Supported Shoulderstand

Hi everyone. Welcome. So today we're going to do shoulder stand at the wall and we're going to do shoulder stand with some blankets just because it's nice to have the support of the blankets for your shoulders and it just keeps your head and neck feeling a little less compressed. So to start, but if you don't have a blanket it's okay. So to start we're going to sit against the wall and you're going to see where your calf muscle is and roughly where your calves are right in the middle there. We're going to take the rounded edge of the blanket and we're going to put the blanket there. So now that we have the blanket there, I'm going to show you how we're going to go up without a belt around your arms first and then after that we'll try it also with a belt. So you're going to sit against the wall and maybe a little bit on the blanket just because I'm a little shorter and then you're going to just roll up so you swing your legs up the wall and then we're just going to check to get the shoulders just slightly away from the edge of the blanket. So maybe about three fingers away from the blanket and you might want to watch me before you attempt this just because once you're in this you don't really want to turn your head around because it's not so safe if you're moving your neck around when you're already inverted. And then from here we're just going to kind of set the shoulders up. You're going to roll your shoulder blades under. Take your feet and press both feet into the wall so you want to slide the feet down until they're about your knee height and then just pressing the feet you're going to inhale and just kind of bring your hips up. So this is the first step. When you bring your hips up you don't want the hips to kind of continue being heavy. You really want to engage your inner thighs so you're going to squeeze into the inner thighs as if you're squeezing into a block and then you want to float the hips all the way up. Then you're just going to check if that feels okay for your shoulders and for your head. So for me I'm going to shimmy a little bit further down. And then once more press your feet in and get the hips up. Then you're going to kind of wind your arms under on both sides so you're squeezing the shoulder blades a little closer towards each other. And then take your hands under your hips so around your lower back.

So from here with the support of your hands on your lower back you're going to press your left foot into the wall and then we're just going to extend the right leg up off the wall. So see if that feels good. Then we're going to try with the other leg. And you still want this action of the inner leg squeezing into its each other. So if that felt okay then we're going to pick both legs off the wall and your hands might want to move a little lower down your back and you can press up with the balls of your feet tuck your chin and just look towards your heart. So that's the simple version of shoulder stand at the wall. And now I'm just going to try to show you also with the belt. So you're going to come on down and then we're going to just roll out for a second. So I have a belt here and with the belt I've already looked it up and what you want to do is you want to get the belt to be about shoulder width. So right now it's still a little wider than my shoulders so you want to get it to be a little more around your shoulder width and I have pretty tight shoulders. So you don't want it too tight because when you're going up the belt's going to help you open up your shoulders more and it'll be around your forearms and if it's too tight you might not feel so good. So here we go again we're just going to come on down swing the legs up and then again just make sure that you have about three fingers distance from the edge of the blanket. You're going to press your feet into the wall. You're going to take the belt in into the forearm of one arm and then also the other arm. So right now both of your upper arms are in the belt and then you're just going to swing again the shoulder blades in towards each other the tops of the arms in and then again take your hands onto your lower back keep the chin tucked take a breath here and then let's just again play with having one leg up. So extend through that leg keep the hip buoyant so you really want to push away and get the hip to float up and then the other hip and then with that you're going to walk the hands further down the back and as you walk your hands further down the back that's going to give you more support. So what's really interesting is that for inversions it's still mostly your legs doing the work so you're really trying to get the legs to engage get the quadricep muscles to just gently contract towards the leg bones and even your hips you're also squeezing in gently and pressing away with the balls of your feet. So you can even just close your eyes here once you're already in the position and the belt is helping you to keep your arms together and you can just be here for about a minute to start and you can work your way up to making it just a little longer. So continue imagining as if you're just standing up except now your feet is towards the sky and you're pressing your feet into an imaginary sky wall.

Really nice keep drawing those shoulder blades together and the bottoms of the shoulder blades are also going to try to draw up towards your heels and then slowly release you're just going to take your feet back to the wall one by one you're going to just lengthen out the arms take your hands to the belt remove the belt and from there just relax the arms slowly release the hips and then just because life is pretty good you could even just stay here and relax here for about a minute before coming out or you could shimmy out and away from the wall just keep your sacrum so that waistband area just take the lower waistband area of the body onto the blanket you can cross your feet and then just relax here and then whenever you're ready just slowly bring your arms up and over and take your time roll over to your side coming off the blankets and just because you were in an inversion where your circulation was going the other way for a while just give yourself a couple of breaths and taking your time press your hands into the floor and come on up and that show this time for you