Back to Back

Scoliosis can cause back pain and many other health problems, including shallow breathing, sciatica, headaches, and even insomnia. Yoga not only brings relief but can also help you accept and embrace the body you're in.

By Elise Miller

For three years the aching rarely subsided. Dee McCandless, 56, of Austin, Texas, felt constant twinges in her lower back. They came as she washed dishes, while she drove her car, even when she tried to sleep at night. A yoga teacher and longtime dancer, Dee grew frustrated and desperate as she searched for an explanation. Then her own yoga teacher, Devon Dederich, took a closer look at her back and suggested that Dee might have scoliosis, or curvature of the spine.

Soon afterward, Dee sought out one of my Yoga for Scoliosis workshops and learned how to use yoga to work with the reverse-S curve of her spine. For the next month she took time off to devote herself to healing. In addition to her morning yoga practice, she began to hone moment-to-moment awareness of how she was holding herself throughout the day. "About 8 to 12 times a day I would make adjustments to the way I sit, stand, sweep the floor, brush my teeth, you name it." Her work paid off. "Within four weeks I was sleeping without pain, and the daily pain wasn't as dominant. About a month after that, the daily pain ended." Not only that, Dee believes that the curve in her lower back is lessening. These days if Dee's pain returns, she knows that yoga can bring her body back into balance.

Dee has been amazed by how quickly her body responded to yoga practice, but the changes she underwent don't surprise me. I experienced similarly dramatic shifts when I started doing Iyengar Yoga for my own scoliosis. During a routine physical when I was 15, my doctor noticed that my spine curved to the right in my upper back and to the left in my lower back. I was diagnosed with a 49-degree structural right thoracic curve with a compensating left lumbar curve. (See "The Four Common Curves".) The news came as a complete shock. I'd never felt any pain. (I later learned that most teenagers don't experience pain until they're older.) I went from being a normal kid who played basketball and tennis to having my doctor tell me he was going to surgically fuse my spine and insert a metal rod into it.

I was willing to do anything but have surgery. I sought a second opinion from a well-known orthopedist who specialized in scoliosis. Thankfully, he felt surgery was necessary only if the curvature continued to increase. He recommended swimming and mentioned that he had just heard that yoga could be helpful too. I took his advice and joined the swim team during college, but it wasn't until my 20s that I took up yoga.

By that time, the pain had set in. My right shoulder was higher than my left and rounding forward. A hump was beginning to appear on the right side of my back. I was motivated to make a change and started taking classes at the Integral Yoga Institute in Dallas, where I was living at the time. Yoga decreased my pain and helped me feel more aligned right away. The more yoga I did, the more balanced I felt. A few years later I met B.K.S. Iyengar, a master at working with therapeutic conditions, and I knew I'd found my calling as a yoga teacher.

Now, after more than 30 years of working with my own scoliosis, my curve has decreased significantly and is barely noticeable. I'm not necessarily the norm—I've devoted countless hours to my yoga practice every day for more than 30 years—but I've seen tremendously positive results in my students too. The key is to be consistent and patient.

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