Working on Arm Balances? These 5 YouTube Yoga Videos Help.

Arm balances can be some of the most inspiring—and intimidating—poses in yoga. Discovering just the right combination of balance, engagement, and confidence to shift your center of gravity forward and rely on your arms for balance requires discipline—and a heavy dose of trust.

This category of poses puts your willingness to take a risk, fail, try again, and fail better to the test. It’s also less about your actual arms than one might expect. Arm balances ask that you engage your entire body (even your fingers and toes!) to avoid dumping weight into your wrists so that you can find a still point of true balance.

Your why also matters here. What is it about arm balancing that makes you want to access it? Is your why related to curiosity?  Achievement? Ego? Or just the natural progression of keeping challenge in your practice? Knowing what propels you to take certain shapes can help you approach them with mindfulness and intention.

These YouTube yoga practices were sequenced to take you into an arm balance—or prepare you for that moment, whenever that time comes.

5 YouTube Yoga Practices for Arm Balancing

Practicing yoga sequences that culminate in an arm balance can help you better understand the stretching, strengthening, and engaging of muscles that are needed to achieve that peak pose.

1. 20-Minute Intermediate Flow for Side Crow

Cathy Madeo guides this intermediate yoga flow that relies on Plank, Side Plank, dynamic Cobra, twists, and more to prep the body for Side Crow. Rather than suggest you sit out on the arm balance if you’re not feeling it, the practice offers twisting Chair Pose as an alternative. The entire sequence builds exactly the kind of embodied strength one needs to attempt liftoff.

Try this balancing practice.

2. 30-Minute Arm Balance Yoga Flow for Firefly

If you’re looking for a practice that’s more challenging than the average class, this flow from High Desert Yogi is a worthwhile option (and comes with the disclaimer that you can, of course, skip any pose that doesn’t feel right in your body). Malasana, Frog Pose, Warrior 2, and more give way to Crow Pose and, ultimately, Firefly Pose.

Try this balancing practice.

3. 25-Minute Yoga Sequence to Come Into Crow Pose

Another Crow Pose practice, this time from Yoga with Adriene, who notes that students who want to access Crow or variations of the pose need to start by ensuring the body is properly warmed up and primed for strength and stability. She does this with Happy Baby, ample vinyasas, wrist stretches, Side Lunge, and more.

Try this balancing practice.

4. 30-Minute Arm Balance Yoga Flow to Get Into Flying Splits

Flying Splits is a dramatic-looking pose, but Yoga with Kassandra helps students understand the sort of natural progression among poses that’s necessary to achieve the pose. At the outset, she makes it clear that practitioners will be prepping the core, strengthening the arms, and opening the hips to achieve this advanced (but fun!) peak pose. Even if you can’t quite find your balance the first time, with repetition, you just might.

Try this balancing practice.

5. 40-Minute Arm-Balancing Yoga Flow

If you’re seeking an all-of-the-above type of arm balance practice, this one’s for you. Charlie Follows leads an intermediate to advanced class that takes you through a series of arm-strengthening poses, some serious core engagement, and several arm balancing poses, including Crow, Flying Splits, and a funky Side Crow variation.

Try this balancing practice.