HANDSTAND POSE (Adho Mukha Varkshasana)

 

Handstand (Adho Mukha Varkshasana) is an adventurous and exhilarating pose that requires commitment, focus, and courage.

Method: Practicing Handstand is demanding work. Take your time developing your confidence, stamina, and overall body awareness. And, finally, enjoy the process. Some days it’s still a challenge to hold this pose, and on other days it feels more natural to be on hands than on feet. Here are the step-by-step instructions:

Step 1: Come into a downward Facing four-feeted position with your hands placed on ground at a reasonable distance from the wall.

Step 2: Making sure that your hands are placed firmly, walk your feet in closer to your hands with your face in the opposite direction, bringing the shoulders over your wrists.

Step 3: Bend one knee and lift the other foot off the floor. Take a few hops here, jumping off from the bent leg and lifting the straight leg toward vertical.

Step 4: Try bringing both heels to the wall over your head. Keep your head down between your upper arms. Start to work on bringing your gaze to the wall.

Step 5: Keep your feet apart and knees bent a little bit. Practice taking the heels off the wall and balancing. You will need to strongly engage your legs and reach up through your heels. Focus on your body and try balance your entire body.

Step 6: To release, bring one leg down at a time and take it easy. Let the movement be gentle.

Special Tips: Emphasize the perfection of technique. Let it be performed just after Jumping jacks exercise to find more flexibility and stamina.

Like other inverted poses such as Forearm Balance and Headstand, a major obstacle to Handstand is a natural fear of falling. So the basic pose is described with the heels supported against a wall.

Avoid Handstand and other inversions if you have any conditions for which your doctor recommends not letting your head go below the level of your heart. These often include uncontrolled high blood pressure, stroke, detached retina, glaucoma, and recent dental bone transplants. Furthermore, avoid this pose if you have an injury or chronic pain condition of your neck, shoulder, or wrist.

Benefits: Most people are either scared of turning themselves upside down or scared of fracturing their hands. Although, this is not the case as regards to this exercise. After mastering the art of balancing your body weight on your hands, it becomes a part of you giving a great sense of balance afterward. When the elements of curiosity, alignment, flexibility, strength, and comfort come together, it’s reasonable to conclude that you will be ready to venture into the world of handstands. 

The pose has a very meditative and relaxing effect on the body as well as the mind. Some other parts of the body also enjoy a rush of perfusion during Handstand which makes oxygenated blood more available for the tissues in the body. As an inversion, it sends blood to your head, which can both be energizing and conversely help to calm you. It calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression. It is excellent for brain healing. If practiced regularly, it can help prevent risks of most incurable mental disorders such as Alzheimer's. While you are in the pose, the pituitary gland situated in the middle part of the brain gets activated. It also activates the secretion of two essential hormones — serotonin and melatonin — one of them is released in the state of sleep only.

It is generally therapeutic to the body system especially the brain as it releases hormones like endorphins that baths and refreshes the brain. Endorphins are feel-good hormones that enhance your mood making you happier. It is not an exception, as it ensures an increase in the flow of blood to the brain due to gravity and the heart increasing its output due to the needs of the muscle. If you do it daily, you can be sure that you are protecting your mind against depression while aiding increase in your immunity at the same time.

Handstand benefits are vital to the endocrine system, which secretes certain hormones that affect your body. The body produces the stress hormone called Cortisol in adrenal glands, which is released and washes through your body as you go through the hectic hours of the day. However, with routine, it benefits the adrenal glands as they are cleansed, and as a result, you enjoy a better mood and anxious moments are limited to the barest minimum.

It also helps you improve your sense of balance. If you've ever tried it, you know that besides needing to be strong to do them, you'll also need to have substantial balancing skills in order to be able to hold yourself up. It, especially, requires you to be able to have full control over your muscles and to constantly make small adjustments to avoid falling. Practicing it or doing it against a wall and trying to take your feet off the wall for as long as possible will help increase your balancing abilities like no other exercise can. Your core will be working hard to get you to the position and to be able to hold it. There are a lot of muscles involved when performing it. You’ll need full coordination from entering, holding and exiting it. It builds strength in your shoulders, arms, and wrists. The muscles also get a workout in keeping your spine stabilized. It makes your upper body super strong. In order to stay upside down for any length of time, you'll need a massive amount of shoulder, arm, and upper back strength.

When everything including your bowels is turned upside down, It aids in the release of stuck substances and increase blood flow to some areas typically subjected to pressure and gravity. The key to the digestive system is blood flow, among other things there are muscles, structures, and glands that require blood flow. Once there is adequate blood flow, referred to as perfusion, is excellent, absorption of nutrients is also optimal. When this exercise is done alongside abdominal breathing, its benefits are doubled.

Results of this pose and the preceding exercise may vary from person to person depending upon many factors such as technique used, availability of time, age, health condition, regularity, discipline, mood and interest etc.

Final Position: Now enter into Natural Standing Posture and relax your body.