Musicians with Dystonia Bulletin Board

I hope you are well, I know you have been a long time vistor to this forum.

Let me clarify - when I say normally, I mean having the intention to play normally, not necessarily at full speed. In fact, in the beginning my playing was quite slow and still is to some extent. The temptation when you have FD is to adapt your movements to compensate for the lack of control. This distorts the natural feedback mechanism of the motor cortex and makes it worse.

Initially Prof Fabra suggested one hour per day but as you get used to the technique, the only criteria is that you "feel" OK. In other words, if your state of mind is good then playing all day is fine. If you are getting frustrated then the only solution is to stop, if only for 5 mins.

Your final point is where it gets tricky. Yes, I initially thought as you do that if I let my finger (it's my 4th fretting finger that's the problem) curl in and still continue the movements with my other fingers then I would be reinforcing the FD. However, what makes a vital difference is your internal reaction to the feeling in your fingers. If you are honest with yourself, I am betting deep down you feel a tiny fear reflex just as your finger starts it's journey. It's this fear reflex that feeds the FD by releasing adrenalin and reinforces the contraction. The result is that our subconcious is programmed with the wrong message and stupidly replays this whenever it gets the "playing the guitar/piano/flute etc" stimulus.

The idea is that we block out this fear reflex by NOT REACTING IN ANY WAY emotionally to the fact our fingers are not doing what we ask. We simply accept the dystonic movement and remain passive whilst continuing to intend the correct movement with our concious mind AS IF WE CAN PLAY NORMALLY. In other words, we are training our mind to simply DO again and not to TRY. I know it sounds a little Zen like but moving your finger up and down is a simple thing and you already know how to do it. We have sabotaged that simplicity by over thinking our movements. The act of moving a finger has now become a concious one instead of an unconcious one.

Now if your finger starts to contract really strongly to the point of cramp then of course, stop and relax. Then simply continue with the stategy.