Improve Your Posture: A Foundation for Healing Scoliosis
When we think about scoliosis, we often focus on the visible curve of the spine. But what if the real solution lies not in fighting the curve, but in addressing the fundamental alignment issues that contribute to it?
While I don’t have scoliosis, I am mildly hypermobile, and my loose joints caught up to me when I began an advanced yoga practice.
It took a couple of years, but my knees began to complain, and then broke down, leading to three surgeries before I was asked the question that changed my life:
“What are you doing to prevent a fourth surgery?”
Everything changed after that. I learned about my poor posture and equally sad movement patterns, and set about changing them.
Soon after changing my own walking and standing habits, I began to help others change theirs, and I immediately received feedback about pain relief that, although I wasn’t expecting it, was not surprising.
From that, the CoreWalking Program was born. The CoreWalking Program focuses on walking, standing, and exercising correctly to rebuild our bodies for the better, forever.
The Foundation of Healthy Posture
My Core Walking Program teaches natural walking and posture techniques that help align your bones, free your joints, and bring welcome relief to overused muscles, emphasizing that true postural health begins with proper skeletal alignment rather than muscular tension.
My work focuses on the idea that many of our postural problems stem from a fundamental misunderstanding: we’ve been trying to hold ourselves up with muscles when we should be learning to stack our bones efficiently.
The key insight is deceptively simple – when the bones are properly aligned, the muscles can relax and do their intended job of creating movement rather than struggling to maintain position.
This principle becomes especially crucial for individuals dealing with scoliosis, where compensatory patterns often create a cascade of muscular tension throughout the body.
The Legs-Pelvis Connection
One of the most overlooked aspects of spinal health is the relationship between leg alignment and pelvic stability.
Getting the legs directly under the pelvis is essential to creating a stable foundation that allows the spine to find its natural curves without strain.
Many people, including but not limited to people with scoliosis, develop compensatory patterns where they shift their weight unevenly, creating a chain reaction up through the pelvis and into the spine.
When the legs are properly positioned beneath the pelvis, they allow the bones to hold us up (which is their job) effectively transferring weight up and down the skeleton, reducing the burden on the spinal muscles and allowing for better overall alignment.
This foundation principle extends beyond standing. How we walk, sit, and move throughout the day either reinforces healthy alignment or perpetuates dysfunction.
My approach emphasizes retraining these fundamental movement patterns to support long-term spinal health.
The Hypermobility-Scoliosis Connection
People who experience both scoliosis and hypermobility often find themselves faced with a unique combination of symptoms and difficulties
One interesting conundrum is that many young girls with generalized joint hypermobility choose to participate in dance because their bodies are suited for this activity, yet this flexibility can come with hidden costs.
The relationship between hypermobility and scoliosis is particularly important to understand.
Hyperextension of the knees in hypermobility is common (my story), and this knee-locking tendency creates a rigid support system that can force the spine to compensate with increased curvature.
When someone habitually locks their knees, they’re essentially turning their legs into rigid posts rather than dynamic, responsive supports.
For hypermobile individuals, the instinct might be to create stability through rigidity – locking joints to feel secure. However, this strategy backfires by creating tension patterns that travel up the kinetic chain.
Instead of locking the knees, the goal should be to find active, engaged support through proper muscular coordination while maintaining joint mobility.
Beyond Traditional Approaches
Traditional approaches to scoliosis often focus on bracing, surgery, or exercises designed to strengthen specific muscle groups. While these interventions clearly have their place, my programs focus on lasting change that comes from addressing underlying postural habits and movement patterns that contribute to spinal dysfunction.
This doesn’t mean abandoning medical care, but rather complementing it with a deeper understanding of how daily postural choices impact spinal health.
Simple changes in how we stand, walk, and perceive ourselves can have profound effects over time.
The beauty of this approach lies in its accessibility.
Rather than requiring complex equipment or extensive time commitments, changing the way you walk and stand becomes integrated into your daily life, and all of your activities.
Learning to stand by positioning the legs beneath the pelvis, unlocking the knees (which is not something everyone does but if you do…), allowing the bones to stack, and lengthening the spine upward, becomes a lifelong practice that helps us to age more successfully..
A Path Forward
For those dealing with scoliosis, especially when combined with hypermobility, the journey toward better posture and reduced pain doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
It begins with awareness – noticing current patterns and gradually introducing new ways of moving and being in the body.
I often say that I am teaching perception as much as posture and movement as most people aren’t truly aware of how they stand or walk.
It might seem crazy but we are not designed to sit around thinking about how we walk and stand. They are generally unconscious actions that we take for granted. Often at great peril.
This work requires patience, as deeply ingrained postural habits don’t change overnight.
However, the benefits extend far beyond spinal alignment. When the body moves as it’s designed to, with bones properly stacked and muscles free to perform their intended functions, the entire system works more efficiently.
Pain decreases, energy increases, and movement becomes more graceful and effortless.
Understanding posture as a dynamic, integrated system rather than a static position opens up new possibilities for healing and growth.
Through conscious attention to alignment and movement, we can begin to address scoliosis not just as a spinal condition, but as an opportunity to develop a more harmonious relationship with our bodies.
The path forward is built on small, consistent changes that honor the body’s natural design while working with, rather than against, our individual structural challenges.
In the next post I will cover exercises for scoliosis – what works and why.