I was taking a walk down memory lane looking at some old photographs. It’s funny how people take so many pictures now and back in the day that just wasn’t the case or maybe it was just my parents that wasn’t the case with I don’t know. I found a photo of myself wearing a beautiful dress my mother had made for me to attend the prom in. There was one picture 1!

As I was looking at the picture I noticed my posture and then found some other photos and I recognize that I used to have scoliosis.  Scoliosis sounds threatening and upsetting and people tend to think it’s this thing that they can’t do anything about. Well, it turns out that’s just not true in all cases. 

I first realized I had scoliosis when I went to a chiropractor for back pain in my late teens. When I was in my early twenties I started doing callanetics and the firm exercise videos. The Firm used weight training combined with aerobics to warm up the body shape the body and achieve strength. I started out with light weights to get my body used to using weights. Working up to a higher weight on a gradual basis  turned out to be helpful for tendons as well so I gently prodded my body into getting stronger.

As I grew stronger, I increased my weights over time. For several years there were new releases of the Firm Videos and DVD. The company stayed consistent on the message, still pointing out that muscle confusion was the way to achieve the best results. On the alternative days when I wasn’t doing a firm I did callanetics which was sort of similar to Pilates and also work the intrinsic muscles close to the bone that affected posture.

When I return to the chiropractor to get an adjustment after I had been injured in a car accident, he took some more X-rays. When he showed me the x-rays he was astonished that the previous x-rays that had shown a pretty bad S curve in my spine, yet in the most recent batch of X-rays, the curve was now gone. He was curious what I had been doing to achieve that. I explained that I had been weight training and I was working on using heavier weights with powerlifting moves and that I also did a lot of stretching.

I know that if I hadn’t done that I would sure be feeling my spine by now. If I had let my spine continue in the state it was it would have continued to shorten and pull on the disc in my spine and surely I would have been a candidate for surgery by now. It’s hard to measure preventive modalities, but as the saying goes a picture’s worth a thousand words.

Val Boonstra

Inclusive exercise for those suffering with poor health