Giselle Toner walks through headstand prep and entry, starting with dolphin pose to build upper-body strength. She emphasizes stepping into it gradually, using a wall or helper, and descending slowly to avoid dizziness. Beginners should take their time; skip it if you're injured.
Chapters
Namaste, Giselle from Eternity Yoga here. Okay, so today we're going to be going into a headstand. We're going to be going into the preparation for the headstand, which is a great strengthener for the upper body, and it's called dolphin pose. And then we will go into a full headstand. If you're just starting, and if you're a beginner, I want you to just please don't go into a full headstand too quickly, because you do need to build up some strength for that. So it might take a week, it might take a month, it might take a year, and it may never happen. You may not want to do a headstand at all, and that's fine. So what we're going to do is show you how to strengthen the upper body, the shoulders, upper back, and the neck in order to get into a headstand properly. If you have any injuries, please don't go into a headstand. Don't even attempt it. Okay? So just stick with the basic strengtheners. Just. So let's go into our dolphin pose. That's the strengthening aspect of the headstand. We're going to take the fist into the inner elbow. That's the correct distance to get into for the headstand and for the dolphin pose. So we're going to start by coming down and placing the fist into the inner elbow for the right distance, clasping your fingers. We're going to straighten the legs. And this is just the strengthener here, called dolphin pose. And this is a great, great way to strengthen your shoulders, your legs and your abs. So just stay here for as long as you can. In the beginning, you may only be able to hold the pose for a couple of seconds. That's fine. And then take a break. But if you can, you're going to hold it as long as possible. Then what we're going to be doing after that is taking the very top of your head to floor so that you're clasping behind your head. And then walk the toes towards the elbows. And then eventually you'll start to come up one leg at a time. And this is where you might have to have someone help you, or you can go against the wall and just hold it. When you're ready to come down, please come down slowly. So you'll take one leg down and the second leg down, and then sit. I'm sorry, kneel in a child's pose and just stay here and sit on your heels and relax. So you never want to come up quickly from a headstand because you'll get very dizzy. And then slowly roll it up, and then take a deep breath. Okay, so that was your dolphin pose going into a headstand. And again, please exercise a lot of caution. Namaste.
