Part I
The Schroth Method of scoliosis exercise has been around for over 80 years but only recently has neuroscience been able to scientifically explain the changes made to the spine by the exercise programs initially created by a German farm girl named Katherina Schroth. Nu-Schroth is a method of scoliosis treatment derived from the Schroth Method but also uses the latest research concepts in neuroplasticity to further expand the work to help make permanent the changes in the spine created by these specialized exercises. This article explains the science behind this tried and true scoliosis exercise program and it’s latest improvements.
Background
The Schroth Method was originally started by a German farm girl who had scoliosis named Katherina Schroth. In the 1920’s she was initially treated for her scoliosis with the traditional scoliosis treatment with a hard brace. After the completion of her treatment program there was no appreciable improvement in her scoliosis, which disappointed this teen girl, so much so that she sought out to find a way to improve her spine on her own.
She began her quest to improve her scoliosis by retreating to her barn equipped with nothing but 2 dressing mirrors and a lot of naïve determination. With this, she placed one mirror in front of her aimed at another mirror she placed behind her in order to see what was going on with her back. Once she could see what was happening she began experimenting with what positions made her back look better and which made her back look worse. She then began to systematically do exercises in the positions that seemed to improve her scoliosis.
Amazingly, it worked! She was able to reduce the curvatures in her spine with these self auto-corrections to her spine, something her doctors had told her simply wasn’t possible.
Soon word began to spread and people with scoliosis began to seek her out to see if she could help them too. Her success with in helping them eventually caught the attention of the German government, who helped her establish an institute for scoliosis treatment that patients from all over the country would come to live for 6 weeks to 3 months at a time to learn scoliosis exercises to help improve their curvatures, all subsidized by the German government.
The irony of her work was that the real genius behind her method stemmed from her complete lack of medical training. Because of she was a blank slate, willing to try anything. If it didn’t work, she would drop it, if it did she would add it to her program. When people began to ask her what she was doing to correct scoliosis she came up with the concepts of body blocks to explain her work.
The Body Block Concept starts with describing the torso of the body as a series of blocks that are normally evenly stacked one on top of the other. The shoulder block is stacked over the rib cage block which stacks on the lumbar spine and pelvis block.
She theorized that when scoliosis occurred the blocks would shift laterally away from each other and eventually as the scoliosis worsened they would also rotate away from each other. In fact, this seemed to be supported by what she saw with the bodies of her patients.