A Guide to Doing a Handstand
October 11, 2019
Written By Heather Callahan, Associate Director of Fitness and Programming
Over the last few years, the handstand has become the quintessential pose for aspiring and active yoga practitioners. There are a few reasons for this shift – a primary reason is because of the rise in social media, many are seeing these advanced postures and admiring the strength, flexibility, and balance it takes to achieve them more often than they were seeing them in Yoga Journal magazine on the shelves in Barnes and Noble.
In my approaching decade of teaching yoga, I have had a love/hate relationship with this pose. It is a battle of fear and ego, of holding and letting go, of mental and physical harmony. The ability to do this pose correctly is entirely dependent upon your mental state and level of preparedness.
There are quite a few physical benefits to practicing handstand including:
- Reverse the blood flow in the body and improve circulation:
- Increase immunity and prevent illness
- Improve balance
- Increase core strength
- Literally give us a new perspective on life
Now what are the tools you need in order to get started?
Have an established yoga practice with good body mechanics
The reason I suggest having an established yoga practice is that it creates good kinesthetic awareness – i.e., your ability to know where your body is in space at any given time.
Yoga helps establish that balance. It also helps to teach your body mechanics needed for a properly aligned handstand (meaning, one that you can hold, stacking your wrists, shoulders, hips, and ankles). Here is what you need:
- Strengthen wrists and forearms with weight-bearing and non-weight bearing exercises
- Understand the shoulder mechanics for a handstand
- Understand the activation of the core
- Neutralize the hips to avoid opening up as you kick up
- Point or flex through the feet, gas pedal the hands
- Breathe smoothly in and out through the nose
This pose helps to attune you to your body tremendously, but it takes a lot of work to get to that place. And a lot of failure.
Understand the fear and the ego
There are some people who avoid trying handstand because of the fear of falling, and others who will recklessly throw themselves upside down. Practice patience in this process, and allow your body to open up to the idea of flipping upside down when you are ready. Consistently check your motives for wanting to achieve the pose.
Understand the journey is not linear
For every human being, life is not linear. We grow, but sometimes we become stagnant. We learn, but sometimes we forget. In the practice of handstand, we progress but sometimes we stop. Our life circumstances will always be a hurdle in a striving towards consistency – and sometimes, we have to accept that for what it is. Life.
If you hold a thirty second handstand, and stop for three months and cannot even kick up to a wall, this is not a failure. This is an opportunity to return back to the beginner’s mind, and learn something new this time around.