Today was the day we met Deborah Turnbull, a Schroth trained physio who will visit you in your own home and develop a personalised exercise routine to suit your curve and your lifestyle.

Our day started just after 9am and we finished about 3.30pm.  It was a tough day, particularly for Chris who had put up with a day of being stretched, pulled, poked and prodded as he started to learn the different exercise techniques.

Debs started off by explaining to us what Scoliosis is, how it develops and how the right exercises can help to reduce and control the progression of the curve.  Her knowledge of the subject was amazing, and her absolute conviction that the Schroth Method works was inspiring.

This is Chris at the start of the day, his curve clearly visible.

We then started to learn the exercises.  I say ‘we’ because we were all involved.  Chris had to do the exercises, Steve wrote notes about them and I took photos to show how Chris was engaging different muscles and moving the position of his spine.  This was the most exciting part for me.  In some of the exercises his spine actually moved and sat straight in his back – only for the time he did the exercise, but it demonstrated to me very clearly that when he engages the right muscles in a controlled way his curve reduces.

You can see here how hard his muscles are working and how much straighter his spine looks compared to the image above.

Over time as he develops and strengthens the right muscles it will become harder and harder for his curve to progress…this is the result I was hoping for!

It wasn’t all smiles and excitement though.  The exercises are hard.  They are very precise and they are repetitive.  Not something that appeals to a 13 year old boy.  It was hard for Chris to spend so much time in just a pair of shorts while three adults constantly corrected his position, poking muscles in his back, moving his shoulders and generally demanding he try harder!

Debs also spent time looking at how Chris sat when playing on the PS3, watching TV and eating lunch.  She looked at how he stood, sat at the table at lunch and even what position he sleeps in in bed!  And then she told us it all had to change!  Everything he does whether sitting, standing or sleeping, he automatically falls into his ‘C’ shape curve.  So what we have to do is get him to do everything in the opposite diagonal.  This will help to re-train his muscles out of their curved position.

By about 2.30pm he’d had enough.  I suggested we stop and let him do something else while we adults reviewed what we’d learned during the day.  Debs left about 3.30pm and said she’d be back again tomorrow to see how much Chris had learned and remembered so that he can do the exercises for himself.

I felt incredibly excited by what we had learned but also terribly anxious as to whether we could get Chris to do another day like today…he’d really had enough of it all and I was worried that if we pushed him too hard he’d just say “No – I’m not doing it all again and you can’t make me!”.  I just hope we can get through tomorrow without him wanting to give up – it’s such a lot to expect of a 13 year old.