Many years ago when I was an early yoga teacher, not yet a therapist, one of my colleagues mentioned that back bending made her unhappy. This woman had scoliosis. I was immediately curious, and my untrained mind was trying to figure out the source, but I didn’t know anything about scoliosis to come up with any answers.
Now that I have been studying and researching this for a decade or so, I have a clue as to what may have been going on.
As I have said before in some of my other posts, scoliosis is not just a side to side curve, but there is also a rotational component. Usually the rotation is going in the direction of the curve. So, if you have, say, a right sided upper back curve, then the rotation is probably continuing to the right, meaning behind you.
Now, the structure of the upper back has more of a forward bending quality to it (kyphosis), as opposed to the low back, which is naturally already in a slight back bend (lordosis). For this reason, you might see more of a prominence in the upper back that can sometimes be confused with bad posture (it’s not!).
So, it’s already challenging to bend the upper spine backwards, then add the rotational component to the mix and you’ve increased your challenge many fold.
Is this making sense?
Now, what can we do about it?
First off, be nice to yourself. If you have scoliosis and a pose like Full Wheel—which is challenging for most everyone, including me—feels impossible to you, then stick with a Bridge. This pose will help strengthen the posterior muscles of the back, which can help with the rotation, as well as with the weaker muscles close to the spine (especially if you are doing a one legged bridge, which is in my curve specific sequences). Win Win.
If you are doing something like a cobra pose and you are getting some discomfort in the low back, try putting a bolster underneath the low belly to make that bend in the low back a little less extreme. You might actually enjoy the stretch without the discomfort.
As usual, I want to hear from you. Do you have discomfort when back bending? Do any of these work arounds give you some relief?
