Have you ever injured yourself belly dancing?

[shiradotnet]

Have you ever injured yourself while belly dancing?

If so, what happened? What kind of injury was it? If you could turn back the clock to that moment, what would you do differently?

(NOTE: Dancers of ALL belly dance styles are welcome to participate in this thread.)

 

[Shanazel]

I tore off my small toe nail when I snagged it on carpet one time (I would now wear slippers if I had to perform on carpet).

Long aggressive practices aggravate my arthritis and my joints and muscles feel like they turn to stone if I go out into the cold too soon after dancing (I now take it easier during practice, take time to cool off, and have something warm to cover body, arms, and legs before venturing out into the cold. I used to just grab a sweater and run through the snow to my car. Getting older sucks.)

I dance on half pointe much of the time and have occasionally strained a tendon when I failed to warm up my feet properly.

Hmm. Looking back, most of my injuries could've been avoided had I not been in too much of a hurry with warmups and cool downs. Let this be a lesson to you, my children. :naghty:

 

[jami]

Any injuries I've experienced have been minor - mainly an aggravation of old injuries sustained in other activities - and could have been avoided if I'd used a little more common sense.

Most recently, I tried to keep up with a workshop class on headslides (which I KNOW aggravate a long-standing neck issue) and suffered the consequences. Won't try that again!

 

[Mosaic]

I Haven't ( touch wood), but a colleague did last year, we were in class and practising turns, when we all heard this pop sound and one girl dropped to the floor, she had popped a muscle in her calf. She was in agony.

She was taken to a local emergency dept', treated, told to rest the leg & had to have lots of physio and no dancing for about 2 months. She is OK now but very cautious with turns.
~Mosaic

 

[alosha]

I messed up my lower back, but it was because the teacher didn't know what she was doing.

 

[maria_harlequin]

I had a friend that was rushed to the emergency room because she cut her foot on something...wearing shoes is a must!

 

[adiemus]

I was doing 'batta' with a strong right hip lock and strained something. I have fibromyalgia so it takes a long time for something like this to settle down. Otherwise the worst thing has been a cut foot from a safety pin left on the floor on a stage (yes, why I wear footsies!)
I think bellydance has to be one of the safest forms of dance for anyone.

To avoid flare-ups of my fibromyalgia I have to make sure I do some cardio warmup, then stretch (not that stretching reduces injury if you stretch at the beginning of your practice), then dance - then I usually stretch as I cool down, but again it doesn't have any impact on injury or muscle pain.

Stretching before or after you dance doesn't influence injury at all (even stretching before running doesn't stop injury) - but I know it's one of the things that most people do. The research around whether stretching does anything at all has finally been quite conclusive - take a look here, or google scholar to find more...

 

[Lydia]

I have a slipped disk in my neck ,because halterbra,s that where realy to tite...and after so many years wearing them like this it caused a slipped disk specialy when bending back the strap reayly is pressing inthe neck and manged to go between 2 vertebra,s....i never was thinking anything off it but years ago i would have pain between my sholderblades when dancing and i was thinking must be a cold fro airco in the hotel untop off the stage....now i only know that from that time already it was pressing..and it caused pain between the sholderblades....i talk about 1987....so all this years pressing ....beside that bang my head a few times on the floor.when doing turkish drop without concentrating very well....my meniscus that i hade a few months ago is from ..pivotting,, to much...So that is my package...not to bad for so many years of having a great life on stage!!!!have a nice day all....

 

[Kharmine]

I CANNOT kneel down on the floor and then do a backbend. I start to feel pain in my knees and stop immediately. Haven't injured myself yet, but that is a warning sign for me that I intend to heed.

 

[Caroline_afifi]

In the early years when I learned and practiced veil alot I developed a really bad neck and shoulder.

I had to get treatment for it on a numer of occasions as it caused me so much grief.

At first I didnt realsie it was connected, but the same thing happend a few times when I was learning a veil piece.

I dont get it now but I dont do full veil routines either.

 

[lizaj]

Beware ladies it's the afterwards that is more dangerous..after dancing the night away at a hafla, I necked rather a lot of rough white wine, staggered out with a box of decorations , put my foot in a grid, twisted it well and truly. No way was I going to A&E in a bedlah so I waited until next morning. I had torn a big ankle ligament and was on a stick for 18 months but after 6 did manage a few belly dance steps...well you do,don't you?

Years on, no more bedlah and I drink very little

 

[Eshta]

Beware ladies it's the afterwards that is more dangerous..after dancing the night away at a hafla, I necked rather a lot of rough white wine, staggered out with a box of decorations , put my foot in a grid, twisted it well and truly. No way was I going to A&E in a bedlah so I waited until next morning. I had torn a big ankle ligament and was on a stick for 18 months but after 6 did manage a few belly dance steps...well you do,don't you?

Years on, no more bedlah and I drink very little

:redface: These are more my kind of injuries, although I refuse to chalk these up to my dance problem and instead chalk them up to my drink problem :lol: Ya know, just in case something happened and I had to choose between them, the drink I could theoretically abstain from, but the dance :shok:!

 

[Creaky Old Dancer]

Have youe ever injured yourself bellydancing

Yes,I have same as Alsoha... lower back injury this was from undulations .

 

[Aurelia]

My first bellydance injury was from learning two new veil choreographies for a show -- my left deltoid got a small tear in it that still flares up occasionally and has resulted in me carrying my left shoulder just a bit higher than my right (trying to work on that!). Next was plantars fascitis, which comes and goes and switches feet, but is definitely aggravated by standing barefoot, weight in heels, for hours at a time. Next I put my left lower back out learning Ariellah's Kali choreography, but it's not her fault -- that was how I realized that I stand crooked, with my left foot inside the hip joint instead of right under it, which activates my back muscles on that side differently. Finally, most recently, I woke up with my neck completely immobilized after a workshop where we did a lot of head slides. That's four injuries in 6 or 7 years -- not too bad, considering I'm almost 43!

As for what I'd do differently, I have a tendency to dance full out every time through, but probably I should mark them about half the time, just to save on wear and tear. Of course, losing 20 pounds probably wouldn't hurt either!

 

[alosha]

:redface: These are more my kind of injuries, although I refuse to chalk these up to my dance problem and instead chalk them up to my drink problem :lol: Ya know, just in case something happened and I had to choose between them, the drink I could theoretically abstain from, but the dance :shok:!

:lol:

 

[shiradotnet]

Next was plantars fascitis, which comes and goes and switches feet, but is definitely aggravated by standing barefoot, weight in heels, for hours at a time.

Weight in heels? Really? I tell my students that their default posture should involve spreading the weight evenly from front to back of the foot, and I tell them that if their weight seems to be mostly in their heels, their posture is wrong.

Now, there could be certain specific moves in which the weight is temporarily on the heels, but if I caught one of my students standing with her weight on her heels as her default stance I'd be correcting her posture!

 

[Ariadne]

Have you ever injured yourself while belly dancing?

I have had trouble with my knee ever since I did a workshop with a lot of turns in it. After your article on dancing with/out shoes I went out and bought some dance paws and now it's going away.

I also have had issues with my shoulder since spring, that didn't come from dancing, but veil work and serpentine arms aggravate it.

 

[Amulya]

-hurt my neck once to try a Rachel-back-bend
-hurt my hip from overdancing (that hip is more sensitive due to an accident I had in the part)
-sore back from over dancing
-sore stiff body (just pain everywhere) from overdancing
-sore locked shoulder from doing too much arm work

conclusion: as long as I don't over dance I'm fine

 

[Farasha Hanem]

:think: Well, this isn't exactly an injury, but I went to an outdoor ren faire earlier this year sicker than a dog, and got hay up my nose because it was terribly windy that day. Made me even worse; I was sick for nearly two months afterward, and I'd been sick a week before the faire.

 

[~Diana~]

Thankfully I havn't hurt myself yet but last week I almost caught my veil and me on fire while performing. I forgot that there was a candelabra about a foot or two above my head.