How to deal with scoliosis
Don’t try to haul yourself up like a sagging wall. The more you push and pull on a sagging wall, the more likely it is to collapse altogether. Instead, you need to find out how to shore it up.
Finding the material to shore up your scoliosis
If you’ve been reading my posts, you’ve already seen many examples of the Tube Principle showing you to work constructively to free up a tight, misshapen body.
Each time you want to coax your body back into shape, you need to find the place where it bends away (the convex side of the bend). In stoops, hunchbacks and swaybacks, the convex side is either in your front or your back. In scoliosis, it is on your left or your right side. That’s the only important practical difference between a scoliosis and those other problems. Let’s take a lean to the right as our example.
Correcting a lean to the right
If you lean to the right, there’s a part of your left side that sticks out more than the right side. In fact, your right side is hollow at that point. That’s the convex side of the bend. As always, you need to allow that convex area to soften and, as it softens, to spread around your body to the front and back.
You can’t do that while you’re struggling to haul yourself up straight, so first stop struggling to be straight.
As your left side spreads, your front and back can begin to ease slightly over to the right (because you have created a little bit of slack by allowing your left side to soften and spread). You’ll be reluctant to do that because your habitual tendency is to try and tighten that area and pull yourself up by main force. But you don’t need me to tell you that that really doesn’t get you very far. Now’s the time to do what does work: begin to soften and ease your bump around to the left.
What do you do with the bump as it begins to inch around rightwards?
The final step in putting the Tube Principle to work for you, is to draw together the slack that you’ve gathered from easing the front and back of your body-bend over to the right. As you do that, it will tend to push the top of your hollowed right side up. It will finally begin to shore you up as it should have been doing all along.
Do you see now what was happening before? The bit of you that should have been holding your right side up was dragged over to the left leaving you clinging on to the overhang, desperately trying to prevent yourself from toppling over.
The more you cling on to the overhang, the more you draw your support out from underneath yourself. The more you draw the support out from underneath yourself, the bigger and heavier the overhang you have to cling on to.
Is it any wonder that your efforts so far have never brought you any success?
Now that you know what you were doing wrong
Now that you know why your efforts couldn’t be successful, just get to busy practising what does work. Whatever you do, don’t let your past failures get you down. I’m not telling you you’ll get amazing results quickly. You might but it’s unlikely. You really need to work at this — and you’ll progress much better if you have a guide.
Don’t wait until you find a guide
Start now. As long as you don’t go back to trying haul yourself up, as long as you begin to put the support back under your sagging right side, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t start your journey back towards greater health and ease right away.
When you need a guide, call an Alexander Technique teacher. They’ll know how to help you. And don’t forget that, whether they realise it or not, your guide will be showing you that it’s not a wall you’re learning to shore up: it’s a tube.
Next: Avoiding “The Price of Pain”
Further Resources
Here are some ways I can help you further.
Wherever you live
- If you’re not already getting my free weekly article delivered to your inbox, then go here to get it.
- Repoise is our membership site for people who are serious about improving themselves (and getting out of pain as they do that). Find out more here: SmilingBackMethod.com/Repoise
When you join, you will:–
- have daily access to me. Together we will work out what’s going wrong for you and how to fix it
- learn from reading other Repoise members’ questions and following their progress as they work with me
- get access to all my articles, not just the ones that are published on my web-site
- I’m writing a book about my work. It will come out on the 1st July 2010. The book I was going to write this year (on the Tube Principle) was a bit too specialised so I changed my mind about writing that book. This new book will still include a chapter or two on the Tube Principle — and, of course, much more besides.
If you’re in Liverpool (or can get to Liverpool)
- I’m also running introductory workshops in Liverpool teaching you how to apply my work to improve your life. Go here for details of the next workshop: SmilingBackMethod.com/workshop
- There’s no substitute for individual lessons. Ring me on 0151 708 6172 to book your initial lesson. (Leave your number so I can get back to you).
If you’re further away and can’t get to Liverpool
- There’s still no substitute for individual lessons. Here’s where you can find a teacher near you in the UK or elsewhere
- Remember to still do the things I listed above for everyone. Even if you’re having lessons from someone else, you will find these a very great help. They’ll help you understand your lessons better and get a lot more out of them. All my own pupils read my weekly articles and several of them are active members of Repoise.
Next: Avoiding “The Price of Pain”
