Looking Out To Sea

Pain in all the diodes down my left side

For a few weeks now I’ve been suffering from a terrible pain in my left side, tracing from about the middle of my left pec right round under the armpit. I remember first feeling it after the most recent charity roda in Edinburgh. I assumed it was an injury sustained in the roda but I couldn’t remember how exactly.

I left things a week, going so far as to stop doing handstands every night in order to give my side a rest. This proved incredibly difficult, and the next time I cracked and started doing handstands again the pain came back. The next morning I was in agony.

At the weekend in Drumnadrochit (which I’ll write about in another post) I tried to arm a berimbau and the pains in my side came back as hard as ever. At that point I realised that the real cause of my pain must have been trying to arm a particularly stiff viola (high-pitched berimbau), with what was clearly poor technique.

I need to practise stringing them using more body weight and less strength because that way, I hope, there will be fewer musical instrument-based injuries in future.