Settle down, kiddos: for never was a story of more woe than this of Sequoia in the dance studio.

I attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem for my sophomore, junior and senior years of high school. My major, or art concentration, was ballet dance for my sophomore and junior years and contemporary for my senior year. Dance, no matter what style, is incredibly rigorous, because in order to improve, you have to devote yourself and your time to dancing. School of the Arts intended to prepare us for potential careers in dance, so outside the four hours of required academic classes, we spent some five to seven hours a day in the studio, five days a week, sweating and working. And if you were fortunate enough to be cast in something, then you could add at least another two to five hours of rehearsals to your Saturdays and occasional Sunday.

It was a lot. I came from a dance studio where I danced maybe ten hours a week, not fifty plus, and it took me awhile to get accustomed to the schedule. But it was my choice to attend, and the workload was just a part of striving to be a dancer, so I bared myself down and pushed forward, trying my damndest to improve with each class.

Flash-forward to the fall of my senior year. I had switched from ballet to contemporary (for a multitude of reasons, but that’s an entirely different article) and was still attending every class, following along a similar schedule. I already knew at this point that I would not continue dance after high school and that I would attend some university instead, so I wasn’t particularly invested in bettering myself from day to day. As the weeks progressed, I noticed an achy twinge in my left Achilles tendon. I didn’t dwell on it much at first, because when you dance about five hours a day for several school years, you accept defeat to perpetual tiredness and achiness. But then it prickled not just when I danced, but when I walked, and my left jumped on the bandwagon and started creaking and aching too. When I could barely make it through particular combinations from the pain, I tossed my pride aside and finally sought help from the athletic trainers in the wellness center.

Diagnosis: Achilles and patellar tendonitis.

The difficulty with tendonitis is that since it stems from overwork, it’s difficult to capture before it’s already there. My Achilles and knee didn’t start to legitimately hurt until the tendonitis was well established. Sure, in hindsight, there were warning signs. I noted months before my diagnosis a slight weakness and fatigue in my left leg, where turning and balancing became more difficult and wobbly in comparison to the solidity on my right leg. But since it didn’t actually hurt, I attributed it to, “Oh, my right leg is just stronger," and "I’m just tired.” I didn’t talk to anyone about it because I didn’t think anything was wrong, and I just continued putting hours into dance without taking any more rest than I had before.

So there I was, senior year, with tendonitis in two places on the same leg, with the same intense dance schedule and the added stress of college applications. Not a great time for me. At the athletic trainers counsel, I revised what I did in dance class and spent a lot of time icing my Achilles and knee. I just wanted to enjoy my last year of dance and high school, tendonitis-free, so I did whatever was prescribed.

Another difficulty of tendonitis: once you have it, it is extremely difficult to fully return to normal. It isn’t like a sprain or a break where a unusual action or movement makes a sudden change; tendonitis builds from months and years of daily activity, where overuse is routine. I iced and iced my Achilles and knee, I sat out of combinations and rehearsals, I stretched more frequently than I had in the past, but nothing. Yeah, the ice and rest would numb the pain a little, but the minute I started using my leg again, the pain would return like an unnecessary movie sequel.

I was frustrated. Why, with me doing exactly what I was supposed to, were no improvements made? I had to accept the half-life I led, where I only participated up to a certain point in classes and walked about feeling uneven and hampered. I never stopped treatments or visiting the athletic trainers, but I finished out the year feeling incomplete and gypped of my "last dance."

So I went home for the summer, slightly depressed and worried I’d carry this injury with me the rest of my life, where I stayed until this school year started at UNC. During those three months at home, I consulted my dad. My dad is the athletic trainer at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, and a certified EMT and kinesiologist. Kinesiology, the study of the mechanics of body movements, is a requirement for most athletic science programs these days, however unlike a lot of athletic trainers, my dad didn’t study kinesiology to acquire a certificate for a degree. He trained in kinesiology for the sake of learning kinesiology and helping others. While kinesiology is now fairly mainstream, my dad is knowledgeable in more obscure, less accepted ideologies and practices. Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture greatly influenced him, both of which rely heavily on the basis of meridians existing within the body that connect seemingly separate body parts to each other. All is one, and one is all, so to speak.

I know those deeply rooted in western medicine may dismiss this as bogus and unscientific, and I don’t blame you. There are countless treatments and practices that truly are gigantic hoaxes, luring people in with outrageous promises and snatching away their money. But what my dad does is not a hoax, and he has absolutely no marketing skill or motivation. He just wants to help people feel better. Maybe right now there is not much scientific data backing it, but as someone who thinks logically and is generally suspicious of most claims, I can confirm from personal experience that what he does real and monumentally helpful.

So I relayed to my dad the extent of my injuries and what I’d been doing to combat them, and he did a variety of muscle tests to gather some insight on what was going on. What did he find? Yes, the pain resided in my Achilles and my knee, but they were not the problem. The problem a tight psoas. The psoas (pronounced so-as) is a deep muscle running from the top of the leg to the abdomen, generalized as part of the “hip flexor.” Since my left psoas was so tight, the top of my leg functioned improperly and dragged the rest of my leg muscles with it, like my quadricep, gluteus medius, and gastrocnemius. Essentially, the most vital muscles of my leg were either inactive or overly active, and this imbalance manifested as tendonitis in my two joints.

My dad gave me a psoas release (which I hope you never have to endure, for it is the coming of Satan) and prescribed some stretches and exercises to limber up my psoas. It wasn’t an immediate change; pain lingered in my ankle and knee and returned depending on my activity for the day. But now, some five or six months later, I rarely feel pain in my Achilles and knee. Am I completely better? No, and I still have to stretch my psoas every day, but compared to when I was icing every night and sitting out of things, I feel like I could run a marathon (okay, maybe not that good).

So, we arrive at The Point.

In my experience, it seems that we (the human race) prefer to take the quick fix to the obvious issue. Where there’s pain, we put an ice bag to numb it. This works in the short term and pacifies for a little while, but it is only temporary, and the issue will one day rise up red and inflamed again. Partially this may be laziness, and partially our perception of the problem is only a symptom of a larger hidden issue. Maybe we don’t want to look upstream, or maybe we don’t know to. Either way, without searching and looking deeper, a problem will continue indefinitely. With tunnel vision, we miss the signs that could lead us to the root. Then, once we know the source of the dilemma, we have to persevere in addressing the real problem instead of hanging back and counting on a easy solution. No important issue can be solved in a quick trick, and if we refuse to put in the effort, the injury will never truly heal.

No one deserves a lifetime of hobbling on damaged joints.