Yoga How-To: Adding Eagle Legs to Forearm Stand

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Wanna jazz up your Forearm Stand (aka Pincha Mayurasana) with Eagle legs?!? Here are a few tips from me about how to do it, along with photos, and even a photobomb from my trusty canine sidekick, Layla...

• You GOTTA have the following 3 things going for any Forearm Stand:
1) A solid foundation at the forearms. Press your forearms into the mat. Here, I even have my hands interlaced for a little more stability. That's always an option.
2) You'll need to align your shoulders safely. Activate your shoulder blades (pull them against your back) and ease them down the back (away from your neck).
3) You must engage your core the entire time.

•When you can do a forearm stand consistently (as shown above), start jazzing it up by getting the hang of lowering your knees down from forearm stand into a 90 degree position or somewhere around that (as shown below). It takes a LOT of core strength and practice to do it, so take it easy. You may fall a lot, but that's ok. Every time you fall, you've learned something about how to do the pose, gotten stronger, or at the very least experienced the pose again.

•When you get the hang of that, start tucking your knees down a little more. Go slowwww.

•And, finally, when you get the hang of that progression, slowly start to cross your legs into Eagle. There are surely several ways to do this, but for me, this way works much better than trying to cross my legs when they are UP in Forearm Stand and then lowering them down. Breathe evenly. Press the forearms down harder as you counter the weight of your legs out in front of you.

•Lastly: practice, practice, practice. Practice makes PROGRESS. Have fun with it!