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Sirsasana ‘The King of Yoga Asana’

So you want to work on your headstand? You have come to the right place! But what is it you need? Do you just want to get into headstand for the first time? Or are you looking to refine your pose and learn some variations to make it really snazzy?

Whatever your stage, this month-long 31-step challenge has everything you need to build or refine your posture in headstand. Along the way you will find tips and drills for conditioning, alignment, strengthening and opening for the perfect headstand practice.

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Sirsasana ‘The King of Yoga Asana’

So you want to work on your headstand? You have come to the right place! But what is it you need? Do you just want to get into headstand for the first time? Or are you looking to refine your pose and learn some variations to make it really snazzy?

Whatever your stage, this month-long 31-step challenge has everything you need to build or refine your posture in headstand. Along the way you will find tips and drills for conditioning, alignment, strengthening and opening for the perfect headstand practice.

Why Headstand?

Headstand is known as ‘King of the Poses’ because of the amazing effect it has on the brain. The inversion causes increased and unrestricted blood flow to the brain, bringing oxygen to the brain and clarity of thought to the mind.

There are so many physical health benefits from this inversion, including stimulating of the pituitary gland, controlling function of the thyroid, adrenal gland. And in yogic terms, the pose does no less than awaken the (Sahasrara) Crown Chakra, associated with nothing less than enlightenment!! The thing that the headstand is brilliant at doing is turning your world around. By physically changing your perspective, you do so many things, you overcome fear and you literally see another view point in the world.

So as well as looking pretty good, this pose has some amazing benefits on your physical, mental as well as spiritual wellbeing. As you work through the challenge we’ll look at all these benefits and more in a daily email.

Each email introduces the next stage of your headstand practice and inspire you to keep going with your headstand practice. But you probably won’t need any reminders: We reckon you will fall in love with the physical challenge, exhilaration and visual appeal of doing a headstand and start to relish your 3 minutes a day!

One word of warning is that headstand requires a great deal of core strength, so if you’re not strong, flexible and healthy already, with an adept and regular yoga practice, this challenge is not for you. This challenge is for adept practitioners, as a rule of thumb, if you’ve been practicing daily for a year or more. Our Core Challenge and our Fire Challenge are perfect for pre-headstand challenge strengthening work, to improve your strength before you start the challenge.

What to expect

Don’t expect to be standing on your head in session one: You need to build up some strength and the correct alignments first. Even if you already have a headstand practice it is worth working through every step to reset your pose with the best possible alignment.

You will find the first 12 videos are the fundamental steps to developing a headstand practice and it could take you anything from one day to maybe a year to perfect this. So expect 12 days of strengthening and preparatory exercises. It’s just great to go through days 1-12 on repeat for as long as you need.

After day 12, you will discover variations building up to challenges suitable for a circus performer! Don’t worry – you don’t have to do them all – we just wanted there to be something for everyone on this challenge.

Every day you’ll have an additional MFML video suggested to you, because the headstand challenge videos are pretty short, you’ll be wanting videos to continue your practice even whilst you’re on the headstand challenge.

How to do the challenge

You should use the 31 sessions in a way that suits you and your body. You could do them one day at a time for 30 days, as the emails arrive each day. Or repeat each drill for several days before moving on. You’ll receive your daily email each day with your day’s video, but remember you can just take a look at the Challenge Home page to look at all the videos, if you want to practice any differently to one at a time.

It just depends on you and what feels right. If you are already strong with a regular yoga practice it might feel right to blast through several sessions in one go. Or perhaps you should consider doing our 15-Day Core Challenge before you begin. You know your body and you know if you are wobbly or strong.

The key is to listen to your body and if you feel you need to develop more strength, then stick on a drill until you feel ready to move on.

Protect Your Neck

When developing a headstand practice it is of overriding importance not to damage your neck in anyway. There’s just no point in risking injury to yourself (or your furniture!) So, make sure you feel comfortable in your practice. Never put pressure on yourself and at no point should you feel any compression at all in the neck. If you do feel this, stop! Come down, revisit earlier practices and see if there’s something you might be able to change. It’s really not worth coming up into a pose if you feel that you might injure your neck in any way.

As with all inversion videos it is important to WATCH first before you join in. It is dangerous to try and crane your neck to watch a video at the same time as balancing upside down on your head – just don’t forget safety in your enthusiasm.

Contraindications

Headstands won’t be for everyone so do please be aware of contraindications. Please don’t do headstand if you have been told by a doctor not to do so, or if you have neck injuries, vertigo, glaucoma, brain tumours and high blood pressure. It’s important to check with your doctor before embarking on the challenge if you are unsure.

Say Hello!

As you work through the challenge, we’d love to hear from you, what you think of the challenge and any suggestions to make it better. Reach out to us on our Facebook Mover’s Group, send us a picture, a question or an idea. There’s a whole community of yoga students and teachers on there, so be friendly, get involved, say hello!

I’ve got my period!

Some yoga practitioners advice skipping inversions when you are menstruating. We say it’s up to you. Most of us at MFML would prefer to put our legs up the wall and take a break rather than headstand on these days anyway, but that’s a personal choice. You do what’s right for you. Remember that we do have specific Moon-Time practices, so if you want to give yourself something nurturing during your period, we recommend these classes and then you can resume your headstand practice when you’re ready.

I feel wobbly – can I headstand against a wall?

We don’t recommend it: much much better to go back a stage and develop your strength and stability with the preparatory drills. If you rely on the wall to speed you along you are more likely to come up before you are ready and risk damaging your neck or back. Just take it easy, take it slow. What is there to prove anyway?

Let us know how you get on during the challenge and share your journey with us on social media using #MovementForModernLife + #MoveMoreLiveMore.

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