"The Minor Fall, and the Major Lift": A Cellist’s Complete Recovery from Tendonitis after Six Years

I never thought I'd post my success story here. I spent years doubting mindbody medicine - and quite frankly, these forums - and it wasn't until yesterday that I realized that not only have I been completely healed, but I was never injured at all. And I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the pain I went through in the interim, because it gave me profound self-knowledge and transformed me as a musician, but more importantly, as a human being. I literally could not have become who I am now any other way.

Scores of musicians – among others – suffer from tendonitis, golfer/tennis elbow, or other repetitive stress injuries. The cure is quite simple. If I can just help one other person, all these years of pain will have been worth it. My story is not intended to discredit those with genuine physical ailments or the fields of ergonomics and music medicine, which focus on many helpful physical solutions. Setting up the right equipment correctly – and knowing how and why to use it – is indispensable for musicians, office workers, athletes, and so on. I only want to point out that what happens in the body is often at the behest of the mind, and how easily we fool ourselves into sickness.

(This is not a short read. But for those who have the patience, I hope it is worth it. I find myself at times solemn, sometimes laughing as I reread these words.)

 

I. French Overture

I’m a cellist. I never thought I’d be able to say that again. I’d been playing cello – having attended one of the best pre-college programs – for about 15 years when, some six years ago, I bought a new instrument. One of the things that attracted me to it was how much it resembled my first teacher’s cello, that ancient, weathered and nearly black vessel that was seen but rarely heard during my lessons. I wasn’t even looking for a new cello, I just fell in love one day walking into my local luthier’s shop to rehair my bow.

That was a magical moment. I must have spent four hours non-stop playing in the shop. I loved that cello. I’d never loved a cello before, only music. It opened a world inside of me. I’d never played quite so in tune – or so fluidly, so completely immersed in the music. This cello was a brother I’d been separated from at birth, and now we were reunited. I spent hours learning difficult repertoire – the Fifth and Sixth Bach Suites – on my own, and when I wasn’t practicing, I was touching, gazing at, smelling my lovely instrument. The cello slept on my bed until I awakened it for another 5 hour marathon practice session.

At this time, I was navigating early post-college adulthood. I’d studied business, not music, to be practical, and my first big corporate job was in IT. Work was so stressful I used to walk the parking lot for hours to avoid my desk. When I wasn’t banging the keyboard, I liked to swim. And lift weights. Anything with my hands. I loved my hands. And I loved my cello. When I played, I never took breaks, rarely warmed up or practiced technique. I could rip through a concerto right after tuning up, why should I bother?

What I didn’t appreciate was this old European cello was longer than standard. And the cello had been through some sort of trauma, as numerous cracks attested. Whoever had owned this very good instrument in the past hadn’t had the money to properly repair it, so the broken neck – the part you hold in your left hand to play – had been roughly doweled back into place, leaving the strings too high and forcing the cellist to exert far more force than usual, in addition to having to make some truly spectacular stretches.

One day, after a particularly taxing practice session, playing the Prelude to Bach’s labyrinthine Fifth Suite, I felt something inside me change. The next day, I could no longer use my left hand. I had seemingly lost my ability to play – or type, or lift anything heavier than an apple – overnight. I suppose the soundtrack to this moment was fitting. I’d never understood the monumental, darkly philosophical Fifth Suite until I played it on this cello. Even then, I didn’t respect the music at all, merely leapt over its measures again and again bathing in its melancholy resonance. It was as if my cello, offended on behalf of the dead German composer, said, Enough: This far you may come, but no further.

 

II. Fugue

I spent four years in and out of some of the best physical therapy clinics available. Various tendon-related diagnoses were assigned. Surgeons told me I would never play again, that I needed surgery to even have a chance. And I believed them. After all, these doctors and clinics specialized in the neurotic, sensitive animals that are classical musicians. They’d diagnosed a hundred like me. I tried most of the standard treatment modalities and a few of the weird ones. Rest – ice alternating with moist heat – stretching – targeted exercises – essential oils, menthol gel, slapping my skin with herbs – wrist braces – skin brushing – electrical stimulation (TENS) – ultrasound – acupuncture – massage – Feldenkrais – sensory deprivation – meditation – yoga. I twisted a large, red, phallus-shaped thing called the Theraband flexbar that was supposed to be a miracle cure for golfer’s elbow. During a new age music festival in New York, I paid a yoga teacher $70 to design a custom routine. A therapist’s assistant talked me into buying a slim plastic plank that I wobbled to and fro after dousing my wrist in infrared light. I spent some $2K all told and amassed enough gear to start my own clinic. I would’ve gone to Germany to have stem cells injected like Kobe but it was too expensive, and I never did cortisone because I’d heard it made things worse later.

My condition – a sort of vague, why-won't-my-hand-work – metastasized into a full body condition. Like a gangrene, it seemed to spread to my left elbow, then mysteriously hopped into my right arm, skipping my torso. I can use my hands, I’d explain to puzzled coworkers. I just can’t do it for very long. I can’t bear weight. Even wiggling my fingers for longer than a minute was too hard. I bought three glass keyboards from Japan, turned to dictation. I got laryngitis, which turned into vocal dysphonia, because I was talking to my computer all day. I stopped being able to hike – one of the few exercise options still available. Then I couldn’t stand anymore, because my ankles felt like they were made of glass, just like my wrists.

Therapy, and my gadgets, were usually good for alleviating symptoms – for about thirty minutes. I turned to nutrition. I'd been vegan at the time of my injury, and my father, a physician, blamed lack of iron as the root of all my ills. There was probably some truth in that: I'd gotten a root canal that year despite brushing three times a day. A wholistic medicine practitioner tested, then diagnosed me with liver and gallbladder dysfunction. Her report was incredibly detailed and scientific but felt like a horoscope: dry skin, worrier (insecure), bad breath, sensitive to heat and noise, melancholia, swollen ankles, constipation, gas, nervous stomach, reduced appetite generally and loss of taste for meat, headaches – I had every single symptom but somehow they were vague and common enough that a random Joe off the street might be nodding his head at the same findings. Nonetheless, I was convinced my diet was to blame. A friend identified systemic inflammation as the culprit, and together we crafted the perfect diet: high in omega-3 and low in omega-6 fatty acids, no dairy, no nightshades, plenty of supplements like turmeric. I was eating better than ever – and not recovering.

Feeling that Western medicine had failed me, I turned East. I had been raised in a solidly scientific household. I didn’t believe in any of that energy stuff. I meditated anyway, even though it felt like I was just staring dumbly into space. An aunt had told me I was just weak – that's why I’d gotten hurt. True, I'd never had much upper body strength. I developed the curious ability to develop a visible pump without actually lifting weights, merely by imagining myself working out. But I had to stop once even that began to trigger pain.

I was starting to get closer to the truth. My mother had cautiously suggested that I see a psychologist. An ENT specialist bluntly responded, “you can talk”, after I handed him a handwritten account of my laryngitis. Doctors stopped approving time off work. But even though everything I had tried had failed, I was still in denial. I wasn’t a basket case. I was a high-functioning adult. I was an artist who’d been struck down just as I was entering my prime. It was so unfair. (This is one of several moments in my narrative I can’t help but laugh at myself).

Then one day – and I still cannot remember how it happened – I stumbled on a book called Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection.

 

III. The Minor Falls

Dr. John Sarno’s famous book told the story of countless sensitive, people-pleasing perfectionists like myself who’d also had their passions and livelihoods stripped away from a perplexing mélange of shifting, incurable disorders, many of them based on repetitive stress injury. Sarno named it Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) – a condition in which the unconscious mind creates chronic physical pain to mask unprocessed emotional pain. Lawyers who could no longer type; runners with plantar fasciitis; fathers whose severe back pain prevented them from holding their kids. Sarno’s patients came in all shapes, sizes, colors, ages, genders, and occupations; they professed a hypochondriac’s wet dream of woe. In the end most that accepted their condition was psychosomatic were healed.

After six months of waffling, I took the plunge. I started journaling. I stopped the moist heat, icing, excessive stretching, bracing – everything. I began typing, singing, walking. I started lifting weights – for real. I even started playing a bit of cello. To my surprise, I did not die. In fact, the more I did, the better I felt.

But my unconscious mind wasn’t going down that easily. I had convinced myself I was mostly healthy now, but I still believed I’d incurred some sort of genuine structural injury years ago, that I had to carefully manage my limbs or risk catastrophe again. (“You only have X contractions a day” a famous hand surgeon told me.) Most importantly, I hadn’t completed the emotional ditch-digging Sarno recommended. My journals were long and went into my childhood with so much depth a Freudian analyst would’ve been proud. But I still blamed the people around me for a lifetime of hurt feelings and missed opportunities, and I still blamed my hands for failing me.

So I relapsed. My cello’s long absence had led me into rock n’ roll. My obsession with cello became my obsession with the electric bass. Combined with a tyrannical weight lifting regimen, I experienced yet another “big break”, paralleling my first one six years ago. I stopped exercising and playing. I took a month off work – then another. I recanted my faith in Dr. Sarno. I wasn’t like all those people sharing their woes and success stories on forums online. No, I was still special.

I grasped at straws. I suspected I was suffering from sort of subtle form of Lyme disease. That I tested positive for one marker shy of a definitive diagnosis gave this idea breathing room. I feverishly researched experimental procedures, considered surgery. Yet Sarno’s success stories – including luminaries like Howard Stern and Anne Bancroft – still gave me hope. Like an agnostic nonetheless attempting to fit God into some sort of scientific framework, I practiced an elaborate doublethink. Psychosomatic disorders were real, but they only partially explained my case, I’d tell myself.

Ultimately, I relapsed several times over two years before finally seeing a psychologist and doing what I feared most – admitting I was wrong and practicing cello for three hours a day.

 

IV. ...And the Major Lift

The truth came suddenly.

Yesterday, I was on day 6 of The Pain Psychology Center’s online program. Alan Gordon opened my eyes when he explained how inconsistent, shifting pain is a red flag for TMS, and how myriad “negative” emotions – from irritation to avoidance to hate – are all just species of fear, and the varietals of pain and dysfunction they engender can all be solved at the root by giving oneself loving attention. I’d been hearing that for the last two years, but somehow, hearing him crystallize that insight – and watching him heal patients in front of an audience – made all the difference.

I’d been using his insights to reflect on my fear of public speaking when I realized that I had made the injury up to protect myself from my fear of performing in public and to save myself from the drill-sergeant practice routine I'd developed. Somewhere inside I still associated playing cello with being judged and found wanting by my teacher and parents, of my struggle to be perfect. And when the "injury" became my whole life - because I "couldn't" type or exercise or anything – I had something I could use to get people's empathy, which I’d never felt I’d gotten enough of. So that's why I held onto this delusion for so long. Because it was so terribly useful. It enabled me to avoid all my fears and concentrate the pain I'd felt growing up into something tangible. All those years I spent away from my beloved cello, without the thing I'd defined myself by, that I used as a shield against the world, my voice so I didn't have to speak, I think I was punishing myself for having lost my way in college, for being shy and afraid to take chances or stand up for myself my entire life.

My pain has been good to me.

I lost so much: years of music, physicality, and vitality in the prime of my life. I lost my identity. My wings had been clipped and I fell to earth, seemingly consigned to a mundane fate like everyone untouched by creative inspiration. But I gained so much more. I've heard the life of the mind described as a house with many doors, all of which lead to the same place. If I hadn’t lost my cello, I’d still be knocking on the same door.

My journey led to a profound friendship with a brilliant, but obscure cello maker and influenced the direction of his groundbreaking designs. Because I “couldn’t” play cello, I became a drummer, singer, guitarist, songwriter and composer. Outside of music, I grew immensely as a human being. I am kinder now, to myself and others. I understand who I am, and why I am. That life is bigger than my limited perspective; the interconnectedness of all things. I can meditate for hours now – and I get much more from it. The things that used to debilitate me – a poor night’s rest, stomachaches, a rude neighbor – register faintly. Some of my best days are when I wake up feeling sick. I moved to work at my dream job. After years of being estranged from each other, I helped our family come back together. Most importantly, I have given up much of the fear and anger and misery I'd been nurturing like a poisonous houseplant my entire life.

And when I returned to cello, I became twice the player I’d been by embracing my inner romantic. It has become somewhat passé to play early classical music in the modern, romantic style. It's the sound the public associates with the cello, the one you hear at the movies: big, lush, emotional. It's a sound to fall in love with. But it’s not the sound Bach, Haydn, or even Beethoven knew. They were accustomed to the clear, modest resonance of gut strings in a smaller hall. There’s a warmth only gut has; the clever, lean excitement of a highly articulated bowing on a pre-Tourte bow. I spent years before and after my injury immersed in period performance, and, paradoxically, also studying the technique of Janos Starker, who, although decidedly anti-Romantic, was anything but period correct.

Though I learned much, and still prefer to listen to period recordings, I discovered that emulating my new, more intellectual musical heroes was limiting me. I had more to say as an artist now, but my cello could only whisper. I gained great nuance but lost my singing double forte, and with it the magnificent voice that had made cello so emotionally compelling to me. So I returned to my childhood reference recording: Mischa Maisky, 1986. Anyone who’s searched for the Bach Suites on Youtube will know it. Maisky’s playing is sometimes criticized for being excessively romantic – especially for Bach – but there is much to admire about his technique and tone. I discovered the bigger I sounded, the more relaxed I was, and the more freely I could move around the cello.

As a child, trying to recreate Maisky’s voluminous tone had created the same kind of tightness I'd gotten from my “period correct” phase. But now, that sound was Act II of my rebirth as a cellist. Act III? Victor Sazer’s book New Directions in Cello Playing, which really is a blueprint for a radical new way of approaching string playing generally. In other words, I found the best way to achieve Starker’s ideal of a lifetime of healthy playing was to sound like Maisky; and the best way to sound like Maisky was to play like Sazer.

Like Dr. Sarno, Sazer is largely ignored or ridiculed by the mainstream of his profession. As with mindbody medicine, it took me two years – and overcoming a lot of skepticism – to implement his odd ideas. I still use much of the technique I’d learned in music school, and it wouldn’t have been possible for me to learn Sazer’s method on my own without that foundation. My experiments started. I played with my thumb freed from the underside of the neck; fretted on the side of the string, never pressing completely down to the fingerboard; held my cello on my left leg only; pulled my bow in circles, rather than releasing weight in relatively straight lines. Most of his ideas are useful in performance, others mainly in practice.

If I’d never gotten “injured”, I wouldn’t have given Sazer’s ideas or Maisky’s warmth another chance. I have the cavernous sound – and more importantly, the balanced technique – that I had only glimpsed all those years ago.

 

V. Coda

Life doesn't like perfect endings. I still get random jolts and stiffness, like static discharge from a passing thunderstorm. My throat often feels dry, even when I haven't been talking. Sometimes I wonder if I should cut my evening walks short. But I know now these are simply emotional residue, mild symptoms of some feeling inside I simply need to attend to. I am completely healed.

It is poetic, and entirely unplanned, that I came to this revelation on New Year's Eve, on the cusp of thirty years of age, playing the very Prelude to the Fifth Suite I'd seemingly extinguished myself on six years ago. Bach's music abounds with pungently unexpected chord changes, but his music is so canonized, so often played, that these twists can feel rather familiar.

Yet this Prelude – the longest and most ambitious, in its fugal writing, of any movement in the Cello Suites – always surprises me. After five pages and 222 measures of gothic C minor – the key of tragedy, of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony – we end on an abrupt, unprepared C major chord. We are left blinking in the sun. No matter how often I play it, I never anticipate it or feel ready. Or that I deserve it. The music – a taut, pompous, possessed maze of darkness – doesn't ask for redemption.

But we get it anyway.

 

Impressive !!!!!
Thanks "fifth suite" for your enlightening, honest, clever story.
In my humble opinion RSI (repetitive strain injury), as well as the vast majority of its quasi-equivalents (tennis elbow, tendonitis, golfer's elbow,...), should be renamed:
RSP (repetitive stress pain), so debunking the myth of "strain" and "injury" and emphasizing the real issue: (emotional) stress and pain (derivated of such stress).
Just my two cents, of course.
All the best!
M

 

@fifthsuite

Thank you for crafting the most beautiful success story I have read thus far. Laden with soul, this is a profoundly healing blessing for everyone on this forum. ❤️

 

@mbo and @plum - I'm glad I could share it with both of you. No one is so gravely wounded - in their body or mind - they cannot be saved. I would not be here telling my story if I hadn't read so many other stories here. Sometimes it takes years to change one's mind, but it is worth it.

When I was young, my parents gave me advice, telling me to heed their mistakes so I would not have to suffer. My older cousin, a sort of older brother, retorted that he had to make mistakes to learn on his own terms. They both gave me something to think about.

 

Beautifully composed. Thank you for sharing.

Mala

 

What a beautiful and fascinating story of healing and life re-examined - congratulations on your success!

Maisky's interpretation is my favorite exactly because it is "excessively romantic" and emotional. At the height of my TMS I realized that music - even my beloved Bach - no longer generated emotional response in me, my emotions were frozen. My healing brought my emotions back, along with the renewed joy of listening to the Bach's unaccompanied cello suites, and Maisky's interpretation is the one I listen to most often.

 

Really well written and im glad you overcame your pain. It is so devastating when you cant do the thing you love cause of pain.

I am still in. pain for about 8 years now, gradually getting worse through those years. I gave up on TMS for about 6-7 months now because it only got worse when resuming activity. To the point where i get a lot of heart palpitations with the RSI like pain symptoms and i get absolutely exhausted and sleep for hours during the day.

Whenever i stop activity i gradually feel better till a certain point. I cant handle more than 5 minutes on my mobile or pc.

I really want to believe TMS again but for me the past 3-4 years it only made things a lot worse. The heart palpitations and exhaustion where i cant stay awake when pain gets bad make it so that i dont dare following the TMS approach again.

Any tips or recognition in these heart and exhaustion symptoms with RSI sufferers would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Hi,
You could/should forget the classic concept RSI , save just the R, and adopt the correct acronym RSP, for Repetitive Stress Pain.
For sure: your pain is not consequence of an injury produced by strain, exertion or overdoing. Your pain is derivated from your (emotional!) stress and psychological tension: the perfect fuel for rage, rage against situations and/or PEOPLE very close to you (family, job, society), perhaps much beloved PEOPLE, very crucial and relevant in your life, rage or anger that you repress unconsciously, rage unfelt --thanks to your protective brain-- in order to avoid much very painful feelings of guilt, shame and misery.
Right now you are pressing, unvoluntary and simultaneously, the accelerator and the brake of your automatic car (your life). You hear the engine roaring ...but you are always in the same place: persistent pain.
Please look at " your feet " !
Be aware of your menacing, incorrect, negative, unconscious emotions trying to become unbearable, dangerous, conscious feelings.
M.

 

@Mala Thank you so much for reading.

@TG957 It just connects with me - and clearly, if you consider how it's the most popular Youtube account of the Suites - so many others on a deeply emotional level. He's sweating, and swinging from his heels, and takes some profound liberties, but there's never a feeling that he's doing it to glorify anything but the music. His sincerity and warmth is remarkable, and really communicates who he is as a human being. As my first teacher said, if you can convince the audience of your interpretation, play it. Do you listen to Bylsma or Wispelwey? They're both so thrilling, but in a very different way.

 

@Mark1122 You are exactly the person I wrote this for. I was in your shoes. I'd believed in TMS, but my belief was shaken when the symptoms returned, when they kept showing up no matter what. I tried everything, including what Dr. Sarno suggested. I just hadn't been persistent enough, and I wasn't mature enough as a human being until very recently to really understand. Once I "got it", not only did the symptoms and limitations go away, but I found deep insights into myself and human nature. This isn't about "fixing". It's about growing in every way, including in ways that have nothing to do with your body.

You must do what you are afraid of. When you face your fear, your whole world expands. The pain is just a doorway to the next level of your flourishing. As @mbo and Alan Gordon - the author of the amazing program on this site - suggest, pay attention not to the symptoms, but to what they tell you about your feelings. About yourself. About how you handle stress, how you visualize your fears and make them real. That's all TMS is.

One day, I scheduled an appointment with a personal trainer. I told her my sad story, and explained that I was looking for some modified exercises. I had something wild in mind - taping light dumbbells to my biceps to avoid loading up my forearms, etc. She looked at me. She handed me a weight.

"What do you think will happen if you lift that with your hands?"

I didn't have a response. So I lifted it. My hands didn't fall off. And I kept lifting, over and over again.

Overcoming TMS isn't an act, it's a habit. It's something I still do at least several times a week. And it's worth it, because it's not about getting rid of pain. It's about uncovering and processing your deepest fears, the ones that are stopping you from doing all the things you dream of.

One day, your pain will go away. Forever. Believe that.

 

@Mark1122 So I want you to do something for me. You say you can't handle more than 5 minutes on a PC or phone.

Get a calendar. There are free ones you can print out online. Tape it to your wall where you'll see it every day.

Set a timer for 5 minutes. Log into your computer. I'd like you to do whatever you want, something you enjoy perhaps - playing a game, typing a Facebook message, writing a story. You can just type gibberish too. Stop when the timer goes off.

Do this for a week. Every day you do it, mark an X on your calendar. It's not a big deal if you miss a day, but never miss more than one in a row.

Next week, set the timer for 6 minutes. Mark the calendar every day.

Next week, set the timer for 7 minutes. Mark the calendar every day.

Next week, set the timer for 8 minutes. Mark the calendar every day.

Next week, set the timer for 9 minutes. Mark the calendar every day.

When you get to 10 minutes a day, and you keep it up for a whole week, reply to this thread or send me a private message. Share a picture of your calendar.

If your symptoms haven't changed or diminished at all, I'll admit I was wrong, send you $20 via Venmo, and you can go on believing you're irrepairably broken. Just like everyone else on here before they found what worked for them.

But something tells me I'm going to keep my $20.

 

@TG957 It just connects with me - and clearly, if you consider how it's the most popular Youtube account of the Suites - so many others on a deeply emotional level. He's sweating, and swinging from his heels, and takes some profound liberties, but there's never a feeling that he's doing it to glorify anything but the music. His sincerity and warmth is remarkable, and really communicates who he is as a human being. As my first teacher said, if you can convince the audience of your interpretation, play it. Do you listen to Bylsma or Wispelwey? They're both so thrilling, but in a very different way.[/QUOTE]

Not being a musician, being completely ignorant about the technical side of music making and not noticing any mistakes or liberties, I am glad you asked so I can throw my humble two cents in: I am fully in the emotional camp with Maisky and incomparable Jacqueline DuPre. Bylsma is quite amazing in how beautifully he seems to hang the sound in suspension, but I found Wispelwey somewhat calculating and dry. Somebody said that the best of music is between the notes, and that's where the emotions are probably hiding :=).

 

The pointing finger is what guides you to the moon. Without the finger (TMS pain), you might not notice the moon (unfelt, unconscious, repressed rage). But the pointing finger isn't what matters most.

 

Mark, I remember your posts from years back. They drip with fear and a preconceived notion that whatever you do, your pain would return. Whenever you tried to resume your activity, your fear overcame you and pushed you back to square one. This is where your problem is. Heart and exhaustion symptoms are not RSI symptoms, they are anxiety symptoms.

I worked with the woman who kept telling me that heart palpitations and fatigue are symptoms of CRPS and typical for CRPS patients - until one day she noticed that meditation made them stop for few minutes, and then for one hour, and then for two hours. She is now pretty much pain and anxiety free. When symptoms return, she knows what to do, and gets them under control quickly.

If I were you, I would focus on anxiety and fear. @fifthsuite is offering you a great method to fight your fear. I would also try visualization technique which I use to get over my fear of heights: I replay the scary portion of the experience (mountain trail in my case) in my mind, time and over, before attempting it. It desensitizes my nervous system. But nothing works better than meditation done right and persistently.

 

So true!