Writer Finds Relief for Scoliosis with Yoga

While back pain reigns as a worldwide epidemic (an estimated 80% of Americans alone will endure the condition during the course of their lifetime), those with scoliosis face a unique challenge. However, Independent Record writer Sara Groves has obtained a reprieve from her scoliosis-induced back pain—impressive, considering doctors once delivered her a verdict mandating back surgery.

Groves, diagnosed with scoliosis as a child, found back pain relief a couple years ago through yoga. Prior to practicing yoga, the writer suffered intense chronic pain: “My back used to hurt constantly — to the point that I took pain medication on an almost daily basis,” she explains in the Independent Record. Groves’s experience is not uncommon; those with scoliosis often endure crippling discomfort.

The lateral curve of a scoliosis-afflicted spine tugs vertebrae at unnatural angles, setting the stage for chronic pain. Furthermore, the body’s elaborate compensation act can overwork some muscle groups while leaving others weak, leading to muscular tension, increased asymmetry, and additional structural discomfort.

For Groves, physicians told her that her only escape from escalating pain was through surgery. However, the writer was determined to try a natural path to relief first.

Previously, during both of her pregnancies, Groves had practiced yoga. During her practice of prenatal yoga, the writer experienced an easing-up of her chronic back pain. With this experience in mind, she signed up for classes at her local yoga studio, Northern Lights Yoga.

By the end of her third class, Groves enjoyed freedom from pain for the first time in years. In a little over a month, she was practicing yoga daily. The writer now enjoys at least an hour of yoga each day and still attends her weekly yoga class at the local studio.

In addition freedom from back pain, Groves has also noticed relief from her once-crippling, recurring headaches. Furthermore, she now enjoys an increasing range of flexibility that awes the orthopedic surgeons who have guided her for years through her scoliosis.

Groves experience aligns with a number of studies revealing yoga’s holistic healing power for back pain, chronic aches, neck pain, headaches, and more. In addition to structural benefits, yoga has also been shown to promote heart health and aid in the treatment of cancer, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. Furthermore, yoga works not just on the level of the body, but on the mind as well, counteracting daily stresses, anxiety, and depression.

Yoga has provided Groves with freedom from pain and a new level of well being. “Practicing yoga has changed my life,” the writer, who has no doubt she’d have had to undergo surgery otherwise, says. Through regular yoga sessions, Groves has gone from a place where she couldn’t even turn her head to a place where she can now stand on her head.