Balance & Invert – Part 1: Hand Balancing

Welcome to Part 1 of the Balance & Invert Series!

Well, what if I told you that STRENGTH IS SECONDARY?
In fact, you don’t necessarily need to be able to do a full push-up to do an arm balance.
If strength were the number one factor then how come yogis who have been practicing for years still can’t arm balance? They obviously have enough strength, so what gives?

It is understanding the mechanics of balance, which have little to do with strength and more about technique.

In this series we will explore four categories of balancing in yoga:

1. hand balancing 🖐
2. forearm balancing 💪
3. low balancing (like crow 🦅)
4. and standing balancing 🌲

Part 1 will focus on Hand balancing 🖐 most important mechanics and techniques to get you flying high on the mat!

Top 3 Hand-Balancing Poses

The top 3 hand-balancing poses in yoga are:

• handstands. One of the most challenging but fun to play with!
• headstands. One of the most peaceful inversions, imo.
• and crow. However, we will get to low balancing postures in Part 3 of this series, so stay tuned for that post! (or click here if you only want to know how to Crow!)

General Hand-balancing Mechanics

The top 3 hand-balancing techniques you can put to use today are:

1. Place each fingertip as far away from the next as possible. This offers a wide standing base to balance with higher chances of success!
2. Never karakate kick into handstand/other hand-balancing pose against a wall. You will become dependant on the wall catching you, thus when you venture away from it, you may find yourself in savasana very quickly. ☺️
3. Keep the weight in your lower palm with a small lean into the fingertips. Similar to when you stand on your feet, we keep our weight 80% (or so) in our heels and use our toes to lightly lean forward to continuously stand (pretty incredible right?!). It is the same thing with any hand balancing poses. We must place a majority of our weight in the base of the palm and, as needed, into the fingers to balance.

Handstands

Okay, you have been doing yoga regularly, you have the top 3 tips for hand-balancing. Now let’s get into the first one everyone loves to talk about! Handstands.

1. start in a standing split
2. place your hands as close to your feet as comfortable
3. first, kick your heel that is in the air
4. second, and nearly overlapping, push gentle off the ball and toe of the foot on the ground
5. third, hold the split position almost using it like a teeter-totter or seesaw
6. keep holding the split in the legs while inverted until you feel your fingertips start to press down into the earth to counter your weight – find your center in your balance within your hands
7. keep fine tuning that center point then you can bring the legs together for a full straight handstand! 🥳

Remember, if you’re new to handstands this will take some time each day for a few months. Keep in mind that once you find your center balance point, you’ll have it unlocked for life. If you stop all exercise, your muscles may fade but the memory of what it feels like in that center point remains! Thus you’ll always remember how to do a handstand once you take some time to learn.

For more handstand info, click the link below to the “How to: Handstand” blog post:

Headstands

Next up…headstands! Yes! I love adding headstands as inversions to my personal practice, though I tend to offer it as an option rather than a requirement while teaching. Here is why:

“You need to break down the mechanics of balancing in a headstand step by step, which takes more than three cues. This means it cannot safely fit into one yoga class.”

• Side note: Please challenge me on this thought if you think otherwise, maybe we can revolutionize it to be safer and add it into all practices!

Okay, finally, the headstand! Here are the basic mechanics behind setting up for a successful headstand:

1. Flat tippy top of your head, NOT your forehead. Many make the mistake of placing their forehead or front of their skull on the earth. I believe this is because we want to see what we are doing so we try to look down towards the ground. However, this places extreme strain on the neck and its supportive muscles.
   • Illustration: Imagine you’re carrying 40 pounds of water on top of your head to a nearby village (okay we have to work to imagine here since this almost never happens in the USA). For that long walk, would you place the bucket of water on your forehead tilting your head backwards? Yikes. No way! You’d likely carry it on the top of your head so that you can see straight ahead and stack the vertebrae in your neck to support the weight.
   • Application: it is the same thing with inverted. You’re placing YOUR body weight on top of your head! Now the next question is, how do we keep it centered without tipping over? XD
2. Lean a large amount of weight into your hands

Takeaway: Strength is secondary to arm balancing but necessary to reduce risk of injury.

What’s will next Monday’s blog be about? Stay tuned.