Salamba Shirshasana

**Real Pose on top, Modification Below
Salamba Shirshasana: Supported Head Stand
salamba: With support
sirsa: Head

Reference:
http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/481
http://www.yogaflavoredlife.com/styles-poses/8-reasons-practice-headstand-salamba-shirshasana.html

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How to practice the pose

Steps
1. Go onto the floor on your hands and knees; clasp your hands together and create the sensation that there is an egg that you are holding within your clasped fingers. Put strength into your hands.
2. Set your forearms on the floor with your elbows at shoulder width
3. Open your heart's center but always keep your wrists and hands firmly in place.
4. Lay the crown of your head onto the floor and hold the crown of your head into place with your hands
5. Inhale and come up into a downward dog position with your legs
6. Bring your legs closer to your elbows with your heels off the ground
7. Always keep your heart center's open and your legs active
8. To allow the front torso to stay as long as possible, lift your back towards your tailbone
9. Exhale and elevate both feet off the floor
10. Firm the Tailbone against the pelvis and your legs must be active
11. The crown of your head should be aligned with everything
12. Firm outer arms inward and loosen the weight on your hands.
13. Keep everything aligned and open up the heart's center.
14. Be aware of every movement and keep weight evenly distributed
15. Push up your feet in "barbie's feet". This will help with distribution of weight and take away the crunch from your shoulders and arms
**Note: The length of holding this pose should be done in small amounts and extended as your practice improves. It can start off from 5-10 seconds to 3 minutes. But before you even go to 3 minutes you have to be able to perfect awareness of the body. That is the only way it will feel effortless.

Benefits of this pose

* Increases stamina: It takes a lot out of someone to do this pose so it helps with creating the endurance needed to take on this pose but other poses that take as much energy
* Improves Concentration and Balance: The awareness allows you to be conscious of all the moves you are making as you are doing this pose and take away from all the other distractions in your life. It allows you to come to your own personal corner and forget everything, but at the same time have full concentration and focus of the situation
* Strengthens and massages lungs: It helps you to control your breathing and therefore improves your ability to learn to control breath, but it also massages the lungs because you are learning to "properly" breath and take deep breaths.
* Improves your heart: Blood is allowed to flow freely through this pose. The de-oxygenated blood is given a chance to flow through the body and therefore improving our cardiovascular functioning.

My Personal Awareness

Overall this was a VERY tough pose for me.
Just to maintain my back towards my tailbone alone was difficult, but the fact that I had to keep the crown of my head towards my palms and lift up my legs to provide support was in fact quite difficult. I believe this pose has really pushed me even though I had only done a mere modification of it. The amount of concentration this pose took was immense. I had to be aware of the fact that my back had to be straight, my heart center had to be open and strong, and finally my legs had to be firm and active. But compared to the first time I had ever done this pose, I believe this was one step towards ultimate balance and concentration for me. I really believe that this pose was a new level of understanding and a way for me to make a goal to try to do the actual full posture some day.