To see Kim Wagaman on a yoga mat is to witness a body perfectly aligned and in harmony with itself.
She’s a yoga instructor, after all, so such flexibility is a given, right ?
Not in her case. Wagaman, 34, of Sacramento, Calif., was once so restricted by scoliosis that she spent most of her teenage years in a neck-high brace.
"I made a conscious effort to hide the back of my body," Wagaman recalls. "There was all this insecurity and denial. And there’s this drive to fix the issue."
Her parents already had ruled out spinal-fusion surgery as too invasive. So as a junior in high school, Wagaman put away the brace she wore 23 hours a day and started to look for alternatives.
For her, the better way turned out to be yoga. In her early 20s, Wagaman started practicing and eventually studied under Palo Alto, Calif.-based yoga ...