Honestly? Progress Report on the Side Plank Pose Challenge

by Nina

Truth Rescued by Time, Witnessed by history by Francisco Goya

How’s the Side Plank Pose for Scoliosis Challenge working for you? I’m still practicing the pose as promised, but to be honest the experiment is not turning out the way I’d hoped.

I started out practicing the pose every single day, two times on my convex side and one time on my concave side. After several days, I started feeling wrist and hand pain in the pose. So I decided to start practicing the low version of the pose on my forearm on alternate days, just to give my hands and wrists a break. I also started doing wrist flossing on the days when I practiced the full version of the pose as a prevention strategy to try to ward off wrist problems. 

But even with all these modifications, I started feeling like this pose wasn’t agreeing with my body. I’d been having some lower back pain and stiffness before I started practicing Side Plank Pose every day, and it felt to me like the pose wasn’t helping that in any way. In fact, I began to develop a kind of dread about doing the pose. In my home practice, I really try to listen to my body and not just power through things because they are supposedly good for me. So finally I took a few days off from practicing the pose.

The next time I returned to practicing the pose, it felt a lot better to me. And I made a decision that I would no longer practice it six or seven days a week. Because I knew that practicing a strength building pose three or four times a week is often enough to build strength, I decided to go for a more modest strategy. Maybe this way of practicing would take me longer to improve my curve (if that happens—I learned that the type of low lumbar scoliosis I have is very rare) but it felt a lot safer. And I have continued as well to do my wrist flossing after doing Side Plank Pose. I’m happy to say that while I still don’t know what’s happening with my curve (I will be checked soon), my body is feeling better and my dread of doing the pose is over.

When I told Baxter about the modifications I was making, he wrote me the following:

“I agree that doing the same pose every day is going to produce some problems for students in the wrist, elbow or shoulder on the weight bearing side, although Loren denies that was a problem in their study.”

So how’s it going for you? Please let me know in the comments. Are you still practicing the pose? How does it feel to you? And how does your back feel? Did you decide to change anything about how and when you are practicing the pose? If you want to add wrist flossing to your practice as a preventative measure, we have a post on it Featured Sequence: Wrist Flossing.
 
For those of you who are not taking the challenge, do you follow your intuition in your home practice?

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