Ah, the elusive headstand. It may be the pose that attracts folks to yoga within the first place—or it repels them away solely as a result of they don’t ever need to should strive it.
Positive, the headstand pose may be to flex in your Instagram, however yoga as an entire, and the headstand particularly, is actually about a lot greater than trying like a badass. There may be an unbelievable quantity of focus, endurance, steadiness, humility, energy, breath, and management that comes with discovering your solution to balancing in your head—all of which interprets off the mat too.
However as you’ll be able to in all probability inform from merely photographs of the headstand pose, it’s not precisely a easy one to execute. Because of this, there’s additionally a danger of harm in case you rush the method and simply attempt to throw your self up there. And many individuals attempt to just do that, by kicking their solution to a headstand.
So let’s get this out of the best way. Please, I urge you, don’t kick your solution to a headstand! As a yoga teacher, I’m like a damaged document in my courses about this: Should you ask my college students what my primary rule is relating to the headstand, they’ll reply loudly, in unison, “No kicking!” I don’t enable kicking for a handful of causes, the most important one being that it will probably set the stage for harm. Kicking up inherently entails momentum, and momentum when somebody is attempting to steadiness on their head—which, after all, 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 may be very harmful and might trigger long-term injury. Moreover upping the danger of harm, counting on momentum additionally means that you could be lack the correct 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, persons are kicking as a result of they’ll’t get themselves up in any other case.