Replacement exercises for HS PE 2&3?

Hello,

I have been doing HS PE2 for a week but when getting up from the headstand I hear/feel some crunching on the left side of my head as the pressure is lifted. I believe this is due to heavy surgery that happened on my ear which has caused the left of my skull to be weakened (without going into too much detail).

I don't really think I should be doing this exercise because of this. Is there any substitute I can use instead of these 2? Or is it possible for me to skip ahead?

Thanks.

Skull surgery sounds like a good reason to not do headstands!

I would recommend seeing if there is a way you can put weight on your shoulders instead of your head. Maybe use yoga blocks or something similar. 

In the worst case, it is *possible* to complete H1 without mastering PE2-3, but they're there for a reason - they help you learn to be comfortable with being upside down and get familiar with correcting your balance in that pose. They also strengthen the neck, which is useful in case you later fall out of a handstand. 

Would it be possible to use an aerial yoga belt or even a back strap suspended from a bar to keep pressure off the head and still work on proper alignment? 

I think Joshua was referring to something like the following for using shoulders and still feeling the balance:

Be careful! I did a vertabrae compression fracture between t4/t5 about 18 months ago and was told not to do headstands for 12 months.

I have been doing them for the past 4 months and have had no issues but I did build up slowly! 

Mark Schoenhard said:

Would it be possible to use an aerial yoga belt or even a back strap suspended from a bar to keep pressure off the head and still work on proper alignment? 

No, that fundamentally changes the pose in a way that putting the the shoulders on a support (as for example in the video above) does not.