A (Playful) Yoga Practice to Take You Into Handstand

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Within the years that I’ve been educating Handstand, I’ve noticed one thing stunning as I watch college students take themselves the wrong way up. Essentially the most important element in studying an inversion isn’t bodily skill. It’s a willingness to be playful.

Studying to come back into Handstand generally is a prolonged course of. However it will also be a playful one if you launch any expectations of instantaneous gratification and as a substitute have a good time every bit of the mind-and-body puzzle as you work it out.

What You Must Know to Come Into Handstand

Holding your self the wrong way up entails two opposing forces working in unison—feeling grounded and resisting gravity. So you have to work each with and towards the legal guidelines of physics. Consider it as a tug-of-war.

I wish to apply quick, playful sequences that emphasize the motion patterns and muscular engagements which might be required if you come into an inversion. Repeating these actions over and over embeds the muscular actions in your reminiscence so you possibly can finally carry out the them routinely, with out letting your ideas or doubts or fears get in the way in which. Working towards them additionally challenges your coordination and brings familiarity to being the wrong way up.

The poses and transitions require the utmost presence and a spotlight out of your complete physique and thoughts, very similar to focusing your drishti in a pose or being within the zone for an athlete. Let your ideas quiet. Enable the unraveling to occur in your physique and mind as you are taking your self via this tornado of a sequence.

Issues to recollect as you put together for Handstand

If you apply every of the next postures, you additionally apply most of the identical actions demanded by Handstand. This repetition—and ensuing familiarity—ensures that correct muscle engagement will look like second nature to you by the point you try to take your self upside-down. As you put together to come back into Handstand, you wish to emphasize these primary elements:

Spider Fingers
Preserve your fingers bent as you place strain in your fingertips and the knuckle pad of your thumb. This maintains some buoyancy in your knuckles.

Arms Straight and Robust
Plant your arms shoulder-distance aside. Externally rotate your higher arms and draw your biceps towards your heart.

Protract Your Shoulder Blades
Transfer your shoulder blades away from the backbone to create a slight turtle again (puffed-up higher again).

Pull Your Ribs Again
Participating the core, particularly the transversus abdominis, prompts stability within the midsection and locking that to the decrease physique entails a particular approach with the bandhas, particularly the Uddiyana bandha which is the low stomach lock and facilitates very similar to a suction lock that strikes the organs beneath the rib cage and locks the low stomach across the backbone. If you see a really sculpted suctioned abdomen in a handstand – that is what is going on.

Draw Your Low Stomach In
Participating your core can assist you keep stability.

Look Straight Down 
Don’t look too far ahead. The place your gaze goes, your physique tends to comply with. Preserve your eyes targeted between your thumbs.

Posterior Tilt Your Pelvis
Tucking the tailbone barely. This helps take away the curve within the decrease again 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 flooring, creating stability all through your core.

Activate Your Total Physique
Attain out of your head during your ft.

A (Playful) Yoga Observe to Take You Into Handstand

If you embrace asymmetry and twists to your apply, you begin to faucet into the energy and stability of your heart and your cylinder of management. This lets you really feel what retains you collectively, bodily and mentally, even when you’ve got opposing actions occurring concurrently.

Have enjoyable. Don’t get caught up within the cues or perfection. Merely let your self transfer.

Advised Heat-Up

Take your self via this sequence towards the tip of your regular apply. Embody the next poses to organize your physique: 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)

The best way to: Come into Seated Twist dealing with your proper. Floor down and really feel the soundness of gravity. Earlier than you twist, discover area between your vertebrae by first stacking and increasing via your backbone. As a substitute of imagining your self wringing out, give it some thought extra as the whole lot isometrically urgent into one thing else. So your core pushes towards your leg as your leg pushes into your arm as your arm pushes towards your leg and so forth.

Breathe: Inhale to create area, exhale to twist.

Transition: If you’re prepared to come back out, inhale as you flip extra into the twist, exhale as you unravel out of your twist by delivering the wrong way and coming onto arms and knees dealing with the again of the mat.

2. Fowl Canine

The best way to: From arms and knees dealing with the again of the mat, make sure that your arms are beneath your shoulders together with your wrist creases face ahead. Give attention to conserving the middle line of your physique robust as you lengthen your proper arm and your left leg parallel to the mat. A slight tuck of the tailbone will assist draw your stomach towards the backbone for impartial core engagement that you simply want in Handstand. Preserve checking to be sure that your shoulders, ribcage, and hip factors stay sq. and the toes of the lifted leg are shining straight down like a flashlight towards the mat. Preserve your foot flexed and pushing towards an imaginary wall. Keep the soundness of your heart line as you attain.

Breathe: Inhale attain even additional, exhale focus in your heart line.

Transition: Decrease your prolonged proper arm beneath your shoulder and press into the mat. Decrease the ball of your lifted left leg to the mat, conserving your leg straight.

3. Fowl Canine Plank

The best way to: Carry your bent proper leg off the mat and lengthen 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 instructions, making a tug of struggle all through your complete physique. To keep up management, activate your core and faucet into your heart axis, drawing your power towards your heart line.

Breathe: Preserve your breath gradual and regular.

Transition: Reverse again to Fowl Canine by reducing your lifted knee and hand and lifting again into the identical expression of Fowl Canine you practiced a second in the past.

Exhale as you cross your prolonged left leg from Fowl Canine behind your grounded proper knee.

4. Parivrtta Gomukhasana (Revolved Cow Face Pose)

The best way to: Sit your hips again into Cow Face legs, try to stack your knees (proper on prime) and produce your ft exterior of your hips. Don’t sit in your ft. Inhale as you stack the backbone, extending the crown of your head towards the ceiling to create space and twist within the path of your prime proper leg.

Breathe: Exhale as you sit again into Cow Face Pose. Inhale as you stack the backbone and twist.

Transition: Exhale as you unravel out of the twist and switch towards the left, inserting your arms shoulder distance aside dealing with the entrance of the mat. Pivot in your proper knee and left heel as you flip to face the entrance of the mat.

5. Prasarita Padottanasana (Broad-Legged Standing Ahead Bend or Standing Straddle)

The best way to: Come to a Wide-Legged Standing Forward Bend dealing with the entrance of the mat together with your knees barely bent. Press your arms firmly into the mat with straight, robust arms. Look straight down between your thumbs and produce your chest towards your thighs. Test to verify your wrist creases are parallel to the quick fringe of the mat. Unfold your fingers out to grip the mat like a cat about to knead the carpet and take spider arms. Really feel as if you happen to’re holding the highest of a push up, externally rotating your higher arms and pulling your biceps towards your heart.

Breathe: Inhale as you come into the pose, exhale as you fold nearer to your thighs, inhale as you come onto the balls of the ft together with your higher physique ready for Handstand, exhale as you fold, inhale.

Transition: Keep on this place as you hop once more or come into Handstand.

6.  Hop or Handstand

After your first hop in a wide-legged bend, your choices are:

Rise onto the balls of your ft. Switch most of your physique weight into your arms. Preserve the top-of-a-push-up engagement.

Take a small hop. Exhale and contract your stomach as you are taking a small hop whereas conserving your ft low and near the mat. Land with bent legs. Begin slowly and finally construct as much as 10 hops. Finally these hops will grow to be stronger and extra managed as you’ll be able to take your hips incrementally larger whereas conserving your ft low. Equal elements energy and launch. Take that mantra to the mat and, when you’re making an attempt with all of your pressure, do not forget that you additionally should let go.

Come into straddle Handstand. There’s lots to consider and you don’t essentially have a variety of time or area to suppose when the wrong way up, so consider, gaze between the thumbs (not too far ahead), pushing the ground away with energy, conserving the tailbone barely tucked, management on the hip crease and conserving the ft low so you don’t lose management and fall out backward. Preserve urgent the mat away from you by externally rotating your higher arm bones and pulling your biceps towards each other. Make the most of the ability of your fingertips by micro managing your steadiness and breaks. Discover area and lock within the stomach by partaking the inside thighs to the pelvic flooring, locking the stomach button again to the backbone and suctioning the stomach contents again and up behind the rib cage (uddiyana bandha). Preserve management at your hip creases by imagining a band that lets your thighs transfer solely so distant out of your stomach.

Breathe: Inhale to rise and gradual exhale to take care of management on the prime or gradual decrease.

Transition: You’re going to reverse the sequence by coming again to a standing ahead bend. Then pivot on the ball of your left foot and heel of your proper foot as you come again into Cow Face Pose with a twist to the best, adopted by Fowl Canine on the identical facet as earlier, then Fowl Canine Plank, repeating Fowl Canine, and ending in Seated Twist towards the best. Consider it as unwinding.

Repeat this sequence 3-5 instances on all sides after which take a kneeling place and shut your eyes. Let all that sink in and settle earlier than persevering with together with your quiet down. Your physique is silently creating pathways and connecting dots. The physique’s intelligence is activating your muscle reminiscence. Use the ability of images to run via the sequence in your thoughts.

After which take it again to the mat one other day and run via it bodily once more, smoothing out the sides and making a extra seamless movement guided by your breath.

Advised Cool Down

Cat/Cow
Forward Bends (equivalent to Paschimottanasana)
Supine Twists

About Our Contributor

Holly Fiske is the mom of two, a registered Yoga Drugs Therapeutic Specialist, and a 500 RYT yoga instructor. She can be the writer of The Guide of Handstand and an eco and ethical clothing designer and yoga and movement teacher. She is a Yoga Alliance-certified superior instructor via Yoga Drugs with a Bachelor’s Diploma in Journalism and Sports activities Administration from Washington State College. You may join with Holly on-line, at touring workshops and through her Yogadventure Retreats. Holly shares her ardour for motherhood, adventures and motion together with her Instagram viewers as @upsidedownmama.