Hello,
does somebody who has scoliosis or any other postural deviations can ever really practise pranayama techniques where back should be erect?
Thank you!
I have prone-supine scoliosis, and have practiced yoga for over 30 years.
I have taught yoga for 20 years. My scoliosis, muscle spasms and compensation cramping have been a major motivation to consistently practice yoga !
Pranayam is even more important with scoliosis yoga. Follow the ABC:
[B]A[/B]ccept the body “as is.”
[B]B[/B]reathe into the physical restrictions of the scoliosis.
[B]C[/B]reate an intention for each breath to expose, embrace and release emotions
With this intention, allow yourslelf a safe breath-place to gently touch and then breathe away negative emotions like anger, resentment, shame, fear, self-pity and physical pain that block the body’s natural tendency to heal itself.
If breath from lower belly to clavicle is not feasible, then breathe as fully as limitations allow. That is your definition and benchmark for a full breath.
Yoga is a practice of unifying mind, body and spirit. Breath or pranayam, is the primary vehicle for facilitating this unity. The perfection of the posture is secondary. That said, if it helps your quality of breath to sit in a supported posture, then do so. As long as the intention is set, you breathe into the restriction, and you are essentially loving/healing it with each breath.
With this practice, you have permission to experience few changes in your physical appearance. You will, however, create significant healing in your mind body spirit area. Mind body spirit healing and connection is what yoga is originally intended to be all about, so I hope that you will choose to celebrate your unique practice, as I do mine.
And you never know, your scoliosis may relax a bit. You will experience a more open heart as a result of your improved comfort level within yourself.
Svaroopa yoga is a style of yoga discipline that offers supported poses. It is a yummy treat to give yourself. You could look online to see if there are classes in svaroopa yoga being offered in your area.
Dear Janet,
truly thank you for your reply. I’m also very motivated to practise and live yoga for the life time. That are maybe a big words for a year of practising but that’s how I feel. I’m awared of my back “speciallities” only sinds practising asanas. Before I didn’t even realise. I’m following also a teachers program. I’m not so much focused on becoming a teacher because that’s too far away but I find study itself really interesting and inspiring. I’m actually not practising pranayama yet I feel it is too soon and I see no reason to be in a hurry. But I was wondering…
I’ve saved your letter to read it occasionally. It is a beautiful letter.
Warmly greetings,
Mirjana
Yogic breathing is pranayama.
Yogic posture is asana.
You are already practicing pranayama when you practice asana.
Some yoga disciplines practice sitting pranayama prior to practicing asana.
This tends to refine a yoga practice toward peace, sweetness and calm awareness. But anyway,
Here’s something to try on your own:
When you practice at home and in class, allow your attention to rest on how you breathe with each movement of your asana. Really imagine your breath “going into” the part of your body that is talking to you with each pose.
You could telephone interview yoga teachers in your area about how they bring yogic breathing into their classes. Or, you could ask your current teacher to detail breathing with postures.
I am glad to hear that your scoliosis is not so severe that you even noticed it prior to practicing yoga.
Your interest in pranayama means that your practice is growing beyond its old boundaries. Keep up the good work !
Nice line of sharing.
There are specific recommendations that i share with individuals for each person is unique in their process with curvature. I have found that curvatures in excess of up to low 40 degrees can be reversed by up to 50% by doing sadhana with my guidance for 2 years. The steps are 3 in nature
1 - assess for weak muscles and discover what range of motion is limited - then develop a program to make the weakness as strong as possible. The practices must be personalized to the individual. This takes about 6 months.
2 - once the musculature is make as strong as possible that strength is used to open the spinal curvatures and shift the spine. Along with this phase also comes much emotional release work - a process i developed called Yoga Bodywork. this takes another 6 months.
3 - stabilize the changes for next year. integrate the yoga more diligently into your lifestyle.
This is detailed on papers graduates have written for certification as Structural Yoga Therapists see [Yogatherapycenter.org : : Welcome](http://www.yogatherapycenter.org) then SYT Papers.
namaste mukunda
Dear Mukunda and Shanti,
I feel that my body and my muscles are stronger than a year ago. I’m practising by myself every morning plus two or three times with my teacher in a class. My scoliosis was never officially diagnosed so I don’t know how many degrees is my curvate. But every morning before I start practising poses I do a passive stretching of my back on the rol (trying to get stick with the ground and with the hands streched over the head). This “session” is becoming longer and longer. Vertebra per vertebra. And I feel clearly at the point where the false ribs are attached that the curve goes pretty much to my right. Thanks to Shanti I started to give a much bigger stress to relax with a deep breathing than streching. Than I gently massage with a slow waving the part that lies on the rol (helping myself also with the hands) and I visualize how the organs are relaxing and sink to the ground. My teacher explained me that also the joints between organs influence the whole structure. Just today I had very intense experience. The whole session lasted one and a half hour. Normally I continue with asanas but today I lied in savasana. I had a feeling that a lot of emotions and pain was released. I don’t know where I collected all that stuff:-) I started to read the book Eastern body Western mind. I’m curious how my shape of the spine influence the energy flow?
Hopefully my description is not to clumsy?
Friendly greetings
I noticed some of you are talking about embracing and releasing emotions.
Does it include negative ones too ?
Should I try embracing my negative emotions like anger, jealousy, and sadness ? Because I usually try to repress those.
Dear Hubert,
for me is a constant work! My daily pray is to be strong and brave to act with love. Sometimes I have to remember myself to treat others just the way I wanted to be treated and sometimes is just the other way around. To treat myself as good as others. To be as much as possible aware of my own patterns of my reactions. That I’m working on, to try to let them go. I give myself every day a chance to act the way it feels right. And I realised that feelings of quilt or being judgemental to others is just repressive and not progressive. But everybody has own subconscious baggage to deal with. But to deal with makes for me life beautiful and so alive!
Dear Hubert:
It is a bit counter-intuitive to think that to let an emotion go, one embraces it first, but that really does work. It is as though the act of “sitting with” the emotion, or “being in” the emotion is the ticket to moving beyond it.
I like to make an analogy when referring to our relationship with ourselves. An analogy brings the discussion into a more neutral area; so much of our inner self is unknown, thus a bit potentially scary, the first natural urge is to suppress that !
So, for the sake of this discussion, please consider a relationship with one’s emotional self is like a parent’s relationship with a small child.
When a small child cries because his finger got caught in a door, or, mom puts his favorite sippy cup in the dishwasher for cleaning(?!), a parent’s first reaction is to accept that small child’s emotion, whether appropriate (smooshed finger) or inappropriate (sippy cup getting cleaned).
Then the parent talks to the child about the emotion, if that is what is acceptable in this situation. The parent does not blast the child for crying,
or even expect the child to immediately be OK when next time, the sippy cup goes into the dishwasher. The child gets time to adjust, and so should we.
Our deeply-held emotions, the ones which we release in our bodies with yoga postures, are genuine, intense, and often child-like. They are not polite, like the emotions we express at a dinner party or business meeting. I like to think of myself as having an inner adult who will sit with my body and gently embrace, or accept the emotions I discover while doing asanas.
If I deny or suppress these emotions, well, what happens if a parent ignores his screaming toddler? Does the toddler apologize and promise to behave more appropriately in the future? Of course not ! Our emotions, when ignored, become more strong and strident and we have to use more emotional energy to hold them in. This leaves us feeling drained a lot of the time in a vague way and unable to make honest decisions based on how we feel. Our muscles may become more cramped and ropy from holding in emotions we don’t wish to acknowledge.
For general emotions, I like to imagine myself breathing in, loosening emotions that are “stuck” inside my body, like fall leaves stuck with damp to the curb. As I breathe out I imagine my out-breath blowing those stuck emotions away from my body the way a leaf-blower scatters leaves out of the gutter.
For specific, intense emotions, I treat my emotional self like a small child, comforting it, accepting its emotion, embracing it. You would be surprised how effective that is in defusing an emotion, all by itself ! Then, I allow that
emotion to either return or dissolve. If it returns, I breathe into the emotion, accept it again, and fully embrace it. I keep doing that until the emotion dissolves.
Namaste,
Thank you. Can I try this at home ? 
I encourage you to do this in a space in which you feel safe. If you have
a safe, quiet, private space in your home, then, yes, do it there.
I like to create and dedicate a sacred space for my emotional healing practice. Depending on the session, I will use incense (like Sandalwood, Hindu tradition) or smudge (Native American tradition, sage and/or sweetgrass), candles; maybe some quiet, gentle music, or nature sounds like ocean waves or rain. I have a couple of crystals which magnify energy (cleanse them with breath or with water after sessions); perhaps a photograph of someone you love and trust deeply.
None of this is necessary, however. With your intention to create a healing space, you create it ! Ask for loving, nurturing energy to surround you as you open to yourself. Ask for guidance and protection about the emotions you encounter. Remember to keep breathing, let your breath move the emotion through you.
Blessings,
Dear Mukunda,
I also have a 20-30 degree curvature. Doctors an Physiotherapists here in Germany say that there do not exist any possibilities / therapies to reverse the curvature.
I’m very happy to read that it is possible do decrease the curvature by doing yoga excercise specially adapted to the invidual. I would really like enjoy your guidance, but I’m in Germany…
The problem is that my teacher here does not know SYT.
How can I find out about SYT yoga teachers in Germany?
Namaste
Rainer
Janet, you’re an inspiration. I posted a thread about my scoliosis (http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/q-yoga-practice-yoga-therapy/1639-scoliosis-help.html) and so far have received very little feedback. Would you mind taking a look at that link and adding anything you have to offer? Thanks in advance!
-Cherry