Headstand or Sirsasana is one of the most difficult yoga poses to practice and requires a lot of dedication. Although it provides multiple benefits like increased focus and relaxation but a complete mastery over the head stand requires a long-term sustained effort. This is where your choice of the right kind of yoga wear for inversions and the best yoga headstand bench becomes very critical. It not only helps you in practicing the difficult yoga pose but also helps in avoiding any injuries.
You can also refer to our posts on the best yoga chair, meditation chair and best meditation bench.
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Best yoga headstand bench – Our top picks
There are a number of yoga headstand benches available in the market today. These benches vary in terms of their material, strength and functionality. Basic features that need to be considered before choosing the best yoga headstand bench are the quality of support cushion, material of the inversion bench, weight bearing capacity, foldability and additional exercise options that the headstand bench can provide.
The ideal yoga headstand bench should be ergonomically designed and it should provide your shoulders sufficient support and stability while you are in an upside down position.
Here are some of our top picks for the best yoga headstand bench.
FeetUp Trainer
The Feetup Trainer allows you to invert safely and easily. Made from a natural material like wood, it enables you to enjoy all benefits of Shrishasana without any risk or danger to your spine and neck.
Restrial Life Yoga Headstand Bench
This inverted bench is ergonomically designed and assists in both headstand and handstands. It also helps in other yoga poses like the yoga block exercises, leg exercises and hip movement.
Sisyama Fitness Yoga Chair Inversion Bench
This is one of the most popular inversion benches available in the market today. It boasts of longer, wider and thicker cushions that ensure safety and stability. It also has self-locking hooks that allow for easy storage without cosuming a lot of space.
The product comes with a very useful instruction manual that guides on the proper usage of the inversion bench for various yoga poses like the side plank and warrior pose.
WonderView Yoga Inversion Chair
Evolution Health Original Bodylift Yoga Headstand
How to choose the best yoga headstand bench?
Like every other buying decision you should be very clear on what features you are looking for in a yoga headstand bench before you can make a final decision about your choice. Here are some of the non-negotiable factors that you should consider.
Weight bearing capacity
The first thing that you need to ensure is that the yoga headstand bench you are considering is sufficiently strong to carry your body weight.
Don’t forget to check out the maximum weight capacity mentioned in the product before finalizing. This is to ensure that the yoga bench can support your actual body weight.
Comfort
Sirsasana is one of the most difficult yoga poses to practice. So, it is extremely critical that the yoga headstand bench that you choose gives you the maximum support possible while you are in an upside down position. This means that it has sufficient cushioning for your shoulders. You need to check out that it does not put too much pressure on your neck for shoulders due to very stiff questions.
Stability
If the bench has any issues like wobbling or lack of sturdiness, it can lead to a fall and injuries. You need to ensure that these benches are stable at your body weight. If they also have a non-slip material provided at the bottom of the legs, it will help in additional stability.
Material of the yoga headstand bench
Usually yoga headstand benches are made of either wood or metal. Both of these materials provide the qualities that we have highlighted above. In addition they are also quite reliable and durable. The only thing that you have to keep in mind is your personal choice and factors like environment friendliness and storage space requirement.
A lot of yoga headstand benches are foldable by design. You definitely need to keep the product dimensions in mind before buying a yoga bench. Ideally, you should decide on the space for the equipment in your house before placing the order.
Benefits of a yoga inversion bench
As mentioned earlier, yoga inversion bench helps you to practice a number of poses in a safe and stable manner without worrying about injuring yourself.
Here are some of the most obvious benefits that yoga practitioners can hope for.
- Practice the more difficult poses in a risk free and stable manner
- Provide sufficient cushioning to the shoulders and put pressure on your shoulders instead of your neck or spine
- Ensure that the body remains in the right posture while practicing Sirsasana
- Experienced yoga practitioners can use the yoga headstand bench to to practice additional variants of the inversion pose
- If you are trying to come back from an injury you can reap all the benefits of inversion poses without worrying about straining your body too much
- It improves your core strength and strengthens your arms and shoulders
- It helps in improving blood circulation and aids in treatment of varicose veins
- Putting your body in an upside down position increases blood flow to your head. This is supposedly extremely helpful in reducing hair loss since it provides additional nutrients to your scalp.
- The headstand helps in fighting diabetes and improves the performance of your digestive system. It also helps in improvement of your metabolism.
- The headstand can help in relieving stress and also provide relief from sleeping problems.
Conclusion
In conclusion, choosing only the best yoga headstand bench is extremely critical since it can help you incorporate poses like Sirsasana into your yoga sessions quite early in your journey. This can help in accelerating your learning curve and make it possible for you to read the benefits of Sirsasana from the initial stages.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a headstand bench?
If you are a beginner yogi or you are recovering from an injury, use of props like the yoga bench, yoga chair or yoga bolsters is the right way to go.
These props provide support to your body and assist you in holding different yoga poses without putting too much pressure on your body.
Yoga headstand bench is used to lift yourself comfortably in an upside down position without putting too much pressure on your shoulders, neck or your head.
Since there are a lot of advantages of practicing yoga asanas like sirsasana, yoga inversion benches comes in handy for beginners to take full benefit of these poses without any injury risk or an extremely long and adverse practice.
Yoga inversion benches are also helpful in other yoga poses for leg and waist exercises.
Are there any negative consequences of doing a headstand?
As long as the headstand is performed properly and you ensure that you are maintaining the proper posture it does not really have any side effects. As mentioned a properly done headstand offers immense benefits both for your body and your mind. It helps in improving the strength and flexibility of your body while reducing anxiety and stress of your mind at the same time.
For what duration should the headstand be practiced?
For beginners it is recommended that the headstand should be practiced for 2 minutes. You can keep increasing the duration of the headstand based on your level of practice and your expertise. You can actually hold the headstand position for a longer period of time but you should ensure that you are not straining your body because that increases the chances of an injury.
In fact different teachers recommend different durations for the practice.
How should you practice the headstand with the yoga headstand bench?
Doing the Shirshasana with the yoga headstand bench is relatively easier. You can follow the steps mentioned below to kick start your practice:
- Place a yoga headstand bench on an even surface. You can also place it against a wall so that the chances of slipping are not there. This is necessary to avoid any untoward injuries.
- Put your head in the opening available in the yoga headstand bench. This should be done in such a way that your head is below the cushion with your shoulders comfortably resting on the arms.
- Hold onto the arms of the inversion bench with your hands.
- Try to get you into an upside down position by straightening your knees and by walking towards the bench.
- You can start by holding this pose for about two minutes and keep increasing the duration till the time you can hold the pose comfortably.
Who needs a yoga headstand bench?
Yoga headstand bench is a very important yoga equipment for beginners because of two reasons:
- Firstly they can practice yoga poses which they will not be able to achieve without a prop, and get benefited from them.
- Secondly at the initial stages of practice the confidence that a person has on holding a pose is less. A yoga headstand bench will help up the novice yogi in achieving these poses without worrying about falling down or injuring themselves.
Another major concern that starters have is getting the right posture when they start their practice. This can only be achieved if you are practicing yoga under a very good teacher.
By using a prop like the headstand bench, the chances of practicing a yoga pose with the wrong body posture get minimized.
Another set of people who can get maximum benefit out of a yoga headstand bench are people who are trying to practice restorative yoga because they had injuries from which they are trying to recover. A yoga headstand bench helps them to practice yoga poses and get benefited from them without worrying about putting additional strain on their body.
What is the difference between a yoga headstand bench and a regular headstand bench?
It is always preferable to use the specialized yoga equipment for practicing the more difficult poses because it is specially designed to provide higher stability and to avoid risk of falling down and getting injured.
The yoga headstand bench is specially designed to take all the pressure of your neck and your back so that you can practice the head stand in the right position without worrying about your balance or your core strength.
When you start practicing headstands as a beginner, it’s very easy to put a lot of pressure on your neck spine since your body does not have the required core strength to achieve this position without putting too much strain on these body parts.
In addition to strength you also need a lot of balance in your body to hold the Shirshasana yoga pose correctly.
Doing this in a wrong manner can lead to bad posture or worse falling down and injuring your neck or your back
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