Yoga, Scoliosis, and the Nervous System: Choosing Peace over Numbness and Noise

In this guest blog, Deborah Wolk, acclaimed Yoga for Scoliosis specialist and Founder of Samamkaya Yoga Back Care & Scoliosis Collective in New York City, shares the conflicts and distractions the nervous system has to contend with due to scoliosis imbalances, alongside her discoveries and approaches to find a centre place where we can rest.

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Challenges and Choices

I am a yoga teacher who lives and works in New York City.  I love it here, and I love my sweet private yoga studio where I see individual students.  Here and there during the week, I’ll schedule some quiet time alone to practice yoga, study anatomy, write, and get work done. I’m in my studio as I write this.  It is south-facing on the 12th floor of an old building—the uppermost floor—and it looks out at other old buildings’ facades with their cool, colorful architectural details and the weathered wood water towers on the roofs.  Because it is so sunny up here the feeling of the studio is that of lightness and warmth.

But at the same time, the city is bringing in tons of real estate developers. They tore down a significant segment of my side of the block to build a huge skyscraper.  They’re just getting started and construction will most likely take years.  

So on one hand, I’m hearing bulldozers and drills and backhoes, and on the other I’m experiencing the quiet of my studio.  My choice, my challenge, is to find a way to allow peace to dominate over the noise and vibration of the construction project.  

I have techniques for this: I can focus on the ideas in my writing; I can focus on my breath; I can watch the light change in the room and allow myself to enjoy it; I can feel the warmth of the sun in the room and be grateful for it on such a cold, cold winter day.  So, the question is this: is the noise of construction a distraction?  Or am I distracting myself from that noise by changing my focus?  Does it matter?

This reminds me of all the conflicts and distractions that the nervous system deals with due to scoliosis imbalances. Information on scoliotic imbalances is readily available, but what is the effect on the nervous system?

Exteroception and Interoception

With scoliosis, one side of the curve is convex and the other side is concave.  Perhaps you have two curves, or three or four, but they all have this structure resulting from the rotation of the spine which creates a concave and convex side in the back body.  BKS Iyengar, the original teacher of the method of yoga I have studied the most, describes the convex side (the side that sticks out) as the ‘extrovert’ and the concave side (the side that ‘caves’ in) as the ‘introvert’.  Why is this?  

To answer, I would first ask the question: What is your experience?  When you sit down with your back against a hard chair or wall, does one side touch more?  When someone walks behind you do they bump into your convexity? Or can you ‘sense’ them more from that side, even without touch?  The nervous system’s phenomena of sensing things outside of yourself is called exteroception.  We receive information through our eyes, ears, smell and taste, and skin—especially the skin on our hands.  We also receive information from the muscle spindles in the joints, and the muscle stretch receptors in the belly (middle) of the muscle.  Both skin and muscles have the ability to not only sense external stimulus, but also to sense themselves.  When you bring your hands together into prayer position (anjali mudra) for instance, you feel the skin of the opposite hand and the skin of the same hand simultaneously.  With your muscles you feel the stretch and movement of the muscle—it has interoceptive feedback; the ability to feel internally. 

On the side of your scoliotic convexity (the side that sticks out) you feel more externally (what you feel around and outside of you, along with touch) and also more internally, than you do on the other side.  This is due in great part to the stretch of the skin and the stretch of the muscles over the bigger curve of the ribs on that side.  The skin may be so stretched over the bone (or just stretched enough) that the nerves there are constantly talking to you.  On the other side, the concave side, there is very little stretch, or no stretch.  As one student of mine put it: one side feels like jello, the other side feels like metal.  The concave side has less sensory information, and someone with scoliosis may not feel that area at all—even when it is touched or touches something. 

This imbalance in the two sides creates a feeling of being pulled in a certain direction, of liking and using  one side of the body more than the other, of feeling a distracting and, over time, attention-demanding achiness on that convex side.  The concave side may feel numb or it may be so contracted that it starts to cause terrible, sharp pain or spasm.  

To manage these feelings, people with scoliosis tend to move a lot to escape sensing their body at rest, or to exaggerate the overstretched sensation of the convex side by rounding into it. Or they may fall into inertia and hold the body tense, because they are afraid of these achy feelings becoming stronger.  In other words, many of us are unable to truly rest.

The Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous System

The sympathetic nervous system (part of the autonomic nervous system) takes care of the functions that we need to live.  It also stimulates the so-called ‘fight-or-flight’ response.  The sympathetic trunk is located on the right and left sides of the spinal cord so it has a bilateral orientation.  If your spine is in a laterally deviated and rotated position at all times this will affect the sympathetic trunk.  Maybe you overreact to situations that are not so dire, or you don’t react at all when you really need to?  These responses could be related to these spinal cord imbalances.  

Parasympathetic refers to aspects of the nervous system that are not necessary for absolute survival.  ‘Rest and digest’ is the most common way to describe this.  If one side of your back is always achy or just feels more—which is referred to as hypertonicity—can you really rest?  To move into parasympathetic, one must find balance in the two sides.

Yoga provides a number of techniques that can bring us to a place where we are more balanced, centered, and can rest.  The most common association is practicing restorative yoga vs. practicing more active poses like the standing postures or backbends.  But there are practice techniques that allow you to experience a parasympathetic response in a sympathetic action.  To illustrate this idea, there is a common maxim in yoga (I forget who coined it) to experience Tadasana and Savasana in every pose.  In tadasana (Mountain Pose) we actively and consciously experience balance between the two feet, lift from the two legs, and balance on the right and left sides of the spine. The pose generates energy.  In savasana (Corpse Pose/Final relaxation) we experience the same, but passively.  Savasana generates rest.  How can those of us with scoliosis experience the integration of balanced energy and deep rest in every pose?  

July Retreat for the Nervous System

In my upcoming retreat with TOPS on Salt Spring Island, in BC (‘Yoga, Scoliosis, and Nervous System: Sympathetic and Parasympathetic’, July 22-25, 2022), we will come together to explore, learn, and practice on a sunny, bright, quiet island in a rainforest, eating delicious locally-grown organic vegetarian food.  There will be very few distractions.

Salt Spring Island is the largest—and known as the most popular—of the many gulf islands on the west coast of Canada. With its spectacular coastal and pastoral scenery and its many lakes, the island offers  tranquility and lightness, in addition to myriad outdoor activities, the opportunity to explore dozens of artist studios and enjoy the food from artisanal farms and markets.  The Salt Spring Centre of Yoga, where we will be studying and living, is located in a beautiful rainforest and offers delicious vegetarian food from their own farm.

During the workshop, we’ll approach all of the poses with an eye towards combining rest with conscious alignment.  Some of the poses will be stimulating yet supported, like standing poses and poses offering gentle traction and extension. They will be supported by props and adjusted so you can experience stretching, opening, and stimulation in your normally atrophied concavities, and a softening of the skin and ‘muting’ of the stretch and hypertonicity of the convexities. As a result, you’ll experience a quiet parasympathetic response in sympathetic activity.  And of course we will also practice all the categories of poses known for quieting the nervous system: forward bends - without exaggerating the convexities, but still supported and soft; twists - which quiet the mind by drawing the right and left sides to the center, and the restorative poses which allow us deep repose.  We will also practice plenty of restorative asanas and pranayama (breathing exercises) woven into every sequence, but your last afternoon will be exclusively restorative and pranayama—and what could be better for your mind/body on your island retreat vacation?

Now that I’m finishing this article, the construction crew down the street has finished its work for the day.  My studio and the street are now totally quiet and I can hear my thoughts just a little bit more clearly.  This analogy is like my yoga practice: When I practice well and find balance between the convex and concave sides, I can sense myself and the world around me with much more clarity, patience, and tranquility.  

I hope to see you in July!!

While the 2022 retreat is behind us, join Deborah for her upcoming ‘FINDING CENTER: Exploring the Plumb Line of the Asymmetric Body’ retreat with TOPS in July 2024 at OHM Centre in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, B.C. More information here.