Abstract

Introduction: Among the everyday musicians’ playing-related pain and injury, musculoskeletal disorders (tendonitis, tenosynovitis), nerve-related symptoms (carpal tunnel, thoracic outlet syndrome), performance anxiety, and task-specific focal dystonia, the latter of which is the least understood by the performing artists and healthcare professionals. Neurophysiological evidence has demonstrated that extensive training and excessive practice can yield maladaptive changes in specific neural networks, leading to task-specific focal dystonia. We encountered four musicians affected by task-specific focal dystonia among skilled musician samples in our hand biomechanics study (N=31) and School of Music-sponsored Musician Triage (N=6). Mindfulness training with biomechanical and ergonomic pedagogy has shown promise in modifying neurological behavior patterns. In this chapter, we document the progressive effects of mindfulness mental training and mind-body integrative pedagogy in rehabilitating two dystonic musicians, whose subjective lived experience and the pedagogue’s interactive observations are structured into Varela’s phenomenological narrative and create intersubjective and communal validation.

Approach: The sessions include deep breathing, in-the-moment focus, anatomical and proprioceptive awareness, and deliberate slow playing. They also apply hand biomechanics and the finger-walk technique, an ergonomic technique. 

Results: Musicians showed progress in rehabilitation after a few sessions. Sustained and permanent behavioral change will require extended second-person neurophenomenological retraining to increase awareness and proprioception.

Implication:  Our experience of fully restored playing in a few sessions may require a more extended period of the two-person method to sustain the mind-body behavior pattern. A third-person method using an external feedback device that sends signals to muscle-brain activity can strengthen long-term neurophenomenological change.  We further imply in an environment where musician curricula are quantity-oriented with little focus on proprioceptive qualitative awareness, the phenomenological process developed in our dystonic rehabilitation process would work well in preventive training for all healthy musicians at the collegiate pre-professional training.