness, its practical, no jokes. Just concentrate on in/out of your Breath in The sirsasana. May I?

Aum.

#4

Hi!
Went to google about this because I was trying to do a headstand and saw my face with all these red spots. I am panicking right now thinking how could I get rid of it. You said it will be gone by tom. Hoping it will.
Thanks for this post.I probably would not do yoga post with headstands especially when Im on my period as my haemoglobin might be low as I bleed out. Might also be a factor.