LOOKING BACK TO FACE MY SCOLIOSIS BY VICKY GROGG
Elise Browning Miller uses a strap to adjust author Vicky Grogg in Ardha Uttanasana.
I
never thought of my scoliosis as that bad. Yes, I wore a brace to straighten my spine throughout most of high school, but it was a space-age plastic design that extended from below my chest to just above my hips, the type that I could hide under my clothing. I became skilled at selecting artful and loose clothes—something easy to do in the mid1980s—to conceal the fact that I was wearing a bulky contraption 23 hours a day.
After three years of wearing the brace, I was finally free of it. Like many people with scoliosis, I thought I was done or “fixed,” and I put the whole experience behind me. Nearly 25 years later, I found myself experiencing lower back pain on my left side. It wasn’t debilitating, but it was annoying and present all day. After trying unsuccessfully to find relief in yoga and looking for answers in books that explained back pain as an emotional trigger, I went to a primary care physician who was familiar with yoga. During my office visit, the doctor immediately saw my spinal curves and reminded me that they were significant and likely Yoga Samachar Spring / Summer 2017
contributing to my pain. He determined that X-rays and other diagnostic testing wasn’t needed. Instead, he summed up by saying, “Because of your scoliosis, you would be in a great deal of pain if it weren’t for your regular yoga practice.” At this time, I had been practicing Iyengar Yoga for 15 years. The doctor prescribed physical therapy to strengthen my core muscles and told me to keep practicing yoga but to stay away from deep back bends until my back felt better. The physical therapy exercises were intended to strengthen my back and core muscles, and I found some of the movements similar to Setu Bandha Sarvangasana and Salabhasana. They helped me a little bit but not enough to keep paying for the physical 13
