8 Yoga Poses to Help You Do a Headstand

A headstand is one of the most challenging yoga poses because it requires strength and flexibility. It also involves going upside down, so there's a fear factor, too. While some yogis make it look effortless, it isn't a pose that you learn how to do overnight. So if nailing a yoga headstand is your goal, doing headstand progressions will help you get there.

Physically, the yoga headstand strengthens your arms, shoulders and back and tests proprioception — understanding where your body is in space.

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Although there's not much science to back this up, the headstand yoga pose — like all yoga inversions (your head is placed below your heart and hips) — is said to provide benefits, including promoting mental clarity, reducing stress, relieving lower back pain and activating the pineal and pituitary glands.

In my experience doing and teaching headstands, it's never actually about the inversion but rather the exploration and adventure of learning something new. Through the process of learning to do a headstand, you will gain new skills, bolster body awareness and build total-body strength — whether or not you end up reaching the full pose.

Following a headstand progression sequence, or a compilation of yoga poses that progress to a headstand, can help you clearly define where you are in your learning process and work on the skills needed to do the headstand yoga pose. It also gives you more options for accessible poses to practice in class.

Here are eight yoga headstand progressions that will help you build your headstand practice. All you need are two yoga blocks and a wall. The time you'll need to work on each pose will vary, so take your time and listen to your body.

Headstand is not required to practice yoga. These progressions can give you similar benefits and also help you grow a fonder and deeper appreciation of your self-awareness. You can still reap all the benefits of yoga without ever doing a single headstand.

Bringing your arms overhead can be challenging, particularly if you have movement restrictions in your shoulder blades. Reaching your arms overhead and side bending can help mobilize and bring awareness to how your shoulder blades move and stretch your lats, which, when tight, restrict overhead arm movements.

Does your neck move with the chin jutting forward or tucking toward your chest? Try to keep your neck neutral. Whatever you do here, chances are you will repeat them when upside down. Ideally, your chin remains parallel to the floor to maintain optimal alignment when weight-bearing on your head.

Tight hamstrings can make it more difficult to get into a headstand. Practicing bending your knees and lifting your hips without straightening your legs can help a lot. And it's easier to learn this with your feet on the ground instead of in the air.

This pose helps you get a clearer understanding of shoulder flexion (lifting your arms overhead). It's also a way for you to properly engage your serratus anterior (fan-shaped muscles around your rib cage), which is responsible for maintaining shoulder blade stability — a must for a headstand.

It's helpful to first put the block on a table or high surface, where you can lift it with your elbows.

You can also challenge yourself by placing the block on the floor and picking it up in a forward bend or squat, which will give you more practice folding and be beneficial for a beginner headstand pose setup.

This pose helps increase your body awareness and strengthens the muscles in the front and the back of your body. This is important for inverting since if the body starts to sway in one direction or the other, you will be familiar with what's happening and be able to counter the action by "rocking" the other way.

Downward-facing dog is an inversion! You can practice this in lieu of a headstand and still get the same benefits of inverting.

To make it more challenging, lift one leg.

A natural progression, this pose helps you become more familiar and comfortable with going into the inversion (going upside down) while incorporating previous headstand elements that help create a firm foundation. This might also be the place you stay if you're unfamiliar with headstands and are just getting started.

Gradually build up time staying in the pose and feeling the balance between bringing weight into your head and forearms. This can be a delicate dance between the two. If you feel ready to move forward, try lifting one leg up at a time, as you did in Downward-Facing Dog.

Placing your feet on a higher surface is the next step to building up to a headstand. This pose is a progression of the previous one since your feet are higher than the floor. It will also help you become more confident with going upside down.

Instead of blocks, you can also use a sturdy step stool, chair, bed, etc. to progress. You can lift one leg to gradually move toward your whole body being upside down and accurately assess where you are in space every "step" of the way.

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