Tips on Crow Pose

This pose is the one that I have been most proud of in my yoga journey. When I first saw someone do this pose, my jaw dropped. I had no idea what they were doing, or how to do it. When I decided that it was time to incorporate the pose into my routine, finding the right how-to was imperative for me, as I am a poor college student and cannot afford proper yoga classes. 

Here are some of the Mental Tips that I needed to try this: 

1. This pose uses core, not arm strength. If you have some Betty Spaghetti arms like I do, arm balances look very difficult and unattainable. However, Crow pose is a lot of core strength, as opposed to arm strength. 

2. You are not that far off the ground. If you fall, it won't hurt. Just stay aware and if you feel that you are falling, position your body so that you don't fall on your nose. 

If you do feel like you're going to fall, hopefully someone is around with a camera and maybe you'll get a spot on Ridiculousness. 

3. Yes, you can actually balance like this; it isn't some voodoo magic. 



Here are some of the Physical Tips that I needed to try this:

1. Your feet will go higher off the ground with time and practice. At first, you might just get the toes off the ground. 

2. Use a yoga block or a stack of books to balance your head if you're having trouble balancing. I do not have a yoga block, so I had a stack of about three Stephen King books (hardback-the thick ones too, like the short story compilations) as a substitute for a yoga block. Just watch the books; sometimes they can slip. I'd go into the pose and balance my head for a couple weeks until I was ready to balance sans books. 

3. If you are worried about falling, practice this on days when you are totally on your game until you get better at it. My balance can be hit or miss sometimes, so I only worked on this pose if I knew my balance was doing well.  

4. I did not use Frog Pose to get into this one. I get into this pose by doing a forward fold, then bending my knees. With that bend, I put my knees as close as possible to my arm pits. This helps for my knees to not slip off the arms. 


Once I got this pose down, I found it was incredibly easy to master tripod pose, which is a precursor pose for a headstand.