How To Practice Headstand Safely

Headstand is a wonderful pose, but has suffered a rash of bad press ever since the post on “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body”. However, when done intelligently, it provides the practitioner with an opportunity to remain in an inversion for an extended period of time. Unlike handstand and forearm stand, a skilled practitioner could safely remain in headstand for several minutes.

Benefits and Risks

According to Iyengar, headstand (sirsasana) is the “King of all Asana,” which “develops the body, disciplines the mind, and widens the horizon of the spirit” (Light on Yoga, 1976). While western medicine may not be on board with the widening of the horizons of the spirit, there are several benefits to inverting.

Inverting your body can have several happy effects:

• lymphatic drainage from the feet
• blood returns to the heart
• lowering of blood pressure (by stimulating the baroreceptors in the neck, the body will lower your blood pressure to compensate)
• cultivate upper body strength
• when done properly, cultivates lower body strength
• change in perspective
• can be energetically grounding.

For the healthy practitioner, headstand can be a wonderful asana. However, you may wish to avoid inversions if you have:

• high blood pressure (while your body is very good at regulating the blood pressure in your brain, you may want to be cautious)
• history of stroke
• glaucoma, or recent eye surgery
• cervical spine injury/whiplash
• hiatal hernia (leaky valve between stomach and esophagus)
• a bun in the oven (while it’s not intrinsically “bad” to invert, prenatal students can have a much higher blood volume and less stable joints, which can make inversions less than ideal)

Here are five tips to set you up for headstand safely.

1. Don’t use your head

Although it’s called headstand, it’s better to think of the pose as forearm stand. Casually putting a heap of weight on top of your head isn’t a great idea. The cervical spine isn’t meant to be weight bearing (that’s what our feet are for!). When you are starting out, it is better to put your weight in the shoulder girdle through the forearms than weight the top of your head. Keep the weight on the head light. Yes, eventually you may put more weight on the head, but why not use the nice strong muscles of your shoulders, back and chest while you’re starting out? In other words, don’t use your neck! If you have a particularly long neck (making it hard to de-weight your head), then use props to “make” your arms longer. And until you develop the strength to lift your head off the floor, don’t be in any rush to use your head as a key pillar. Practicing dolphin (head off the floor) is an excellent way to build up strength (and hey, it’s an inversion too) and prepare for the full pose.

2. Keep the curve of your neck natural

When you place your head on the floor, put the top of the head on the floor (not the forehead or back of the head). Imagine you are right side up and carrying a stack of books on your head. Where would they need to be positioned on your skull to balance? The intervertebral disks of the spine are happiest and best aligned when the cervical spine has a slight lumbar (inward) curve. Since we want to keep the neck happy, keeping this natural curve when adding weight is the way to go.

3. Work the upper back

Since you are bearing weight through the shoulder girdle, the position of the scapula (shoulder blades) on the back is very important. Lift the shoulders up away from the ears and draw the shoulder blades slightly towards each other to widen the collarbones and draw the upper back in. I usually prepare for headstand by training my upper back to move inwardly through backbends such as baby cobra, locust and baby cobra.

4. Go Slow

Headstand is like the grandpa of inversions: slow and dignified. Unlike handstand, it’s not appropriate to kick up exuberantly into headstand. It is a lesson in patience! Instead, go step by step (here’s a video) through the pose and cultivate your abilities over time.

5. My Favorite Cues

• “Press down through your forearms.” This is my favorite cue (you’ll see I use iterations of this same cue all the time in this pose). This cue will help anchor the foundation, lift the shoulders and de-weight the head and neck.
• “Lift your upper back in and up.”
• “Root through your forearms to lift your hips.”
• “Root through your forearms to lift your shoulders up.”
• Once up: “Press through your forearms to lift through the legs.”
• “Squeeze your legs and reach up through the insides of your feet.”
• “Hug the outer hips in.”
• Usually, students need help with avoiding a banana shaped torso: “Draw your front ribs in and lengthen your buttocks to your heels.”

Happy Practicing!