Christa Lehnert-Schroth Explains Which Poses to Avoid:
"Many problems that my mother Katharina Schroth and I saw in some of our patients stemmed from well-meaning but counterproductive therapeutic exercise programs that used to be practiced in Germany. In some cases our patients had performed bad exercises for years before coming to our clinic, and their condition was far worse, and more difficult and time-consuming to correct, than if they had done no exercises at all.
Therefore I note with great concern that many of these exercises are now very popular in yoga, and some are even recommended by yoga teachers as scoliosis exercises. While they are often very positive for normal bodies, we found the exercises on this page -- or similar ones -- to be harmful to our scoliosis patients.
Yoga was not conceived for scoliosis, as our exercises were. Each Schroth scoliosis exercise was created empirically in our clinic to address a specific problem that our patients had. The complex musculoskeletal configuration of every case of scoliosis made it necessary to consider and observe carefully all the potential ramifications of each exercise, so that each would both achieve its intended effect and create no unwanted secondary problems.
It is very important not simply to do a series of exercises, but to accomplish a specific, rehabilitative goal with each exercise.
Section C.VIII.1 of my book is devoted to pointing out exercises that must be avoided by persons with scoliosis. Some of these exercises are outlined here.