tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4319140166304392809.post7661321004434635198..comments2022-01-12T01:05:14.889-08:00Comments on Living with Embouchure Dystonia: Focal Dystonia is an Emotional Disorder? Since when? (continued)Katie A. Bergløfhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03366656511463644665noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4319140166304392809.post-1994253031104796222012-12-27T22:52:17.018-08:002012-12-27T22:52:17.018-08:00...also wanted to add, that I really enjoyed your ......also wanted to add, that I really enjoyed your comment about balance. I do feel that is very important in recovery too. Balance and moderation in how and what we play. I use to be a high horn player, and I rarely got to balance my use of my low register in my playing. So my embouchure was constantly tense and always playing high up there. And when I got injured, I was at a point where I was so tired, and being overused, and pushed to my limits, but I thought I could handle it. My endurance was gone, and I just thought if I played through it all, I'd get a break eventually and revitalize my face...but that wasn't a good idea. I even asked for a co-principal, and to switch parts when I did feel pushed that far, and I was turned down. I look back often and think, "I should have tried harder to get a co-principal, or lower part, even when told no." I should have argued and told them it was necessary and vital for my health of my playing. I always got the reply, "I don't have anyone else who can do this part." or, "We need you because of this year is the tour." or "We don't have anyone good enough to double your part, there's just not enough players in the studio." and when I did get injured, and my playing went downhill, it still was a very hard fight to get them to understand what I was going through. It was if they never had an injured player before, or heard of one, or never been been through an injury before either. It was frustrating. Katie A. Bergløfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03366656511463644665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4319140166304392809.post-56075855065649375192012-12-27T22:42:32.293-08:002012-12-27T22:42:32.293-08:00Hi Izaac!
Thank you so much for that wonderful p...Hi Izaac! <br /><br />Thank you so much for that wonderful post! I very much enjoy hearing from other musicians with dystonia and their views. I definitely agree and feel along the same lines. I feel after I got injured, it was the only way my body knew how to deal with inflicting pain...to try to avoid it. And even now, after healed, if I irritate the scar tissue too much, my symptoms are worse. I feel like my body natural does this to protect itself from being overused, and because it has been overused so much. I have no doubt that my overuse of my muscles lead to my injury, and the dystonia symptoms. <br /><br />Currently I feel I'm at the stage where long tones benefit me, but in the beginning my muscles couldn't handle it. It made my involuntary contractions worse, so long tones were not doable or helpful. In the beginning, since my muscles tend to contract and pull into a spread smile...or tight muscle formation...I had to focus on relaxing them...playing on a more collapsed embouchure. It was difficult, because the symptoms were bad no matter what I did, but I intuitively and physically felt that I needed to try to play with relaxed muscles...and over time I realized this was more like deprogramming my face...which was necessary. I call it "ironing" out the spasms. I had to stretch them in a relaxed position (kind of like if your muscles in arm are sore, you stretch them before you excersize). Maybe because my face was so use to contracting into a tense position, I needed to do the opposite and stretch them into a relaxed position. By that, I mean a collapsed embouchure. <br /><br />After learning to play on a collapsed embouchure, and eliminating my tonguing (using air/poof attacks instead of tongue articulation), I was slowly able to rebuild muscle groups...just by feeling things out. I always trust my body and try to find the tension and iron it out through exercises that make my embouchure feel like it has more blood circulation running through it...a vitalizing feeling, rather than a worn-out or tense feeling.<br /><br />It's not easy to explain, but I feel like much of my recovery has come from basically deprogramming my embouchure, and slowly reprogramming it just by listening to my body...and my embouchure slowly adapted new muscle movements as I went along. <br /><br />Currently, I feel I have 40-50% of my abilities back. And it is at this stage I now enjoy and can benefit from long tones. I work on them a lot now. Especially since right now one of the areas my symptoms occur in is when I hold out long notes...and I get a spasm here and there the longer I hold out a note. So the long tones help me feel out where it happens, what notes, what register, what position/angle, and I work on holding the note longer every time I play in order to see if I can adjust when the spasm happens or test it. <br /><br />Hope I explained things okay...I typed this really fast. So glad you commented!!! Wishing you the best as well with all you are doing! :-)Katie A. Bergløfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03366656511463644665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4319140166304392809.post-51785872925974800502012-12-21T02:21:57.671-08:002012-12-21T02:21:57.671-08:00Another thing just occured to me. I don't hav...Another thing just occured to me. I don't have experience with focal dystonia in the embouchure, however, consider for a moment that this is a muscular, repetitive stress disorder. I know the doctors want to make it SO much more complicated than this. But just consider for a minute that when you tense up any muscle in your body for long enough for extended periods of time, that it is only natural that the body LEARNS to contract these muscles more frequently and eventually will began to contract them involuntarily. I think this phenomenon is what is at the core of "focal dystonia". But now I'm curious, for my own research, do you find that doing slow and focused exercises like long tones is beneficial to counteracting your sypmtoms or does it make it worse, or have any effect either way?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4319140166304392809.post-46444188651854878862012-12-21T02:04:19.943-08:002012-12-21T02:04:19.943-08:00Dear Katie,
I have been fascinated by this phenom...Dear Katie,<br /><br />I have been fascinated by this phenomenon for a while. I experienced just a few isolated incidents of the symptoms of what doctors have termed Focal Dystonia in the past and it coincided with a number of other physical imbalances. I find your insights to be very much in line with how I perceive this disorder, or imbalance, if you will. We live in a society obsessed with diagnoses and cures. We look at a problem and say, "this is a disease that we must cut out of ourselves" and we can do it if we "find the right medicine". I think that it's much simpler than this, which is not to say that it's easy. From my experience and through my observations it appears to me that "Focal Dystonia" is similar in nature to many other repetitive stress imbalances that many people experience from DOING REPETITIVE ACTIVITIES THAT ARE UN-NATURAL WITHOUT DOING SUFFICIENT BALANCING ACTIVITIES TO COUNTERACT THEM. Sorry for the obnoxious uppercase...lol. Anyway, I think that any musician, athlete, human who engages in prolonged un-natural activites should EXPECT one or more inflamatory conditions to ensue at some point down the line. Of course genetics plays a part, of course there are other aggravators, but the condition itself must be viewed as a fire. Once the fire is ignited, and as long as the fire is still smouldering things like Anxiety, Poor Posture, Muscle Imbalance, Poor Diet, Nutrient Deficiency, etc will be like fuel thrown on the fire. Often times we will observe the way that these AGGRAVATORS effect our condition and then, naturally, blame them as the culprit. But the reality is that the fire started after years and years of repetitve, un-natural activity without ENOUGH balancing activites. Think of practicing an instrument as a bow-drill creating friction and eventually a fire. The key is to put out the fire, and it's not going to be easy, but conceptually it is rather simple. You have to be proactive and artistic in your approach. You cannot expect one single "medicine" to simply "cure" you of something that is not a magical illness that came out of thin air. How many musicians do you know who got focal dystonia early on in their careers? How many office workers do you know who developed severe lower back pain after one day of sitting in front of a computer? How many novelists got carpal tunnel syndrome the first time they typed at a computer? I mean, let's be real here. There's a reason why the "seasoned" musicians get the focal dystonia. I think we would be best served by doing away with the victimizing and stigmatizing labels, and start getting realistic and creative about these chronic conditions. As a culture we need to stop obsessing over diagnoses and cures, and start focusing on balance, what got us where we are in the first place, and what's gonna get us where we want to be. Anyway, I applaud your article. Please feel free to check out my blog. I have some videos up that relate to this subject. I wish you well on your journey to a healthy and fulfilling musical life. <br /><br />Cheers,<br />Izaac<br />www.izaacmusic.wordpress.comAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4319140166304392809.post-14170376127111158612012-05-06T14:32:39.486-07:002012-05-06T14:32:39.486-07:00Sorry I deleted my last comment...my formatting ke...Sorry I deleted my last comment...my formatting kept showing up weird! :)<br /><br />Thanks so much for reminded me of that! I remember reading about it a while back at http://www.dystonia-bb.org/forums/mwd/posts/3284.html .<br /><br /> <br />I added Women's 1-a-day multivitamin supplement to my diet about 4-5 months ago. I am not sure if it has helped me with my dystonia because I've been making good progress already before and after adding it. But it really does make me feel overall physically and mentally better! I have less headaches, less stomach problems, less exhaustion, and less hunger for some reason. <br /><br /><br />The 1-a-day multivitamin supplement has 2mg of B6 and says that's 100% of a daily value. It also has 15mg of Zinc and says that's 100% daily value. It also has about 19 other nutritional vitamins, etc in it. I bought it at Walmart after my boss recommended it to me. She said it made her feel like a new person....and it really does...still shocked at how much energy I have...and 100x that when I exercise.<br /><br /><br />Thanks so much for the comment! I wish you the best on progress with your focal hand dystonia symptoms. I know how you feel...I have a lot of faith and support in anyone who has been coping with this life-changing and grueling neurological disorder while never giving up hope.Katie A. Bergløfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03366656511463644665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4319140166304392809.post-6080769357545845572012-05-04T11:46:52.783-07:002012-05-04T11:46:52.783-07:00I had a bad case of focal dystonia in my left hand...I had a bad case of focal dystonia in my left hand which I partially cured by adding more zinc in my diet. It seems that when you have a low zinc level in your blood due to eating beans, nuts, chocolate, all of which contain phytates which prevent absorption, you get an overload of copper in your blood. I am a flamenco guitarist. But if you are a trumpet player your mouthpiece has copper in it mixed with into the brass. This can raise your copper level. The zinc will remove it....If you go to <br />"Musicians with dystonia bulletin board" under the title posting of:"Rubber band" you can read much more about the zinc cure. There are a few trumpet and trombone players discussing their problem with dystonia and how zinc helped them...It has helped me...You have to take the zinc along with vitamin B-6 on an empty stomach 2 hours before a meal or after for the zinc to be absorbed without being affected by your food......Good luck....MoebiusTripperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12337055254912379208noreply@blogger.com