>if your neck gives you problem with the "chording" you use in Emacs (lots of cases with multiple keys pressed down at once), then Vi's modes would be helpful.

If the goal is to eliminate the need to hold down a key while pressing another key, turning on "sticky keys" would a lot easier than adapting to a different text editor.

"Sticky keys" is available as an option (usually accessed via Settings > Accessibility) in OS X, Gnome 2, the Linux console, Windows and probably other environments (though ISTR some bugginess in how it worked in Windows the one time I test-drove it in Windows).

Source: I have been using sticky keys with Emacs (on OS X, Gnome 2 and the Linux console) for the last 15 years or so.