Problems with Yoga

There are many general yoga exercises that look fantastic and could also tempt patients with scoliosis to try them out. Unfortunately, this should be rejected from what has been said above.

Patients usually also get pain through wrong or not at all well thought-out exercises because the WS joints are not physiologically adjusted and finally one bone part rubs against the other, which causes pain because the periosteum surrounding the bone is the most sensitive part. Often the incorrect loading still leads to a vertebral torsional sliding (up to more than one cm), which completely irritates the spine and the patient. Often only one operation can help. All this would not be necessary if therapist and patient knew why they should perform this exercise and avoid it.

Wrong Yoga Exercise For Scoliosis

Meanwhile, especially in America, many yoga experts have founded institutes where they also promote scoliosis treatments and even train teachings in them and above all practice the above exercises. "Yoga for Scoliosis Teacher Training Journal" Yoga teachers are trained here for scoliosis training in five days. Yoga comes from the Far East and was certainly not created for scoliosis. Genuine yoga exercises are wonderful for normally built bodies. Each variation is for scolioses of evil. Here, as everywhere, the saying applies: "Cobbler stick to your last".

The 'scoliosis treatment' has also crept into Pilates. There, too, people "think", if everyone does it, why don't we do it, too? Why do they have to be specific exercises to improve scoliosis?

Scoliosis is not just a laterally bent and twisted spine, as described in the medical dictionary. Because the ribs are attached to the vertebrae and move and rotate with them. Patients usually don't realize until much too late that their chest is deformed due to pain. Then they look for solutions. Unfortunately, general gymnastic exercises cannot help because the scoliotic no longer has symmetrically working muscles. The muscles then usually work in the wrong direction. As long as they are straightening up and smoothing exercises, such as Pilates, this is not to be contradicted.

But all wonderful to look at side bends or torso rotations like e.g. in yoga have to be omitted. I refer here to the "Yoga Journal, May 2006 = Yoga for scoliosis", in which exercises for (or against?) scoliosis are propagated.

This exercise is shown for a thoracic right scoliosis. It is intended to stretch and ventilate the sunken left side. However, it overlooks the fact that the right waist and lumbar muscles are compressed and narrowed by this bending to the right. The two lower free ribs (the 11th and 12th) push to the left and push the lumbar spine enormously to the left. Not only a lumbar arch to the left is created, but also a thick lumbar bulge because the left lumbar muscles are now used for work. They must prevent the body from falling over. That would be immediately recognizable if the lady would show her naked back and could also look at herself from behind. Remember: all trunk sections that deviate to the side from the midline also turn backwards. And all fuselage sections that narrow automatically turn forward.

These side-bending exercises, which are dangerous for scoliotics, aggravate an existing scoliosis very quickly if they are practiced regularly. Then "despite regular training, the patients unfortunately have to get a corset" and, in the worst case, have to undergo surgery. Katharina Schroth observed exactly what happened on the uncovered trunk. C. Lehnert-Schroth described this in detail in the teaching book "Three-dimensional scoliosis treatment" in the section "Problems of scoliosis treatment".

Here you can clearly see that the rib hump on the right side rotates enormously outwards and backwards and that the left side of the back moves forward, which was certainly not the aim of the exercise. With regular training of this twisting exercise, the angle degrees of the scoliosis are quickly increased and "the patient must be operated on as quickly as possible".

No matter how the patient turns and turns or bends, it will always be wrong to pursue the goal of improving only the thoracic WS bow. A scoliosis does not only consist of a single WS bow! A thoracic arch is quickly joined by a lumbar arch and a shoulder-neck arch at the top. All WS arches increase in size when exercises are practiced, as in the Yoga Journal, May 2006.

Katharina Schroth has recognized this. She has developed exercises that have a corrective effect on all WS-bows and torso twists. See teaching book "Three-dimensional scoliosis treatment". Who really wants to help the scoliotic to find his way out of his scoliosis misery must (unfortunately) think a bit more than just "How does this exercise look nice! The patient has to know what he has done wrong so far and how it has to be right.

The patient lies on the right side of the rib hump. Under the right thorax lies a rather large, thick pillow, which pushes the entire thorax to the left without paying specific attention to the lumbar spine curvature. Even if a smaller pillow were placed under the thoracic rib bulge, this would be problematic because these pressed ribs are turned backwards and part of the front side is pressed by the pillow pad. This means that the WS. chest twist increases and the pressed ribs get a kink due to the load.

Schroth places the patient on the thoracic concave side with a small cushion that is placed specifically under the lumbar lumbar bulge musculature, which was previously pulled forward manually.

The certified Schroth therapists know about the various scoliotic curvature patterns and how they can be treated reliably, and that the treatment of three-arched scoliosis, for example, differs considerably from that of four-arched scoliosis, which the above-mentioned "specialists" cannot even think about because they have not informed themselves properly. Otherwise they would not even demand such exercises from the patient.

The 'Schroth patients' are also taught that they must not be allowed to walk during their leisure time because each of these unfavourable postures imprints new engrams in the brain. Of course, this also applies to the correct postures in daily life, where favourable posture patterns should be anchored in the brain. From now on the patient may no longer think: "At least when eating or writing I want to have my peace before these exercises! Because these wrong postures work like an exercise. He must recognize: Every wrong exercise costs a certain amount of time. In order to eradicate the wrong engrams in the brain again, it does not only take the same time for correct exercises. It takes at least as much time to achieve the success every patient wants. If the patient has understood this, he would be really stupid not to heed it. After all, the new body feelings that are recognized as correct become flesh and blood. He no longer has to think about it. He has made it!