Are Handstands really yoga? 🧐

After Laura’s handstand workshop, I’ve been thinking a lot about what a handstand actually is 🙃. And I’ll say something that surprises people. Almost everyone reading this is already strong enough to do one. The arms, the core, the physical capacity is there. Trust me, this is experience and biomechanics talking. Strength is rarely the factor standing between you and being upside down.

So if it isn’t strength, what are we actually training?

🤔😨 👉🏽🧠

We’re training the brain. Specifically, we’re rewiring a safety mechanism that is doing its job a little too well.

The Wife 👆🏽

Here’s what happens when you kick up → The balance organ in your inner ear wires almost directly into the amygdala, the part of the brain that handles threat. The moment you invert, that inner ear loses its bearings and the amygdala reads it as genuine danger ⚠️. It essentialy trips the internal alarm 🚨. Our unconscious brain has decided we are falling. To our death. Extreme, I know.

None of this has anything to do with strength. The arms or the core. It’s a brain / wiring problem 🤔. And wiring can be changed.

Every time you go up and come down in one piece, you train the brain that upside down is not, in fact, fatal. Do it enough and the inner ear recalibrates. It learns which way is up again. The amygdala stops pulling the alarm ‼️. The handstand that triggered panic starts to feel like a new normal. Nothing in your arms changed. Your nervous system just rewrote the threat as a non-threat.

And this is where breathing earns its keep. Sorry, I meant "the breath"🫣. Because it’s the one part of this you can control. Slow breathing, with a long exhale (just as Laura teaches), speaks straight to that same alarm system and tells it to "stand down". It measurably lowers the brain (amygdala) activity. So when you’re up there and the panic rises, dropping into a slow exhale isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s you reaching into the control panel and turning the volume down. Ragged, held, panicky breathing does the opposite and feeds the fear.

There’s a lovely twist in the stress of it too. That cortisol your adrenals release isn’t your enemy. A manageable dose of it is exactly what drives the adaptation, it’s the signal that tells the brain this is worth learning from. So the nerves, the slightly sick feeling, the pounding heart, that’s not a sign you’re failing. That’s the rewiring happening in real time. You just have to keep the breath steady enough to ride it.

So handstands are barely about the anatomy at all. They’re about the nervous system, breathing and the brain learning, or relearning what’s safe. Which is why I’m always baffled when a teacher tells me handstands are NOT really yoga 😨.

In my experience, the teachers who insist handstands aren’t yoga are usually the ones who never learned to do them. And rather than say they’re afraid, which is human and completely fine, they reach for philosophy to make the fear sound like a principle. I understand it. I just don’t buy it.

A handstand might be one of the most yogic thing you’ll ever do. Because it gets you out of your head. And it forces you to trust the deepest part of who you are. Your physiology 🧠🫁❤️. You will also learn more about who you are when upside down than you will doing a pose you have done a million times before. You just have to be brave enough to go upside down and find out.

Namaskar

Zahir

IN-PERSON TRAINING 👇🏽

→ 200h YOGA TEACHER TRAINING

→ ADVANCED 300H TT

🧠 ONLINE LEARNING 👇🏽

Free Courses

💡 Advanced TT,

🧠 Anatomy Blueprint,

😤 Science of Breathing

🧘🏽‍♀️ Teaching & Structuring

☯️ YIN Yoga

References 1. Goutham S, Bhargav H, Holla B, Mahadevan J, Nagendra RP, Jasti N, Narasimha VL, Mehta UM, Varambally S, Venkatasubramanian G, Chand P, Gangadhar BN, Hill KP, Keshavan M, Murthy P. Yoga for Opioid Withdrawal and Autonomic Regulation: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online 7 January 2026. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2843424 Free full text (PubMed Central): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12780978/ (Study design, 59 participants, 30 yoga and 29 control, ten 45-minute sessions over 14 days, median recovery of 5 vs 9 days, improvements in heart rate variability, anxiety, sleep and pain.) 2. Powell A. Yoga can help cut severe, initial opioid-withdrawal period in half, study finds. Harvard Gazette, 24 February 2026. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/02/yoga-can-help-cut-severe-initial-opioid-withdrawal-period-in-half-study-finds/ (Group sessions, the specific practices used, and comments from the Harvard researchers.) 3. Yoga accelerates opioid withdrawal recovery. Healio, 23 January 2026. https://www.healio.com/news/psychiatry/20260123/yoga-accelerates-opioid-withdrawal-recovery (Parasympathetic activity accounting for 23% of the effect.) 4. Jha S. Drug withdrawal takes 9 days, yoga brings it down to 5: NIMHANS study. The South First, 16 February 2026. https://thesouthfirst.com/health/drug-withdrawal-takes-9-days-yoga-brings-it-down-to-5-nimhans-study/ (Stress markers rising briefly during breathing practice, then improving at rest by day 15.) 5. Gratzer D. Reading of the Week: Yoga for Opioid Withdrawal? The New JAMA Psych Paper. 29 January 2026. https://davidgratzer.com/reading-of-the-week/reading-of-the-week-yoga-for-opioid-withdrawal-the-new-jama-psych-paper-also-maois-history-and-ai-associated-psychosis/ (Average age of 25.6, and the study's limitations: small sample and no active control group.)