This is Part 43 of a serial blog originally titled 'Martha Carter's Healing Journey'. Curious about the earlier posts? To start from the beginning, read Part 1.

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In 2007, I was in my 14th year of an ongoing contract where I had the amazing opportunity to tour with a dance company (Montréal’s Cie Marie Chouinard) as their Artistic Director as well as their rehearsal director and trainer. I felt so privileged observing and working with those incredible dancers. Their bodies were finely-tuned instruments showcasing the innate intelligence of the human form. Their flexible spines made me shiver with envy due to their ability to articulate the tiniest of moves, isolating vertebral connections, creating fluidity in every joint of the body. Watching them allowed me to escape the frustrations of my own very stiff, very fused spine. I could only imagine moving like that, and watching them daily allowed me to sense it viscerally. I learned many things working with them, not the least of which is the importance of paying attention to everything in your body all the time. After all, to stay in optimal shape, the dancers were constantly managing their wellness; working with trainers, and all kinds of massage therapists, plus staying focused on their own daily practice while paying close attention to their diet and sleep patterns. Just like a racehorse - aka professional dancer - it takes a small village to support dancers’ personal discipline and bodywork needs in order to keep them in tip-top shape and ready to perform.

That knowledge helped me a lot when I decided to train for a dance performance after several years of not dancing.

Martha Carter and Elise Browning Miller, back in the day!

It had been a long time that I had been thinking about creating some kind of artwork that recounted my journey as a dancer with a twisted and fused spine, but I just didn’t know where to start, plus I was somewhat shy about sharing my ideas. Thankfully, one day on a tour bus somewhere in Germany, I was chatting with one of the lovely dancers about my thoughts when she simply said, you should make a dance about exactly that. Before I knew it, I was googling ’scoliosis’, realizing I had never really researched the subject much before. Aside from my own experience, I had only met a few other people with the condition, and I had never looked for any bodywork professionals who specialized in working with it.

Elise and Zoreh dancing at the first Yoga for Scoliosis retreat in Mexico in 2008.

Thanks to Google, my search led me to the one and only Elise Browning Miller, a senior Iyengar Yoga teacher with severe scoliosis who used her own healing process to develop a program called ‘Yoga for Scoliosis’. In 2008, she was holding a week long Yoga for Scoliosis retreat in Mexico and I signed up. It was the first time I had done anything like that and, except for a few previous attempts at yoga where I always hurt myself, I had never done yoga before (after my surgery I was told to never do yoga, but then again, I wasn’t supposed to dance either, so why not?).

Long story short, that yoga retreat in Mexico was completely life changing! (side note, I have attended several retreats there and elsewhere with Elise over the years and, since 2015, I started holding my own annual retreats in Mexico, thanks to another wonderful teacher and host Zoreh Afsarzadeh, a good friend of Elise and director of Yoga del Pacifico). Click here to visit my Mexico retreat webpage or here to join the waitlist!

Photo of Martha Carter by Stephen Lemay. From her performance TWiSTED in 2010.

The knowledge, the insights, the physical shifts, the friendships, the new and ongoing connections, and especially the warmth of Elise, were extremely impactful to me in every aspect of my life. The education around scoliosis and how to manage it was a major force in helping me to get in shape enough to perform again as well as to create my dance piece ‘TWiSTED' which premiered at the Dance Centre in Vancouver in April 2009. It went on to be presented at the Paralympic Arts Festival in Vancouver in 2010, the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, and the Corps-Atypik Dance Festival in Montreal in 2011. In 2012, I had the opportunity to present ‘TWiSTED’ in New York City as a studio showing where Elise was teaching one of her famous Yoga for Scoliosis workshops, providing me with a most dedicated ‘twisty’ audience, including Elise!

I didn't know it at the time, but that whole sequence of events marked a huge shift in my life.

During that time, I founded the Twisted Outreach Project for Back Care & Scoliosis (TOPS) and, in 2013, Elise travelled to B.C. where we hosted three different workshops over two weeks - at the Dance Centre, at Louie Ettling’s Yoga Space - both in Vancouver - and at Ganges Yoga on Salt Spring Island, where she shared her teachings with dozens of twisty students. I remember counting over 75 people who signed up for Elise’s classes, so we just kept adding more! I was new to hosting at the time, so her visit opened my eyes to the need for Yoga for Scoliosis specialists in Canada, while at the same time bringing needed attention to TOPS, helping to launch our programs. Over the next decade, I gradually phased out of my career in dance to instead channel my knowledge of movement to join Elise and her growing roster of Yoga for Scoliosis teachers around the world in her mission to help others with scoliosis.

Elise became my friend and mentor, and I was honoured when she invited me to travel with her to India to experience therapeutic yoga classes at the Iyengar Institute in Pune. She inspired me every morning with her handstand in the hotel room, insisting it was better than coffee. She was generous in helping me to navigate the very overwhelming cultural experience in every way - crowds, garbage, speeding tuk tuks dodging cows and camels in the streets, plus incredible teachers, mind-blowing food, wonderful shopping, and more. After Pune, I joined her at a healing centre near Auroville in southeastern India for a yoga retreat, which she co-taught with Zoreh from Yoga del Pacifico, who was the host of that original retreat I attended in Mexico! In Auroville, I was ‘roomies’ with another wonderful body work specialist Marcie Spahi who also has a yoga studio in Mexico where I now hold my retreats. That trip to India was an extension of all the life altering changes that seem to happen when I am around Elise!

In fact, ever since I met her, the connections that have guided me on my scoliosis journey have been—and continue to be—rich and fulfilling.

Finally, after several years of pandemic delays, this year we were thrilled to welcome Elise back to B.C. at the end of May. This time, she came straight to Vancouver Island where she held one 10 hour workshop and one weekend retreat... and they were fantastic!

In the yurt studio at OHM Centre, June 2024.

Around the table after a healing retreat day, June 2024.

The first one was in Victoria, organized by one of Elise’s Yoga for Scoliosis teacher trainers (and TOPS team member) Kathryn Kusyszyn who gathered over 20 students, serving the scoliotic community of the South Island (we are everywhere!).

The second workshop was a four day, three night ‘weekend’ retreat held at the beautiful (if I do so say myself) OHM Centre in Comox Valley, where a smaller group gathered for a weekend of classes, catered meals, forest bathing, beach walks, hot tubs, and most essentially - community! Thinking back to my very first retreat with Elise on the beach in Mexico, I wondered how everyone else in the class was feeling; I wondered if they had ever attended a scoliosis retreat before. I wondered if they had ever met other people with scoliosis, or whether they had ever thought about their convexity or concavity, or whether they just felt like crying thanks to the overpowering emotion of finally finding some help?

Those are some of the emotions and reactions that I went through during my first retreats with Elise. The work is so powerful and it goes so deep that it literally challenges your alignment with your spine (and yourself) from the inside out.

For me personally, this recent retreat at OHM was one of the best experiences I have had in regards to my own progress physically with Yoga for Scoliosis. Perhaps because it was a small group in a very familiar setting, or perhaps because the material itself is finally familiar to my body? Definitely thanks to Elise’s warmth, I was able to relax into it all.

Getting creative with props in the yurt studio, June 2024.

As the weekend proceeded, Elise got very creative working in the round yurt (different than a typical rectangular studio) - tying yoga belts to the poles for traction and with other props in the circular space. Unlike with bigger groups, she had extra time to help each person with their individual curve patterns, showing them the optimal way of working with each pose. I was once again reminded of her deep knowledge and masterful skill at explaining and demonstrating the concepts in her gentle and caring way. Her ability to engage with every personality and each body to try new things and commit to unfamiliar sensations in the name of back care is a big part of her magic.

Thank you, Elise!!

And on a side note, I was reminded once again of the wonderful synergy between Yoga and Somatics - especially for people with spinal fusions. Considering I have been doing more ‘Somatics’ than ‘Yoga’ for the past few years, I was pleasantly surprised how the yoga poses were not as challenging for me as at previous retreats. My body felt more supple and connected to the movements, and I experienced less discomfort than I remember. In the past, I assumed that the discomfort I felt was simply because I was challenging myself in new ways. And although that was likely true, I now realize that the very stubborn muscle contractions around my fusion were not changing with yoga alone. Now I understand that I really had to go back to basics to awaken that area, and there is no doubt in my mind that my training in Essential Somatics™ is what really helped me to get the deeper kinks out, finally allowing my body to find more ease while doing yoga. This time, I felt fluid and strong and it was exciting… a reminder why TOPS will continue to offer both of these movement practices in our classes, workshops, and retreats!

We look forward to welcoming anyone interested to our classes, workshops, and retreats so you can experience you own life changing shifts, teachers, movement practices - and more!

Reflecting On My Long and Impactful Relationship with Elise Browning Miller (and her recent Yoga for Back Care retreat at OHM!)

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