I’m working on arm balances as part of my latest yoga mission (not to mention hip openers, camel pose.. and anything else that I find challenging).
When I started doing yoga, I watched with a mixture of horror and awe as fellow students leant forwards slightly and balanced on their hands with elbows near their shoulders into crow pose. Amazingly (to me at least) no-one fell smack on the floor and neither did anyone have to make the trip to A&E with a broken nose.
I had an injury at the time and I decided to put the idea of an arm balance on the backburner for a while.
But after some time, over a year, I decided to give it a go with a view to building up to maybe even one day doing a handstand, something which has eluded me all my life.
I worked on getting first into the posture and feeling comfortable with my feet still safely on the mat, to lifting a foot of the mat one at a time, and then finally taking a deep breath, pulling my knees as high as I could into my shoulders, leaning forwards slightly and lifting my feet off the mat.
The trick seems to be to place some trust in yourself and lean forwards onto your hands, focusing on your breath helps too. Admittedly I kept a cushion on the mat for the event of any accidents but I’ve never needed it.. which again goes to show that fear can be ungrounded sometimes and just in the mind.
There’s still quite a bit of room for improvement but the first step has been taken.
Attached some helpful links to Crow pose..
http://www.yogajournal.com/pose/crane-pose/
http://www.yogajournal.com/slideshow/clean-crow-pose-7-common-cheats-challenged/