death by tai chi

I've never professed to be any sort of athletic. In fact, I could very well be the antithesis of athletic. I really don't care; it is what it is. Case history: I took baton twirling as a preschooler, but I had a problem with the, you know, twirling (it's always the coordination. Damn the coordination!). Then in elementary school I took gymnastics and somehow caught my pinkie toe in the mechanics of the beam when attempting a, ahem, dismount. Broken toe equals no more gymnastics. Somewhere around this time, I was introduced to soccer. I loved soccer until Jose Martinez. Jose was thirteen and roughly the size of an overweight thirty-year-old man with a full beard. Jose kicked the soccer ball straight into my nose from six inches away as I was bent tying my sneaker. This brings us to middle school when I was on the cheerleading squad. I couldn't tumble, flip, or split, but I worked a mean half-time show knee stand (shut up.). After realizing my dreams of cheerleading royalty were all for naught, I decided to join the cross country team. It went splendidly until I realized, sadly, that I actually had to, you know, run. After meeting my now husband (and realizing he was, unfortunately, all kinds of athletic), I agreed to go on a hike to a mountain peak for our first date. All was well until I ducked under a fallen branch on the trail, caught my back, ripped out a bleeding slice of skin, and fell on my ass in a mud hole. Oh, yeah, and there was the bike ride I agreed to attempt in which I wobbled off the path and down a hill with a mountain bike tangled about me.

So, yeah, no athletics for me. Heck, I don't even like to watch sports on tv. Or in person. Or even hear about little league, to tell you the truth.

Which brings us to the topic at hand: tai chi (there's a commercial with a middle aged woman practicing tai chi in the park with a border collie looking on. It's for arthritis medicine. Just so you know). The class is a combination of tai chi, yoga, and pilates, so it's basically a series of poses and manipulations, with some pilates 100 worked in there. I've been taking this class for more than six months and have become quite the student. In fact, I must admit, I had fantasies of instructing others down the righteous path to meditation and bendy-ness. Therefore, in all my self-important glory, karma decided to cripple me. I don't know how it happened or even when, but at some point on Tuesday evening, my neck disconnected from the rest of my spinal column. The resulting trauma means I can't turn my head more than 15 degrees in any direction -- especially debilitating with young children who are dodgy little varmints. It actually hurts to touch the skin on the back of my neck directly below my head. It's a spot about the size of a lemon, and it is NOT improving. I don't know if it's muscle, tendons/ligaments, nerves, or bone, but something is clearly not good.

Any suggestions short of humiliating myself further by calling my internist and confessing that I broke something doing a sun salutation?