The Role of Your Feet in Headstand
Why This Overlooked Technique Is a Missing Link in Your Practice (and how to do it)
Your Feet Complete the Circuit.
In every asana, your feet play a critical role — but in inversions like headstand, they’re often forgotten.
Think of your body as an energy circuit.
Your feet are one end of that circuit (in headstand the other end of the circuit is your head).
When your feet are inactive, the circuit breaks. And that break leads to:
• Instability
• Disconnection
• Heaviness
• Reduction in balance, control and longevity
Padha Bandha: The hidden power of your feet
You may have heard of bandhas in Yoga — internal domes that harness, bounce and direct energy throughout the body.
There are both orthodox and non-orthodox concepts of bandhas.
In this case, think of Padha Bandha (the foot bandha) being like a tornado or whirlwind:
• It’s perimeter connects to the earth
• The rebound force sucks energy upwards through the centre
• It creates a lift.
Whether you’re in standing poses or upside-down in headstand, activating the feet creates internal lift and stability— even if your feet aren't physically touching the ground.
This action provides an extra energy resource that makes ALL the difference.
Why Many People Struggle in Headstand.
Having worked with 1000’s of yoga teachers, what I know is that many teacher training courses and classes overlook vital headstand details and your feet are one of them.
It’s often missing links or applying instructions that don’t actually align with the mechanics of the pose as why many people struggle (and believe they are the problem - not enough strength or flexibility). Literally 90% of those I work with it is either missing technique or misaligned methods that cause the struggle.
When it comes to your feet , you may have been instructed to point the toes. This doesn't activate the feet in the desired way and means you miss an element of the foundations.
Without activating your feet properly, you’re:
• Fighting gravity and collapsing the body weight into the neck
• Losing lift
• Creating unnecessary effort by over-relying on other body parts
• Missing a key anchor for balance and control
• Missing a vital element of the foundations
When your feet are switched on, they create a counter-force that supports your entire body.
This translates into:
✅ Lightness
✅ Stability
✅ Strength (without overusing your muscles)
✅ Greater control
✅ Longevity in the pose
✨ PRACTICE: The Pen Exercise
This simple but powerful drill teaches you exactly what to do with your feet in headstand and helps you understand the importance of the feet.
What you need:
• A thick pen or wooden spoon
• Some floor space to lie on your back
✅ Setup:
• Lie on your back, legs extended up at 90°, soles of your feet facing the ceiling.
• If your head tips back, support it with just enough blanket height to slightly elevate your forehead above your chin.
• If straight legs at 90° is challenging, add blanket support under your sacrum so your pelvis stays grounded (and so your legs can stay straight and 90° to the floor).
• Keep your feet together — heels and big toes touching. You’ll see a small gap between the inner arches of your feet.
✅ The Action:
• Place the pen vertically in this gap, just below the balls of your big toes (sesamoid area).
• Only using your feet, lift the pen towards the ceiling using your inner arches — without letting the pen tilt.
• At the same time, draw your outer arches (lateral edge of the foot) down toward the floor.
🔁 Repeat. Rest when needed.
It may feel like your feet are in-between flexing and pointing — and yes, it can feel weird at first! It can take time to get the different parts of your feet to do different things, particularly if you haven’t done this before.
🌀 What You're Training
This action is about connection.
[When in Headstand] You're creating an internal energetic and structural circuit between your feet and your head.
By applying this action, you also enlist your leg muscles to switch on which forms another part of the foundational chain.
Apply this action through every stage of headstand:
• Before your feet lift-off
• During the lift
• In balance
• On the return
Whether you lift your legs independently, together, straight or bent, make sure BOTH feet are always applying this action.
To begin with you can keep the pen/object in place as you come up into headstand through the 4 vital stages. Once you have trained the feet and body to understand this action, you can do it without the pen.
And you’ll notice:
• Your legs feel lighter
• Your pelvis lifts easier
• Your balance improves
• Your energy flows up, rather than collapsing down
🧘♂️ Remember - this instruction works in tandem with ALL the other foundational instructions. Nothing works independently. So if you accurately apply this action but still feel things aren’t quite right, chances are there are other foundational elements and mechanics missing or need reworking.
This practice (and following progressions) is one of many drills and techniques we teach inside the Art of Headstand training programme.
Many of the methods inside, you probably haven’t come across before as they too are often missed in training courses.
Inside The Art of Headstand training programme, you’ll learn :
• Key techniques & principles (many of which are missing from training courses)
• The complete Headstand blueprint
• The 4 vital phases of Headstand
• Common Mistakes you didn’t realise you were making (you may have learnt them in a training or classroom so assume they are helpful)
✅ Ready to Master Headstand?
Join The Art of Headstand Programme
🎉 Get 20% off for the month of May 2025
➡️ You can click here to enrol and access all the techniques to finally master headstand.
We’ve spent the past 15 years refining and mastering headstand techniques and mechanics, all of which are inside this training.
We trust this action of the feet fills a missing piece of the puzzle and supports your headstand practice (you can apply the same process to all inversions).
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