Ah, the elusive headstand. It may be the pose that pulls individuals to yoga within the first place—or it repels them away completely as a result of they don’t ever wish to should attempt it.
Positive, the headstand pose might be to flex in your Instagram, however yoga as an entire, and the headstand particularly, is really about a lot greater than trying like a badass. There’s an unbelievable quantity of focus, persistence, stability, 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 possibly can most likely inform from merely pictures of the headstand pose, it’s not precisely a easy one to execute. Because of this, there’s additionally a threat of harm in the event 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 way in which: 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: When you ask my college students what my primary rule is with regards to the headstand, they’ll reply loudly, in unison, “no kicking!” I don’t permit kicking for a handful of causes, the most important one being that it might set the stage for harm. Kicking up inherently includes momentum, and momentum when somebody is attempting to stability on their head—which, in fact, is hooked up to their neck and a part of their backbone—is only a recipe for no, nope, and nuh-uh. Head and spinal accidents might be very harmful and might trigger long-term injury.
In addition to upping the chance 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, individuals are kicking as a result of they will’t get themselves up in any other case.
