[QUOTE=lotusgirl;83654]
A question for you though: You had disc surgery and was told to avoid forward bends. What type of surgery did you have? Spinal Fusion? If the disc protrudes toward the back, then yes, forward bends would be contraindicated. To the front, they would be therapeutic.
[/QUOTE]
Hello Lotusgirl, thank you for your reply and suggestion about Elise’s book, I already found her material on amazon but didn’t think it would add much to what I already learned over the years with different teachers, including Iyengar ones.
To be more specific, I had a L5-S1 disc microdiscectomy back in 2011. It is not a major operation and totally removed the sciatic pain that was causing me so much distress. Although at the time, most iyengar teachers recommended not to do the operation and be patient and practice yoga. Only one day I couldn’t walk and almost didn’t feel my left foot so I’ve got to say I felt frightened and did the surgery anyway.
For some reason other problems appeared few months later, pain here and there gradually increased with time, but it is more muscular discomfort than nerve pain.
It feels like imbalances and bad energy circulation is now creating problem with one disc gone from my lumbar area. It makes sense though if we think in term of levels and the fact that the spine was already curved at a 37 degrees angle due to chronic scoliosis. Remove the second floor of the Tower of Pisa and see what would happen…
On a more practical note now: I did start a yoga class, one-to-one with a friend from Kerala, who’s a Hata yoga teacher from the Sivananda tradition. For 2 months, we focused on backbends, and almost didn’t allow forward bend into the practice, except in Surya namaskar with Uttanasana, always with knees bent, and child pose to counter effect all the back bends I was doing.
I felt very good after these classes, only that the next day, I was always feeling stiff in my lumbar area. With his classic Indian flair, my friend told me it was normal, energies were moving and needed to be adressed with backbends. After few warming up exercises, it was ok and I could practice again, And so on for few weeks, stiffness in the lumbar when my body became cold few hours after class, then ok during class after warming up! But in general I was feeling more “open” and I could feel I had a better range of motion.
Unfortunately I stopped this routine, as I had to travel for work and I got sick, some flue I caught in Asia, and then I couldn’t practice for more than 2 months. After this time, where I am now, I feel like my lumbar lordosis is much more pronunced than before. My lower back it extremely hard, the curvature inward is more noticeable than before (is this the wedge you are talking about?) .
So that’s when I did some research and a friend sent me that article. She’s a Pilates teacher and also believes that forward bends are not recommended in my case and that I should focus on strenghtening the core (pilates teacher talk…) and focus on backbends…
But for me, no more forward bends means no more relaxing child poses, no more hip opening asanas and yin yoga hip series, no more surya namaskar!! So where is the fun in yoga after removing all that ?!
All is very confusing, that is why I asked for the forum advice. I will see a new PT who just moved in my region (south of France). apparently he’s qualified with athletes and sport related injuries. Let’s see what is his opinion in this.
Thanks again for all the help, hopefully Inner Athlete could enlighten us more on his field experience with the issue 
Peace
