How to Do the Headstand Pose in Yoga Without Kicking Your Way Up

Ah, the elusive headstand. It may be the pose that attracts folks to yoga within the first place—or it repels them away completely as a result of they don’t ever need to need to strive it. 

Certain, the headstand pose might be to flex in your Instagram, however yoga as a complete, and the headstand particularly, is actually about a lot greater than wanting like a badass. There’s an unimaginable quantity of focus, endurance, balance, humility, energy, breath, and management that comes with discovering your strategy to balancing in your head—all of which interprets off the mat, too. 

However as you may in all probability inform from merely taking a look at photographs of the headstand pose, it’s not precisely a easy one to execute. In consequence, there’s additionally a danger of damage in the event you rush the method and simply attempt to throw your self up there. 

And many individuals attempt to do exactly that, by kicking their strategy to a headstand.

So let’s get this out of the best way: Please, I urge you, don’t kick your strategy to a headstand! As a yoga teacher, I’m like a damaged file in my lessons about this: In the event you ask my college students what my primary rule is with regards to the headstand, they’ll reply loudly, in unison, “no kicking!” I don’t permit kicking for a handful of causes, the largest one being that it could actually set the stage for damage. Kicking up inherently entails momentum, and momentum when somebody is attempting to stability on their head—which, in fact, is connected to their neck and a part of their backbone—is only a recipe for no, nope, and nuh-uh. Head and spinal accidents might be very harmful and may trigger long-term harm. 

Moreover upping the chance of damage, counting on momentum additionally means that you could be lack the right management, energy, or mobility in your core or higher physique to get into the optimum place to go as much as headstand. More often than not, individuals are kicking as a result of they’ll’t get themselves up in any other case.