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What Is Angular Breathing?

People with scoliosis have an abnormal curvature of the spine that often causes a great deal of back pain. Exercises developed by Katharina Schroth, which incorporate rotational angular breathing, can help alleviate some of this pain.

  1. Need for Rotational Angular Breathing

    • With scoliosis or after spinal fusion, the patient's rib cage has limited movement during breathing. Because of the spine curvature, one side of the pulmonary cavity will be wider and the other will be narrower. The narrower side is often inactive during respiration. The patient must learn to direct air into this narrower side to increase oxygen uptake.

    Schroth Method

    • The Schroth method involves realigning the spine into its correct alignment while practicing rotational angular breathing. With angular breathing, the patient pushes at the misaligned rib cage outward from the inside by targeted breathing against the direction in which the curved spine tends to move.

    Rotational Angular Breathing Exercises

    • With the Schroth method, the patient performs a series of isometric exercises with "guided" breathing, focusing on targeting the inhaled air into the narrow section of the torso. Correction of the curvature of the spine should always occur while inhaling, with the exhalation period focused on maintaining the correction that has been achieved through isometric tension of the back muscles involved. Overcompensate in the opposite direction of the spine curvature to help correct its alignment.

      The Schroth method of rotational angular breathing is very complicated and must be demonstrated by a trained physiotherapist.

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