It's great to see there are more and more fellow musicians here who have recovered already. I have read as many personal recovery stories here as I could and the common point seems to be the idea of letting go; that is not forcing and interfering but allowing the correct muscle control to unfold. I wonder if anyone here would agree with me in that it should only be introduced after some time only. I think it is important to first identify the dystonic and compensating fingers, find uneccessary tension, learn to relax the muscles, and re-learn to move the correct ones; and only then learn to let go. To me recovery exercises are physical exercises - I would even say mere technical exercises, where muscle awareness is of vital importance until it becomes semi-automatic. Then we need to learn letting go simply by applying the fresh info until it becomes natural; thus it is learnt. I teach jazz and improvisation and it is the same process: learn theory, learn to hear the chords and melodies, apply the rules and after a while all you have to do is forget all and just make music.
So to sum up timing I think is vital. Starting out with letting go instead of understanding what is going on tension-wise first may possibly end in repeating the same dystonic movements over and over and feedign the problem this way.
Would you agree?
