7 Tips for a Happier Pincha Mayurasana

Pincha Mayurasana!! Aka forearm stand, aka peacock pose: how does one approach Pincha step-by-step? How does one open the shoulders and also learn Pincha at the wall to build strength and confidence?

Poses that require a strong upper body have always intimidated me. 🙈

Before yoga (so for my first twenty-two years?), I had very little upper body strength — could never squeeze out a single pull-up in gym class when all my friends who were doing gymnastics could do like twenty.

So, for the past several years, I’ve made it a personal project to at least attempt Pincha Mayurasana just about every day. Perhaps a pose so daunting and impossible could become…doable.

7 tips for a happier & stronger pincha mayurasana

Open your Shoulders

Pincha works better with shoulders that are more open.

• Try this real quick: from where you’re sitting…or standing…draw your elbows into your sides, extend your hands outs, palms facing down. Kinda like T-Rex arms.
• Then keep your elbows close into your sides but raise your arms up overhead so that your elbows move toward your ears, palms facing the ceiling.

This is basically what your arms are doing in Pincha Mayurasana, with forearms on the floor. Notice that your shoulders really engage as you try to keep the elbows in (not splaying out) when palms face up, and if you hold your arms like this for a while, your shoulders and upper back muscles will begin to fatigue.

YOU GUYS: IT’S HARD TO KEEP THE SHOULDERS FLEXING LIKE THIS.

This is your shoulders “flexing.” And this is what they do in Pincha. So, if you have particularly tight shoulders — i.e. strong shoulder girdle muscles — a shape like Pincha Mayurasana that requires elbows to draw toward the center line with palms facing down AND shoulders to draw back and down = super challenging. 

There are lots of yoga poses that help to open the shoulders and thus create more space in Pincha:

The basic shoulder openers:

• a) Heart-opener at the wall — allow chest to drop between and below your biceps)
• b) Puppy pose (Anahatasana) — hips stack over knees, walk hands forward, and drop chest down
• c) Thread the needle — from all fours, bring right arm between left arm and left side body and drop down to right shoulder, turning head to the left. Repeat on opposite side.

Shoulder openers that incorporate a shoulder rinse (hands clasped at the low-back or holding onto a strap):

• a) Forward fold with bent knees & a shoulder rinse (Uttanasana)
• b) Humble warrior (Virabhadrasana I, variation)
• c) Wide-legged fold with shoulder rinse (Prasarita C)

Shoulder openers with reverse prayer (Namaskar) or catching opposite elbows:

• a) Pyramid (Parsvottanasana)
• b) Bound airplane (Dekasana)

Shoulder openers with cactus arms:

• a) Goddess with cactus arms
• b) High Crescent Lunge with cactus arms (Anjaneyasana, variation)

Shoulder openers with eagle (Garudasana) arms:

• a) Eagle (Garudasana)
• b) Warrior I with eagle arms (Virabhadrasana I, variation)
• c) Cow-facing pose (Gomukhasana)

Shoulder openers that are also backbends:

• a) Bound locust (Salabhasana)
• b) Bow pose (Dhanurasana)
• c) Wheel (Urdhva Dhanurasana)

Dolphin as a shoulder opener (…lots more on this & how it helps LEAD to Pincha Mayurasana below)

Savasana with a block between the shoulder blades:

Measure

Okay. So shoulders are now more open. Moving on to the set up.

As with any inversion, or any yoga pose for that matter, it’s really important to start with a strong foundation. In Pincha Mayurasana, elbows/forearms should be just about the width of the shoulders: not too wide. 

So, figure out where to put your forearms in space before you plant them down on the mat. Measuring elbows is only ever approximate, but I like to measure elbow-to-elbow (“I Dream of Jeannie” style, cupping hands around opposite elbows).

Then when I plant forearms, elbows, wrists, and hands down on the mat, I also sort of push forearm skin out to side edges of the mat to anticipate that the skin will move outwards when the forearms bear the body’s weight.

This all helps ensure my forearms aren’t too far apart.

A block can also be really helpful to determine forearm placement, placing the block long-ways between the palms and making an L-shape with thumb and first finger around its bottom corners.

If I’m looking at actual distance, this usually means I start with forearms a little less than shoulder’s-width distance apart. (If I start wider, when the skin does move out ever so slightly, my forearms end up a little too wide.)

Make sure to keep the inner wrists and thumbs firmly pressing down to avoid rolling to the outer-wrists/pinky finger and moving away from the center line of the body. 

More Dolphin Pose

So we’ve got more open shoulders and a solid foundation. Time to walk through the best prep pose for Pincha: dolphin pose. 🐬

Dolphin helps tremendously with strength of belly and shoulder girdle. It also helps “flex” the shoulders.

In dolphin:

• Measure forearms/start with your strong foundation.
• Knees can bend a little or a lot depending on how hamstrings feel.
• Toes should walk in toward a place where hips begin to stack or even move beyond the shoulders.

Practice holding a solid dolphin for ten breaths. Then rest in child’s pose. Do this once a day for a week. The following week, hold for fifteen breaths. Keeping working to increase your time.

Start with the Wall

So now that dolphin is coming along, we’re ready to think about sending the legs up.

And, the wall is (gasp) FINE. I absolutely needed a wall to begin to learn Pincha Mayurasana, and, full disclosure, I continue to use the wall as a tool for training.

I’ve said this in classes and to fellow yogi(ni)s, but even now when I lift off into Pincha in the middle of the room, I still imagine where the wall is. It helps me feel where my body should be in space. 

When you set up near the wall

I actually set up about a foot, foot and a half away from the wall. Why? When learning this shape, I found that being too close to the wall didn’t give me enough space to kick up or feel where my hips should be in relation to my shoulders — working toward stacked.

If I started with a bit more distance away from the wall, I could begin to feel how to engage when away from the wall. And — promise — barring some crazy feat of physics, the wall will remain in its place.

No Banana

Being farther away from the wall, you do have to pay attention to your belly and low-back — you want to avoid banana back i.e. dumping into the low-back. When I first started to attempt Pincha Mayurasana, I was a pro at the banana 🍌 back. Not enough bandha engagement — i.e. I wasn’t using the belly and pelvic floor “locks” to draw the belly up and in and find lift and length through the tailbone (which, upside-down, will reach long toward the ceiling). 

So again, in 4 steps, here’s how to set up Pincha Mayurasana at the wall, entering the shape from a place of strength:

1) Measure, plant forearms, and roll forearm skin out. Then PUSH.

• Actively push your forearms into the floor. As if they could extend through the floor. The shoulder girdle has to be engaged.
  • Muscle-wise, this includes, among other muscles, the serratus anterior — the too-often forgotten about muscles that wrap around your ribs and attach underneath the shoulder-blades. Throw a punch 👊🏼 and the serratus anterior muscles engage and create the doming/protracting effect of the shoulder-blade.
  • Big picture? It helps me to think expanding, broadening across the shoulders. Like a huge bear hug. 

2) Then find dolphin

• With forearms planted, tuck toes under and come into down dog with your legs. Begin to walk toes in as far as you can toward your forearms. Stay on your tiptoes.
• Lift up through your pelvic floor, mula bandha (muscles you engage when you don’t want to pee). A bend in the knees is totally fine so that your hips can move toward stacking over your shoulders.

3) Use that wall

• Press through forearms even more.
• Lift one leg. Rather than a full kick, which will likely result in finding the wall maybe too quickly, try little hops. When you kick up, be light. Engage mula bandha and really lift through your leg, through your toes. Look for the wall with your toes. 
• Once you’ve found the wall (YAY!), with the lifted foot on or just tapping the wall:
  • Continue to push the floor away with your forearms and spread your fingers wide.
  • Root down through the first finger and thumb and inner wrist.
  • Engage the belly and allow hips to move slightly beyond shoulders to begin to feel balance and stacking, upside-down.

4) No Banana

• Draw lowest ribs toward the spine (avoid flaring them out) so that you begin to eliminate the arch — banana — in the low-back. 

And that’s it. Pincha Mayurasana, with or without the wall. You’ve got it.

All together now:

Prioritize Strength Before Balance

Practice holding Pincha Mayurasana at the wall to build strength. Start with five to ten breaths, then rest in child’s pose.

When you practice at the wall, the balance piece is taken care of. ✔️

There are a lot of other ways to build core strength and therefore stronger inversions. Here’s a list of drills you can incorporate into your practice.

Inversions like Pincha require your LEGS

It took me like…a year to realize how important the legs are in inversions like Pincha Mayurasana

Practice Pincha Every Day

I really believe that Pincha Mayurasana is a pose that any yogi(ni) can learn, with the wall and eventually without it.

And there are TONS of drills one can practice in order to increase strength in inversions and arm balances, across the board!

Are these tips on Pincha Mayurasana helpful? Please share!

Do you have other tricks that have helped you learn or become more confident in this shape? Please comment!