Clinical Somatics for Scoliosis
In Clinical Somatics for Scoliosis, you’ll learn how to use Clinical Somatics exercises to release the chronic muscular contraction that is pulling your spine out of alignment. The scoliosis exercises also relieve muscle and joint pain, prevent joint degeneration, and improve balance, body awareness, and muscular control. By the end of the course you’ll be self-sufficient, able to continue to improve your posture and relieve your own pain by doing the exercises you feel that you need each day.
Clinical Somatics for Scoliosis Curriculum
Clinical Somatics exercises are slow, gentle, and therapeutic. The exercises are appropriate for all ages and fitness levels. In the three-month Clinical Somatics for Scoliosis course, you’ll learn Thomas Hanna’s Clinical Somatics exercises one by one though video demonstrations, audio classes, and written explanations. The scoliosis exercises release the muscular contraction that is pulling your spine out of alignment, relieve chronic muscle and joint pain, prevent joint degeneration, and improve proprioception (how you sense your body in space).
You’ll spend two days focusing on each exercise before moving on to the next one. This focused time gives you the opportunity to become completely comfortable with the exercises and the effects that each one has on your body. During the course, you will do audio classes (25-30 minutes in length) that combine the exercises into sequences. The pace of the course is set, so you cannot skip ahead, but you can feel free to move more slowly through the course if you want to.
Throughout the course, you’ll receive a daily email letting you know that there is a new exercise to learn, a new class to use, or suggesting what to practice that day. Ultimately, you will have learned the exercises well enough that you are able to assess yourself and do what you need on a daily basis to continue to improve your posture and relieve your pain.
In this three-month online course, you’ll learn how to:
- Use Thomas Hanna’s technique of pandiculation to release the chronic muscular contraction that is pulling your spine out of alignment
- Alleviate back pain, disc problems, joint pain, sciatica, uneven leg length, and more
- Learn proprioceptive exercises that improve posture and give you an accurate sense of how you’re sitting and standing
- Improve mobility, balance, body awareness, and muscular control
Prevent recurring injuries and joint degeneration
Develop a daily practice that addresses your individual needs
Understanding Idiopathic Scoliosis from a Functional Perspective
Approximately 80% of scoliosis cases are classified as idiopathic, which means that the cause of the spinal curvature is unknown. Many cases of idiopathic scoliosis are caused by chronic muscular contraction pulling the spine out of alignment. If you have scoliosis, you can touch your back and waist and feel how tight the muscles are. Chronic, involuntary contraction of the muscles along the spine can result from injury, chronic pain, emotional stress, repetitive activities, and even handedness.
When we have a protective reaction to an injury, or if we repeat certain postures or movements over and over, our nervous system learns to keep certain muscles tight, and we lose the ability to voluntarily relax them. This is one of the negative effects of developing muscle memory. While muscle memory allows us to perform daily tasks efficiently and improves athletic performance, it also allows us to sink deeper and deeper into dysfunctional muscular patterns and do damage to the physical structure of our bodies.
A spinal curve caused by tight muscles pulling the spine out of alignment is a functional issue; it is caused by the way the nervous system is functioning. Using a brace or metal rods to force the spine into alignment has little to no effect on the messages that the nervous system is sending to the muscles to contract.
The most effective treatment for most idiopathic scoliosis patients is active, conscious movement that gently releases the chronic muscular contraction in the torso. A lasting release of chronic muscular contraction can only be achieved through active, conscious movement that engages the nervous system in a learning process.
People who use Clinical Somatics exercises to release the chronic muscular contraction that is causing their curvature typically experience reduction or elimination of their pain and gradual straightening of their spine. For most people, idiopathic scoliosis does not have to be a life sentence. The earlier the condition can be addressed with neuromuscular education, the better. Years of pain, physical degeneration, and psychological suffering can be prevented with early, constructive intervention.
Get started today!
Learn gentle, highly effective Clinical Somatics exercises in the comfort of your home. Relieve your scoliosis, muscle tension and pain in just 15-30 minutes per day!