| Hello,
First post to the site; hope I'm doing it right....
I'm also hoping for some insight from those (many) of you who have much, much more experience than I do.
I started doing Bikram yoga three months ago, first 3 X week and then every day. I had really enjoyed it and was working with a very talented instructor who seems immune from a lot of criticisms of Bikram that I've read on this site. I had switched to yoga, ironically, from a Pilates regime that was making me nervous about injury (ironically since I never had an injury in two years of Pilates, despite being physically manipulated every-which-way by my teacher weekly).
Five days ago I overextended my neck in one of the Bikram head-to-knee poses. By the next day I was practically immobile, since the spasms at the base of my neck caused most of the muscles in my upper back and along the spine to seize up.
My problem (apart from pain and having to spend most of my time laying down!!) is that I keep getting contradictory advice. The yoga instructor said gentle neck stretching (which I was disinclined to believe because the pain was so bad). I went to a massage therapist who massaged out the back muscles (they seized up again less than thirty minutes later) and said to keep icing in spite of the number of days since injury, and to "take it really easy"--i.e., no exercise.
Yesterday things were still so bad that I went to a Western doctor. He (of course) prescribed painkillers but said that my injury was similar to whiplash--the neck muscles are completely contracted--and recommended a series of painful although gentle stretching exercises and heat every hour.
My questions: have any of you ever had an injury like this? What did you do? How long did recovery take? I'm terrified that the pain and lack of mobility will continue beyond the one week mark... And I'm shocked that what must have been a very minor muscular strain has caused this much pain and immobility.
Darren
P.S. I am 33, very healthy and fit. |
Neck injury
