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Within the years that I’ve been teaching Handstand, I’ve observed something surprising as I watch students take themselves the wrong way up. Essentially the most essential component in learning an inversion isn’t physical ability. It’s a willingness to be playful.
Learning to come back into Handstand is usually a lengthy process. But it might even be a playful one while you release any expectations of quick gratification and as an alternative have fun every bit of the mind-and-body puzzle as you work it out.
What You Must Know to Come Into Handstand
Holding yourself the wrong way up involves two opposing forces working in unison—feeling grounded and resisting gravity. So it’s essential to work each with and against the laws of physics. Consider it as a tug-of-war.
I prefer to practice short, playful sequences that emphasize the movement patterns and muscular engagements which can be required while you come into an inversion. Repeating these movements over and another time embeds the muscular actions in your memory so you’ll be able to eventually perform the them mechanically, without letting your thoughts or doubts or fears get in the best way. Practicing them also challenges your coordination and brings familiarity to being the wrong way up.
The poses and transitions require the utmost presence and a focus out of your entire body and mind, very similar to focusing your drishti in a pose or being within the zone for an athlete. Let your thoughts quiet. Allow the unraveling to occur in your body and brain as you are taking yourself through this twister of a sequence.
Things to recollect as you prepare for Handstand
Whenever you practice each of the next postures, you furthermore may practice most of the same actions demanded by Handstand. This repetition—and resulting familiarity—ensures that proper muscle engagement will look like second nature to you by the point you try and take yourself upside-down. As you prepare to come back into Handstand, you wish to emphasize these basic components:
Spider Fingers
Keep your fingers bent as you place pressure in your fingertips and the knuckle pad of your thumb. This maintains some buoyancy in your knuckles.
Arms Straight and Strong
Plant your hands shoulder-distance apart. Externally rotate your upper arms and draw your biceps toward your center.
Protract Your Shoulder Blades
Move your shoulder blades away from the spine to create a slight turtle back (puffed-up upper back).
Pull Your Ribs Back
Engaging the core, especially the transversus abdominis, prompts stability within the midsection and locking that to the lower body involves a special technique with the bandhas, specifically the Uddiyana bandha which is the low belly lock and facilitates very similar to a suction lock that moves the organs under the rib cage and locks the low belly across the spine. Whenever you see a really sculpted suctioned stomach in a handstand – that is what is going on.
Draw Your Low Belly In
Engaging your core can make it easier to maintain stability.
Look Straight Down
Don’t look too far forward. Where your gaze goes, your body tends to follow. Keep your eyes focused between your thumbs.
Posterior Tilt Your Pelvis
Tucking the tailbone barely. This helps remove the curve within the lower back and controls the teeter-totter that may occur in Handstand.
Pull Your Thighs Inward
This prompts the glutes and activates the adductors that connect with the pelvic floor, creating stability throughout your core.
Activate Your Entire Body
Reach out of your head during your feet.
A (Playful) Yoga Practice to Take You Into Handstand
Whenever you include asymmetry and twists to your practice, you begin to tap into the strength and stability of your center and your cylinder of control. This lets you feel what keeps you together, physically and mentally, even when you will have opposing actions occurring concurrently.
Have a good time. Don’t get caught up within the cues or perfection. Simply let yourself move.
Suggested Warm-Up
Take yourself through this sequence toward the top of your usual practice. Include the next poses to organize your body: Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose)
Anahatasana or Uttana Shishosana (Puppy Pose)
Dolphin Pose
Salabhasana (Locust Pose)
Malasana (Squat)
1. Ardha Matsyendrasana (Half Lord of the Fishes or Seated Twist)
Tips on how to: Come into Seated Twist facing your right. Ground down and feel the steadiness of gravity. Before you twist, find space between your vertebrae by first stacking and expanding through your spine. As an alternative of imagining yourself wringing out, give it some thought more as every part isometrically pressing into something else. So your core pushes against your leg as your leg pushes into your arm as your arm pushes against your leg and so forth.
Breathe: Inhale to create space, exhale to twist.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
Transition: Whenever you’re ready to come back out, inhale as you switch more into the twist, exhale as you unravel out of your twist by turning in the wrong way and coming onto hands and knees facing the back of the mat.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
2. Bird Dog
Tips on how to: From hands and knees facing the back of the mat, be sure your hands are beneath your shoulders together with your wrist creases face forward. Concentrate on keeping the middle line of your body strong as you extend your right arm and your left leg parallel to the mat. A slight tuck of the tailbone will help draw your belly toward the spine for neutral core engagement that you simply need in Handstand. Keep checking to be sure that your shoulders, ribcage, and hip points remain square and the toes of the lifted leg are shining straight down like a flashlight toward the mat. Keep your foot flexed and pushing against an imaginary wall. Maintain the steadiness of your center line as you reach.
Breathe: Inhale reach even further, exhale concentrate on your center line.
Transition: Lower your prolonged right arm below your shoulder and press into the mat. Lower the ball of your lifted left leg to the mat, keeping your leg straight.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
3. Bird Dog Plank
Tips on how to: Lift your bent right leg off the mat and extend it straight behind you. Pop onto the fingertips your left hand and play with extending your left arm alongside your ear. You at the moment are in a Plank with the other leg and arm reaching in opposing directions, making a tug of war throughout your entire body. To take care of control, activate your core and tap into your center axis, drawing your energy toward your center line.
Breathe: Keep your breath slow and regular.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
Transition: Reverse back to Bird Dog by lowering your lifted knee and hand and lifting back into the identical expression of Bird Dog you practiced a moment ago.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
Exhale as you cross your prolonged left leg from Bird Dog behind your grounded right knee.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
4. Parivrtta Gomukhasana (Revolved Cow Face Pose)
Tips on how to: Sit your hips back into Cow Face legs, try and stack your knees (right on top) and produce your feet outside of your hips. Don’t sit in your feet. Inhale as you stack the spine, extending the crown of your head toward the ceiling to create space and twist within the direction of your top right leg.
Breathe: Exhale as you sit back into Cow Face Pose. Inhale as you stack the spine and twist.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
Transition: Exhale as you unravel out of the twist and switch toward the left, placing your hands shoulder distance apart facing the front of the mat. Pivot in your right knee and left heel as you switch to face the front of the mat.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
5. Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend or Standing Straddle)
Tips on how to: Come to a Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend facing the front of the mat together with your knees barely bent. Press your hands firmly into the mat with straight, strong arms. Look straight down between your thumbs and produce your chest toward your thighs. Check to be sure your wrist creases are parallel to the short fringe of the mat. Spread your fingers out to grip the mat like a cat about to knead the carpet and take spider hands. Feel as in case you’re holding the highest of a push up, externally rotating your upper arms and pulling your biceps toward your center.
Breathe: Inhale as you come into the pose, exhale as you fold closer to your thighs, inhale as you come onto the balls of the feet together with your upper body prepared for Handstand, exhale as you fold, inhale.
Transition: Stay on this position as you hop again or come into Handstand.
6. Hop or Handstand
After your first hop in a wide-legged bend, your options are:
Rise onto the balls of your feet. Transfer most of your body weight into your arms. Keep the top-of-a-push-up engagement.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
Take a small hop. Exhale and contract your belly as you are taking a small hop while keeping your feet low and shut to the mat. Land with bent legs. Start slowly and eventually construct as much as 10 hops. Eventually those hops will grow to be stronger and more controlled as you’re in a position to take your hips incrementally higher while keeping your feet low. Equal parts strength and release. Take that mantra to the mat and, if you find yourself trying with all of your force, keep in mind that you furthermore may must let go.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
Come into straddle Handstand. There’s rather a lot to take into consideration and also you don’t necessarily have lots of time or space to think when the wrong way up, so consider, gaze between the thumbs (not too far forward), pushing the ground away with power, keeping the tailbone barely tucked, control on the hip crease and keeping the feet low so you don’t lose control and fall out backward. Keep pressing the mat away from you by externally rotating your upper arm bones and pulling your biceps toward each other. Utilize the facility of your fingertips by micro managing your balance and breaks. Find space and lock within the abdomen by engaging the inner thighs to the pelvic floor, locking the belly button back to the spine and suctioning the belly contents back and up behind the rib cage (uddiyana bandha). Keep control at your hip creases by imagining a band that lets your thighs move only up to now away out of your belly.
Breathe: Inhale to rise and slow exhale to keep up control at the highest or slow lower.
(Photo: Holly Fiske)
Transition: You’re going to reverse the sequence by coming back to a standing forward bend. Then pivot on the ball of your left foot and heel of your right foot as you come back into Cow Face Pose with a twist to the suitable, followed by Bird Dog on the identical side as earlier, then Bird Dog Plank, repeating Bird Dog, and ending in Seated Twist toward the suitable. Consider it as unwinding.
Repeat this sequence 3-5 times on either side after which take a kneeling position and shut your eyes. Let all that sink in and settle before continuing together with your cool down. Your body is silently creating pathways and connecting dots. The body’s intelligence is activating your muscle memory. Use the facility of images to run through the sequence in your mind.
After which take it back to the mat one other day and run through it physically again, smoothing out the sides and making a more seamless flow guided by your breath.
Suggested Cool Down
Cat/Cow
Forward Bends (similar to Paschimottanasana)
Supine Twists
About Our Contributor
Holly Fiske is the mother of two, a registered Yoga Medicine Therapeutic Specialist, and a 500 RYT yoga teacher. She can be the creator of The Book of Handstand and an eco and ethical clothing designer and yoga and movement teacher. She is a Yoga Alliance-certified advanced teacher through Yoga Medicine with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and Sports Management from Washington State University. You may connect with Holly online, at traveling workshops and through her Yogadventure Retreats. Holly shares her passion for motherhood, adventures and movement together with her Instagram audience as @upsidedownmama.