How Should I Do Half Headstand (Pike)?

Transcript of: How should I do half headstand (pike)?

Hey everyone! Welcome to this month’s question of the month. I’m David Keil. I’m answering your questions as always. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button over there. Or, if you’ve got a question that you want me to answer—maybe if you got inspired by the question I answered here or you want to reframe it to something that’s happened with you or for you—by all means. Go to yoganatomy.com/myquestion. This month’s question comes from Monica and it’s about how to do half headstand, or pike position.

The Question:

My question is about headstand (salamba sirsasana and tripod). Should I tuck my chin in and how would I know if I maintain a healthy cervical curve during headstand? This question came up when I couldn’t see whether my legs were parallel to the floor in the pike position. My teacher suggested to me to tuck my chin in so that I have a visual. In that way, I felt my back neck was lengthening, but I worry it would be too straight. Looking forward to hearing from you.

The Answer:

Interesting. Here’s my initial thought on this—if a student asked me this and I was in the room with them. Here’s what I would do instead of having them change their neck position, because I’m going to assume if you’re doing that and you’re doing half headstand (pike position), that you’ve been doing headstand for a while. You have a reasonable amount of strength. I probably wouldn’t change your head position because it’s probably in a good position for you. What I would do is have you lower your legs and then I would provide you with the feedback of where parallel to the floor is in your half headstand (pike). I’d give you that. And then you could take that into your body and maybe readjust your body in some other way rather than having to tuck your head in and look to where your feet are.

Even if you did tuck your head—I’m not sure, I mean maybe you could see your feet, but I’m not sure if that would tell you whether your legs are parallel to the floor in half headstand or not. So I’m not quite sure—not to beat up on your teacher or whatever. It is an approach. I would probably just provide you with the feedback.

Find more backbend for half headstand

I’ll also point out that what most people miss in the pike is a stronger backbend. Not a full backbend, of course. In other words, the pelvis has to tuck more this way as the legs come down to counterbalance the weight around the center line of more or less where your head is touching the floor. So, in other words, in half headstand, if your feet are going that way, then something has to go that way to balance it out.

Most people hold back. They hold back from taking their legs all the way down in pike because they feel like they’re going to fall potentially. So at that point in the half headstand, if this were your butt and your hips, as your feet go down, your pelvis goes that way a little bit. Let a little more arch come into your spine in the pike than you would when you’re normally in your headstand. That’s probably going to help you find parallel faster, quicker. And again, try to use somebody’s outside feedback. Or, videotape yourself doing the posture so you can get a sense of what that feels like and what that looks like. Okay?

Alright. I hope that helped a little bit Monica. Anyone else, if you’ve got a question, you know what to do. Go to yoganatomy.com/myquestion.