Musicians with Dystonia Bulletin Board

I think you're right there are many types off dystonia. It seems writers cramp is not really very similar to most musician's dystonia at all. And right hand and left hand dystonian seem to very different. But within groups there's massive consistency. For example, most string players, if they have left hand problems, do seem to have the problem centred on their ring finger (so you're 'special'!) I'm guessing that we could probably do with really focused discussions (bewteen pianists - between string players left hand ring finger problems etc). It seems to me that the general nature of the problem is fairly well understood, but recovery is about details and that's where treatment falls apart. Hence the value of this board (and chatting over a beer - cheers, guitarist, it's the only thing I'm missing in Vancouver!).

You say there's more to it than reorganising the sensory map. Possibly, but I think all the things you mention are important in being able to reorganise the sensory map. As I understand it we're trying to come up with exercises that create new pathways at the expense of the dystonic ones. This is crazily complicated. We have to come up with excercises which are sufficiently different from the old ways of playing not to reproduce the 'bad' pathways, but sufficiently similar so that in increasing the representation of them on the brain they co-opt the neighbouring neural resources responsible for the 'bath' pathways. All the things you talk about are useful for this.

This brings me on to the piano. My 'recovery' if I can call it that yet, started with the piano. The piano is brilliant as there are so many ways of playing it (finger, wrist, hand positions that are possible) unlike, say the violin - once your elbow is in the right place, your fingers above the strings etc - you don't get many degrees of freedom on a violin. But also, as you say, you must keep your fingers separate, the faintest of touch means the brain is not learning to do these movements by itself. By the way, I made a lot of progress playing the violin like a cello - presumably you'd do yerself some damage trying the reverse with a cello - but how about trying the viola (still big intervals) ???

And Yes, i think the 'discovery' part is crucial. Although my treatment with Candia didn't work, I don't think he's wrong about anything important. The problem was that I just didn't know my problem well enough. I caught the problem early and stopped playing until I got treatment. I thought at the time this was good, but I'm not sure. The point is you have to know exactly what your problem is before the exercises make sense. It's often the case that people who have recovered say they spent about 6 years working out their problem then recovered in 6 months- and that if they'd known what they know they know now they'd have recovered more quickly. I'm not sure. May be you have to let it get bad to be intouch with exactly what the problem is - speculation on my part though....

One last thing. You talk about your fingers doing the right or wrong thing. I think I know what you mean. But I think there's an important point here too. I don't think treatment initially makes you play the 'right' way at all - and trying to play the 'right' way can be a mistake. You are essentially trying to create pathways which allow you to play (kind of) without reproducing the bad pathways. But this may involve really daft ways of playing, which are not musical etc. But then when the old pathways are 'killed off' you can hopefully go back to playing in the way you used to. This seems to be the experience of people I've met who have 'completely' recovered. And it is in keeping with Candia's ideas about it all.

Sorry, more sprawling, blah, than intended. All the best.

Clive