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My Wishes Never Last Long….
So this is exactly what happened.
The day before the performance, my neck started to hurt badly.
Some of you who have read my previous blogs know that I have a chronic neck pain, but so far it’s only affected my right side. Well, this time it was on my left side, which was a first. Luckily it wasn’t as painful as my past experiences with the right side of my neck had been. Believe me – that really was awfully painful!! But it still hurt when I moved my neck and, at the same time, the left side of my back felt icky and stiff too. The pain in my neck was coming from my back – I could feel it. But even with the pain, I was still able to move my neck – and since there was a rehearsal in the morning on that day, I had to go!
So there I was at the director’s house. I didn’t tell any of fellow cast members how I was feeling because I didn’t want to scare anyone, especially the director! By the way, we, Pacific Theatre of LA, are a non-profit organization. We’re a small group with no understudies, so now you can imagine how worried the director would be if I told her I wasn’t feeling good!!
During the rehearsal, I felt some pain here and there but it wasn’t too bad. I was also careful enough not to put more pressure on my neck, even when I was dancing. Actually when I was dancing, it was the least painful time. That might have been because the muscles of my back and neck were getting more stretches and exercises.
After the rehearsal, however, while we were having lunch together, my back began to feel more and more uncomfortable. I did a downward facing dog, but couldn’t get rid of the feeling. Of course not. Why should it be so easy? Over the last few months, I’d built up a lot of pressure and stiffness, so it was too late to try for a “quick fix.”
I wasn’t feeling too bad while I was hanging out with the co-cast members, but when I got back to the office, I started to feel really sick. My body was exhausted and it didn’t help that a wildfire had started nearby, causing the air to be all smoky. I just didn’t have enough stamina to resist it. And because of the neck pain, I felt that there wasn’t enough blood flowing to my brain, so I decided that I needed to rest for about an hour.
I somehow managed to baby-sit for a while. Then I decided to do some yoga on a DVD to stretch out some of my muscles pains. Christina let me borrow a Simple and Pure Yoga DVD but even this DVD was too powerful for my weakened body. I couldn’t even go through the entire exercises. I stopped in the middle of session and lay down for a long time.
Once I’d rested, I felt better so I started to practice koto for the last time before my performance. I played through the pain for hours. Then before going to bed, I prepared what I had to bring to the performance – I didn’t get to bed until 2 in the morning!
I will talk more about the performance. Stay turned!
Koto Performance and Yoga:
- Why Was I So Busy??
- My Wishes Never Last Long…
- Yoga and the Performance
[tags]performance, stiff neck, neck pain, back pain, stretches, exercises, yoga dvd, yoga at home[/tags]
Taking up a a stretching program workout to release every one of my muscle groups really helped my back troubles profoundly.