How to Crow: Hard Yoga Poses Made Easy

Meet the gateway arm balance. In the ‘Hard Yoga Poses Made Easy’ series, we focus on a particular yoga pose or skill that seems (or is) very difficult and we make it a lot easier by breaking it down into actionable, realistic, and sequential steps. This tutorial focuses on crow pose, which is often one of the first arm balances for anyone just starting out with yoga. I love teaching this pose to athletes because it opens a whole new world for them. For most athletes, their athletic world can be pretty rigid with training and practice making up most of their experience. So, when they don’t get it at first but feel that moment of balancing on their hands, they start acting like little kids and want to try it again, and again, and again. There’s something special about this pose that I can’t quite put my finger on. It requires enough technique, body awareness, and strength to make it interesting and, once mastered, becomes a platform of all kinds of new arm balances and transitions.