Related Sections: How Exercise Helped My Scoliosis Scoliosis Exercises - Part I - Yoga and the Egoscue Method My complete index of all the scoliosis related pages. Recommended Book: Back Care Basics : A Doctor's Gentle Program for Back and Neck Pain Relief - has a chapter specifically on yoga for scoliosis

Question: There are a number of yoga teachers with scoliosis themselves who hold classes and seminars for students with spinal curvature, but you don't seem to recommend any of them on your site. Why not? How can I find a good yoga teacher to help me?

Answer: I don't recommend any of the yoga teachers who claim to specialize in spinal curvature because I've personally never been to any of them. Plus, I would be skeptical about going to any yoga teacher to help me correct my curve if that person still had a significant spinal curvature of her own. If she really knew the right exercises to help with curves, one would think she would have been able to help herself. I've noticed just from pictures on the Internet that at least one yoga teacher who gets marketed as an expert for scoliosis has poor posture and unbalanced muscles. I don't see how anyone who can't improve her own condition is in a position to help others. If they really knew how to correct scoliosis, they'd have corrected their own problems first.

Many of the books and articles I've read on yoga for scoliosis emphasize standing postures, when for me those types of postures generally made me worse. My problems stemmed from tight leg muscles pulling on my upper body and standing postures just strengthen leg muscles.

From my experience in classes and reading books, the majority of yoga teachers just know how to do poses in general and don't really know how to tailor specific poses for specific health conditions that can actually be corrected with yoga therapy. This includes many of the experts and master teachers. It looks to me like many of of the Indian yoga "masters" in reality just have hypermobile joints that extend beyond a normal range, possibly due to nutritional deficiencies brought on by vegetarian diets advocated by traditional yoga teachings. It probably isn't a good idea for most people to do these extreme poses these masters can do, and I suspect in fact many of these extreme poses actually do more harm than good by weakening joints.

Before spending a lot of money on a seminar or classes with a yoga teacher claiming to be an expert when he or she himself has poor posture, taut and unbalanced muscles and/or significant scoliosis, you may want to ask yourself if you would go to a dentist with bad teeth, a mechanic who wasn't able to fix his own car or an accountant who couldn't do his own taxes?

There is a person in the town where I live that is considered a yoga expert and even does teacher training. Yet I know from taking a class with her and watching her that she has orthopedic problems that are exacerbated by the exercises she does in her classes. She has headaches and TMJ, yet she spends a lot of her time doing exercises that tighten instead of relax and balance her misaligned neck and shoulder muscles.

In searching for people to help with my spinal curve and other alignment problems, I found the best success with referrals. The physical therapist who ended up helping me had helped a neighbor of mine and the doctor who helped me the most had been referred to me by a fibromyalgia support group.

So when looking for a good yoga teacher, ask friends for referrals or just start taking classes and just shop around on your own. Don't just assume that because someone is certified in a certain yoga method, good at marketing themselves as an expert, has had or even does teacher training, that they will necessarily be able to help you. I think there is definitely an art to understanding proper body alignment and muscle balance through yoga.

Just as everyone who has been to art school is not a great artist, not everyone who has a yoga teacher certification or markets themselves as an expert with specific expertise is necessarily going to be a able to help you. Some of the worst conventional and natural health care practitioners I saw when I was on my quest to get better were people who did well at marketing themselves as "experts" in a specific malady or body part. The people that helped me the most were ones were generally didn't have to market and promote themselves a lot because they had enough business just from referrals.

Also see my main section on scoliosis and my complete index of all the related pages.

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