Exploring Life & Business with Erin Myers of Spiral Spine Pilates

Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Myers.

Hi Erin, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I was diagnosed with minor 17° thoracic scoliosis at the age of 14.
Follow-up treatment was never sought after my initial visit as my doctor said my scoliosis would not progress.

Fast forward to age 21 when I danced with the Radio City Rockettes. I injured my knees during the season, leaving me in knee braces. The Rockettes’ head choreographer told me I would not dance a second year unless I fully recovered prior to the next season and recommended Pilates.

Intent on staying a Rockette, I started taking group Reformer classes in NYC and fell in love with Pilates. I decided to become a certified Pilates instructor while finishing my business degree in college, with a dream of using them together. During my Pilates teacher training, I worked on someone who had scoliosis and saw a vertebra realign for the first time due to an exercise. This is when I realized that Pilates could help scoliosis.

I moved to Nashville after graduating and opened my first Pilates studio without any focus on scoliosis. Word got out that I was a former Rockette and had scoliosis. People with scoliosis started seeing me in hopes that I could help them. I had no specific training in treating scoliosis at the time but had a large heart, a keen mind, and a passion to help others.

A set of parents brought their 9 year old daughter with scoliosis to me. I was able to reduce their daughter’s major curve by about 10° in the first six months. The parents said they would do anything for me to aid her in helping their daughter. Luckily, the parents worked at a prestigious university, and I told them I wanted research. They showed up at their daughter’s next lesson with a thumb drive packed full every available research article up to that point with the word “scoliosis” in it.

I spent the next decade reading every single research article from the hundreds included on the thumb drive covering a wide array of topics, including surgery, movement, bracing, the root of scoliosis, and psychological aspects involved with scoliosis. I read every book on the market, took trainings, and realized there was a giant gap missing in care for people with scoliosis. During workshops I attended, I noticed practitioners looked confused and those with scoli looked emotionally wounded. I had a hard time reconciling that treatment for scoliosis was often confusing and not helpful at its best and deeply traumatizing physically and emotionally at its worst. Was that the best the world could offer for scoliosis care? There had to be a better way to deal with both the physical and emotional aspects of living with scoli.

A year and a half after I opened her first studio in Nashville, I received a cold call from Al Harrison, head of education at world-renowned Balanced Body, the largest Pilates company in the world. He told me Balanced Body was launching a teacher training program and asked her to be a teacher for them, the first in not only Tennessee but in the southeast United States. My first studio became an Authorized Training Center for Balanced Body and I taught comprehensive Pilates teacher training alongside teaching Pilates and scoliosis specific Pilates.

During my decade of reading research, I sold her first Pilates studio, gave birth to two sons, taught scoli clients at her house, and decided to write a small book about her experience of working with people with scoliosis. I figured I should put my X-ray in that book. When I requested my original X-ray, I was told that my doctor had discarded it. I had to get a new X-ray if I wanted one in her book.

Lo and behold, I was shocked when my thoracic curve measured 35° and had gained a 25° lumbar curve. My doctor told me that my back would not progress! He was terribly wrong. I realized how broken the medical scoliosis system was when it came to treating scoliosis. If I wanted to help myself, I had to figure it out. I spent the next years practicing what I taught, combining what I’d studied in research and my Pilates knowledge. I reduced my upper curve to the 20° range and lower curve to be less than 10°.

While being a stay-at-home-mom and part-time Pilates instructor, I started developing resources for people with scoli during my small moments of downtime. I published two books and had an app created to help track scoli without the need for X-rays.

One of my home-studio clients asked to hear scoli client stories. The client’s jaw dropped and told me that she needed to go big with this because what I was doing was miraculous. I told my client that the hill was too big to climb, going against what the medical world taught, and gave my client homework to research “scoliosis” online. My client came back the next lesson and said she looked up “scoliosis” on a popular doctor talk show online and “sclerosis” showed up. She did more digging and realized “scoliosis” was the number one pediatric spinal diagnosis in the world, and no one covered it. There was no information on it, let alone how to help all the people who had it. She told me to do something about this because I had the knowledge.

After I called scoliosis a spiral spine during a lesson, the same client told me to call my company Spiral Spine.

Eventually, my youngest son went off to kindergarten and I told her husband I didn’t know what my next step was. He said he knew, and it was time for me to open another brick-and-mortar Pilates studio. I stubbornly resisted and said no way, saying Jesus was going to have to miraculously open all the doors because I wasn’t doing it on her own. Well, a location opened up at a very affordable rate four minutes from our house. Spiral Spine Pilates miraculously opened six weeks later.

Upon opening Spiral Spine Pilates, I began to teach for Balanced Body’s Teacher Training Program again. I started to teach my own workshops focusing on helping those with scoliosis at Spiral Spine as well as those for Balanced Body around the world.

Being surrounded by those learning to become Pilates instructors and those with scoliosis gave me a unique view of how to educate both movement practitioners wishing to help those with scoliosis and those diagnosed with scoliosis. Workshops at Spiral Spine were developed to allow movement practitioners access to those with scoliosis in order to gain hands-on knowledge from those with scoliosis while giving those with scoliosis the tools they need to thrive throughout their daily lives.

This is how I train the Spiral Spine staff to be top-notch instructors that work with a wide array of people. Spiral’s staff works with clients of all ages and stages of scoli: from young children who have been recently diagnosed to grandparents trying to stay ahead of their grandchildren, from those without a brace to those with a brace, from those who haven’t had surgery to those who have had a spinal fusion or tethering, from those without pain to those in chronic pain, from those who are neurotypical to those who are neurodivergent. Spiral Spine has become world-renowned for figuring out how to work with extremely difficult bodily situations.

With another two groundbreaking books on scoliosis being published and subsequently translated by medical companies into both Chinese and Korean, Spiral Spine is now an internationally recognized name in the scoliosis world. Doctors from around the world refer their patients to be cared for by the teachers either in-person or virtually. Physical therapists come to learn from the staff on how to better care for their patients. Belmont University’s doctoral Occupational Therapy program has partnered with Spiral Spine; its students perform their capstone projects and do research on how to have better practices in the scoliosis world and increase the quality of life for those with scoli assisted by Spiral Spine.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Oh heavens, no, it has not been a smooth road. I never intended to work with the scoliosis population, but have been called to it. As I tend to my own body that seems to need ever present love and care, splitting my time between caring for myself, my family, my business en masse, and the clients at Spiral Spine is a daily challenge. There are simply never enough hours in the day. As word continues to spread about what we do at Spiral Spine, my teaching staff grows to upper double digits working 7 days a week both in-studio and virtually around the world, the more challenging clients come out of the woodwork. The work is so good and I’m so grateful to have this calling and to have created a place for all these people to call home, but it’s a lot for me. I’m so very grateful for my amazing, large hearted, and brilliant staff that are willing to help carry the burden for caring for people around the world.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Spiral Spine Pilates enhances the lives of individuals through specialized Pilates instruction, personalized care plans, and educational resources. We offer Pilates private lessons for those looking to work on specific goals, needing to familiarize themselves with Pilates equipment, address acute issues, or wanting an instructor’s undivided attention. Group classes are a great place to build camaraderie with others while continuing to care for their body. Most of Spiral Spine’s clients mix private lessons and group classes to create a program of care for their specific wants and needs. Spiral Spine Pilates is an Authorized Training Center for Balanced Body, the largest Pilates company in the world, and offers comprehensive Pilates teacher training year-round.

Spiral Spine Pilates is a world-renowned company and pioneer in scoliosis care, offering in-studio and virtual lessons, consultations, and workouts for people with scoliosis. We also have a growing set of scoliosis resources including 4 books in multiple languages, an app, a streaming service with scoliosis workouts and education called Spiral Spine on Demand, the Scoliosis Retreat where people come from around the world to learn to care for their scoliosis with others who have it, and a scoliosis certification program that will be launching soon.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
I’ve learned that movement heals and it has been shocking to see results of the last 2 decades. I’ve learned that movement not only changes lives, but saves lives. I’ve learned that some of the burdens people carry in their physical bodies are a lot, and they need a safe and joyous space that they can come to where they know they’ll be cared for well for the rest of their lives. I’ve learned to study hard to offer people solutions that no one else has been able to offer them. I’ve learned that a community of like-minded staff helps me creatively come up answers that I couldn’t have come up with on my own. I’ve learned that some things in our bodies will not go away while we are on earth, and I’ve learned to hold space for that, give myself grace, and love people well along their journeys.

Pricing:

• https://spiralspine.com/scoliosis-care/# is where all of our pricing is for scoliosis care
• https://spiralspine.com/pilates-class-information/ is pricing for Pilates lessons
• https://spiralspine.com/pilates-teacher-training/ is pricing for teacher training
• https://spiralspine.com/store/ is our store where we have scoliosis resources/products

Contact Info:

• Website: https://spiralspine.com
• Instagram: Spiral_Spine
• Facebook: SpiralSpine
• Youtube: @spiralspine
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/spiral-spine-pilates-brentwood?osq=Spiral+Spine+Pilates