What Is Yoga for Scoliosis?

Yoga for scoliosis is a gentle form of yoga that strengthens and stretches the muscles of the back and spine to help improve posture, reduce pain, and improve mobility.  

Scoliosis is both a physical and mental challenge; yoga is both a physical and mental practice. By practicing yoga postures (asanas) and increasing awareness of your breath, you can begin to redevelop some body symmetry, which can reduce pain, increase self-awareness, and empower you to accept your true present self.

By taking on a yoga for scoliosis practice you are investing in yourself and taking an active role in your healing journey—both mentally and physically.

Elise Browning Miller says it best:
“Yoga for Scoliosis is a practice that is empowering both physically and mentally for those who live every day with the effects of spinal curvature. By gaining experience through a daily practice, skills in self-reflection, and awareness of patterns that have developed from imbalances, each person becomes his or her own healer” (Yoga for Scoliosis: A Path for Students and Teachers).

Browning Miller sets out six key components of yoga for scoliosis in her book:

1.      Developing breath awareness

2.      Lengthening the spine

3.      Strengthening

4.      De-rotating

5.      Realigning the posture

6.      Defying gravity and centering the spine

Though all of these components are important, and her book is THE RESOURCE, for a yoga for scoliosis practice, I will boil down the types of yoga postures you will be doing.

The main premise is to lengthen your concave side (a right thoracic curve student’s concave side is the left) and strengthen the convex side (a right thoracic curve student’s convex side is the left).

However, there is much more to the practice than that. The issue comes when you have multiple or compensating curves and knowing whether lengthening or strengthening is needed where.

Here is an example.

You may visualize your concave side as collapsed and, in order to create space, you stretch that side. But because it is collapsed, it is also weak. And as you try to create space on the left side (using the right thoracic curve example) you feel a lot of tightness and discomfort along the right side of the spine. Why?

Though the convex side is stretched and longer, its muscles are likely tighter, and you will feel more sensation on that side.  

And what does all of this mean?

I may have lost you in the previous paragraphs. And that is part of the problem (or point?). No two bodies are alike. The reason why yoga for scoliosis works is because yoga is the modality to look into YOURSELF and YOUR BODY. You can use a teacher as a guide—and I do recommend that and a good physician—but the only way you can truly understand your scoliotic curves and bodily imbalances is through yoga.

So, what is yoga for scoliosis?

Learning self-awareness through yoga poses to learn to live with, and perhaps reduce, your curves.