Headstand: A Pose for all Occasions

Feb 2, 2015 | Inversions, XPoses | 2 comments

headstand yoga pose - Headstand: A Pose for all Occasions

Eve and Daniel Wedding Card

Headstand: Weddings, Anniversaries, Birthdays… Anything

The above drawing was done by Soo Balbi on the occasion of our wedding in 1994. I like the message that the card proclaims: this is a non-conformist marriage. It also says that yoga is an important part of Daniel and Eve’s lives, and it can also be done anywhere.
A few years ago I created the YogaAnywhere Practice Cards. My mission was to encourage people to do yoga wherever and whenever they wanted. ‘The more personal practice the better’, I thought. Regular yoga practice has worked well for me; let’s see if I can turn more people on to it.
Yoga practice isn’t meant to be restricted to the sanctuary of a studio or a school. Think of where yoga began. The original yogis did their practices in the forests of India.
I’ve done yoga in unusual places and you may have too: planes, offices, airport terminals, beaches, and cliff tops.
This weekend Daniel and I went away for our 21 st wedding anniversary, camping at Trial Bay, NSW. While there, I was able to fit in a few practices. The yoga helped me recover from sleeping on a mattress on the hard ground. One of the poses that gave me relief was headstand. There’s something about inverting one’s body and defying the effects of gravity. Your tail goes up as you press your strong arms down, and everything in between becomes long and lithe.
Going upside down by itself won’t cure a sore back, but you can use the time you are in headstand to mobilise your core muscles. As well, you use the strength of your buttocks muscles and legs to take much of the weight off your lower back.
Headstand @ Trial Bay Campground

Preparation for Headstand

If you are concerned about going up into headstand, for whatever reason, a good place to develop the necessary strength and muscular prowess is on the ground.
You can build up the muscles of your arms and back by holding this pose. Or, you can do the ‘dolphin’ version of the pose by moving your shoulders forward over your elbows and then back into the dog pose shape five or six times. Then, take a rest and repeat so you’ve done 3 sets altogether.

Headstand (Sirsasana) Preparation

Headstand (Sirsasana) Preparation


I’d be curious to hear about some of the unusual places that you have done your yoga practice….
 

2 Comments

  1. Pranayama in a friends Dungeon….I think that takes the cake so to speak for me. On a Ferry and another goodie was on the Nullarbor in the middle of the road, you can see the cars for miles so even tho it’s a stop/start practice there is something energetically awesome about being on a road that is the hub of connecting the east and west parts of the south of this land.

    Reply
    • Those are excellent examples of the unusual, Sarah. I just remembered that I taught yoga in a sound-proofed radio studio for several months. That was very trippy when it came to the extreme silence for savasana. Kindly…. E

      Reply

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