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What is Salamba Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand)
- Practicing this asana integrates your mind with your body and soul.
- Your brain feels bright yet calm, your body feels light and infused with radiance.
- The inverted pose allows fresh, healthy blood to circulate around your neck and chest.
- This alleviates bronchial disorders and stimulates the thyroid and parathyroid glands.
Benefits of Salamba Sarvangasana
- Alleviates hypertension
- Soothes the nerves
- Improves the functioning of the thyroid and parathyroid glands
- Alleviates asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis, throat disorders and congestion
- Relieves breathlessness and palpitations
- Helps treat colds and sinus blockages/sinuisitis
- Improves bowel movements and relieves colitis
- Alleviates urinary disorders
- This yoga pose stretches and strengthens the shoulder and the neck
- Helps treat hernia
- Helps treat a prolapsed uterus and reduces uterine fibroids
- Relieves congestion and heaviness in the ovaries, and helps treat ovarian cysts
- Calms the brain
- Stimulates the function of the prostate glands
- Reduces menstrual cramps and helps regulate menstrual flow, if done regularly between two menstrual periods
- Relieves stress and nervous disorders
- eases migraines and stress related headaches
- alleviates hypertension and insomnia
- reduces palpitations
- This yoga pose helps in relieving from the symptoms of mild depression
- Stimulates the function of the abdominal organs
- Improves the digestion
- Relieves cervical spondylosis and shoulder pain
- This yoga pose relieves insomnia
- Prevents varicose veins
- Relieves the fatigue
- This yoga asana helps in reducing the symptoms of menopause
- Strengthens and tones the legs and buttocks
- Alleviates ulcers, colitis, chronic constipation, and hemorrhoids
- This pose is the best yoga therapy for infertility
Contraindications and Cautions
- Do not practice this asana during menstruation.
- People with high blood pressure should only attempt this asana immediately after holding the pose of Halasana for at least 3 minutes.
How to do Salamba Sarvangasana – Step wise Instructions
Step 1
- Place a mat on 3 folded blankets, one on top of the other, on the floor.
- Lie down with your neck, shoulders, and back on the blankets.
- Rest your head on the floor.
- Stretch your legs and tighten your knees.
- Push the inner sides of your legs toward your heels.
- Press the outer sides of your shoulders down on the blankets.
- Raise your upper spine, but push your lower spine down on the blankets.
- Stretch your arms out close to your body, palms facing the ceiling.
- Make sure that your wrists touch your body.
- Raise and expand your sternum without moving your head.
Step 2
- Roll your shoulders back and pull in your shoulder blades.
- Turn your upper arms out slightly and stretch the inner sides of your arms toward the little fingers of each hand.
- Exhale, and bend your knees.
Step 3
- Without moving the upper part of your body, exhale and raise your hips and buttocks off the floor.
- Bring your knees over your chest.
- BEGINNERS If you find it difficult, at first, to raise your hips off the floor, ask a helper to hold your ankles and push your bent legs toward your head.
Step 4
- Maintain your grip on the chair seat and straighten your legs, one by one.
- Your buttocks, lower back, and waist should rest on the front edge of the chair seat.
- Lift your dorsal spine and shoulder blades.
- Intensify your grip on the chair seat.
- Extend your inner legs from the groin to the heels.
- Rotate your thighs inward.
- Keep your neck soft.
- Do not hold your breath.
- Hold the pose for 5 minutes.
Coming out of the Pose
- Exhale, and place your feet on the chair back.
- Push the chair away, slightly.
- Slide your buttocks and back onto the bolster.
- Rest for a few minutes.
- Turn on your right, slide off the bolster, and sit up.
Step 5
- Now, slide your hands down to the middle of your back, so that your palms cover your kidneys.
- Point your thumbs toward the front of your body and your fingers toward the spine.
- Exhale, and raise your torso, hips, and knees, until your chest touches your chin. Breathe evenly.
Step 6
- Raise your feet toward the ceiling.
- Only the back of your neck, shoulders, and upper arms should rest on the blankets.
- Make sure that your body is perpendicular to the floor, from the shoulders to the knees.