Hangovers - that was the big change going from your 20's to your 30's. “Newsflash - You had your first real hangover.” And then your second. And a third .... until you accepted that your body of this decade would regularly revolt against your insensitive judgements.
On a tangential thread, I recently read a fascinating best-seller called "Why We Sleep," written by a sleep scientist. Aside from the so many eye-opening (no pun intended) things I learnt about how imperative sleep is to our existence ... I also learnt that in the maturation stages of the brain, going from child to adult, one of the last areas to mature into adulthood is the area that makes logical decisions. That explains a lot of the choices I made in my 20's.
Well, now I've hit my 40's, and am learning the next hard lesson of this decade. You cannot physically exert your body the same way you did before.
Three years ago, the summer of 2018, I was leading my life at full throttle (as always). My newly formed dance company had been accepted into one of the most prestigious dance festivals this side of the Mississippi - the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. I was training, choreographing, and musically conducting 9 dancers, 5 musicians, and myself for this world premiere at the prestigious 3,000 seater SF Opera House. It would be my biggest performance to date. Two weeks later, we were premiering an evening length show, self-produced, featuring 90 minutes of all-new repertoire that I was creating/composing/choreographing, and rehearsing 4-6x a week. In between this, I also met with social media superstar kathak dancer Svetlana Tulasi for a brief 24 hour period, where we choreographed, and shot a music video - immediately after which we both parted and rushed off - myself to another 4 hour rehearsal with my musicians, and she to a 3 hour workshop.
When you're going full-speed, everything is extreme. Your highs are high, and your lows are low. Being on that grand stage was one of the finest moments of my life. I had never seen an auditorium of that grandeur - at least not from the vantage point where I was standing then. I looked out to the audience, and kept looking higher and higher - it was as if the audience reached all the way to the sky.
I also remember one of the two days of the SF Ethnic Dance Festival performances, I had a terrible depression. The kind where you can't bring yourself to get out of bed - let alone drive 50 miles, do hair/makeup for seventy minutes, and then dance as if you owned the stage for twelve minutes. I remember a distinct moment, when we were in the last one minute of our performance. I had one last set of spins left, and then the finale. I was so tired. Not because a lack of stamina - I was just tired of talking, smiling, guiding my students, making pleasantries with my colleagues, and going about this spectacular day in the most professional/personable way I could. In that split second moment, I chose to "cheat," and do one less spin than the piece advocated for. This may sound silly to you, but for me, it was indicative of a debilitating state of mental health.
And it's no surprise when you're pushing so hard, that both your mental health, and your physical health suffer.
We finished both those concerts that summer, and my teaching calendar suddenly was wide open without any major rehearsals. Always needing to keep pushing myself to the brink, I decided to do a 30-day Facebook Live footwork practice something-or-the-other, where I’d share a live practice session of about 20 minutes of intense footwork each day. Thinking back, this choice was made out of fear. Fear that if I don't have an upcoming performance, I will fall out of regular practice.
Now, I can't remember if it was already starting to hurt, but I have a recollection that in the first week of this footwork challenge, I carried my then six year boy in my 'godi.' As moms, we all hold our kids at the strangest of angles, while multi-tasking other things. My son was probably close to 50+ lbs, but more problematic was the fact that he was 2/3 my height. It is very imbalanced to hold something heavy that is almost as big as you.
I strained my left hip. The piraformus. I quit my Facebook footwork series within 8 days, feeling like a complete failure, and berating myself for how weak I am. I don't even know what happened for the next year, but I must have gotten used to a low level (like, 2 out of 10) pain in my left hip. Each time I would amp up dancing (usually before a performance), the pain would come back. This pattern continued until 2020.
I threw my back out for the first time in 2020, a week after the Shelter-in-Place order. Like the rest of the world, I had to switch my work to Zoom, and I taught hours of Zoom kathak classes sitting in my bed, because the other desks in the house were taken by my son and husband. Throwing out my back was one of the scariest experiences ever. I panicked when I found myself STUCK. Like, I literally could not move, and even a slight centimeter of movement caused pain beyond belief. Like, contractions-labor-level-pain (that is always my metric for pain, bc that was seriously the craziest pain I have ever experienced). My cousin-in-law, who has thrown his back out several times, came to my virtual rescue, and taught me exercises to get out of my stuck. My physician cousin prescribed me ibuprofen and muscle relaxers. I had learnt my lesson - I would never allow myself to get to this point again.
Never say never.
Cut-to, exactly a year later. In the last 12 months, my back has gotten to the "almost thrown out" stage at least 3x. Each time, I would slow down, do my physical therapy for a few weeks, and then go back to my normal life.
The same thing happened two weeks ago. I slept on a soft mattress, and then tweaked my back while showing my students how to do pushups with proper posture (irony at its best). My back was on the verge of getting thrown out - so I took my standard precaution, and slowed down for about a week. Then it felt better, and I amped up my practice and did 4 solid practices in a matter of one week. I was feeling sore after the last practice, and did yoga the next morning - and after a seemingly innocuous downward dog, it happened.
My body said a big "Fuck you" to me.
My left hip completely seized up. I couldn't stand. For THREE DAYS. Each time I would stand, an acute pain would emanate from the exact place my original injury of three years ago, and it would spread. Within 30 seconds, the pain would be so much, I would have to sit down, and could feel my thighs spasm for several minutes afterwards. I couldn't sleep, because there was no position in which I wasn't in pain. And from a mental point, I was bored, depressed, and freaked out. My fatalistic thinking took over - what if I could never dance again? It worried me that the pain had not reduced in these first few days - that this time I had really messed it up in a permanent sort of way. But, fortunately for me, on the third day, the pain became ever so slightly less. Over the next few days, I could stand for a few minutes at a time, and stretch a little. I could feel that the pain was just the same little hip injury from 3 years ago, screaming and shouting at me to take care of her.
I am allowing myself to feel the reality sink in. I'm in my 40's, and I have to do things differently. In my 30's, I had to be mindful of alcohol consumption. In my 40's, I have to be mindful of physical exertion. I CAN still do the physical work as my 30’s - but with all the work that comes along with it.
I have finally gotten a physical therapist, who will be my regular BFF now. Seriously, bc I will be seeing more of her than most of my own friends. Nowadays, there are all these cool apps that help with accountability of doing your exercises. Last time I was in PT, they were still sending you home with photocopied worksheets of what stretches you needed to do. I probably don't need to tell you that I lost those sheets even before I made it home.
I suppose my 50 year old self would be looking back at me and saying, it's as simple as 1-2-3: 1) warmup, 2) stretch 3) Self-care i.e. REST. Well, I hope I can heed the wise advice of the 'been-there-done-that' version of myself. No, I change that. I'm not going to hope. I AM TAKING THE ADVICE. Three years of ignoring an injury deserves at least three months of my full attention. And so, I focus on fully healing. Once I am healed, I continue to strengthen. My 40's body will allow me do my dance as I wish, just as long as I remember to do the needful.
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| Teaching kathak at the park, while seated. |
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