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How Long Will It Take to Resolve Musician’s Dystonia?

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 02:46:11 GMT

The “How Long?” question is frequently one of the first questions many musicians ask after receiving a focal dystonia diagnosis or clarity about symptoms.

T he “How Long?” question is frequently one of the first questions many musicians ask after receiving a focal dystonia diagnosis or clarity about symptoms. Your livelihood, your identity, and your deepest artistic outlet have suddenly been disrupted. It is a completely natural, human response. You want a timeline—a date on the calendar to circle, a finish line to cross so you can get back to "normal."

But if you are on this journey, you quickly realize that focal dystonia does not operate on a standard recovery timeline. It doesn’t heal predictably like a broken bone or a sprained ankle.

Perhaps the better question to ask is this: How much do you want to recover, embrace the learning process, and grow into a freer, more expressive musician?

The Trap of Old Thinking

The brutal truth about musician’s dystonia recovery is that we cannot use the same thinking that got us into this situation to get us out of it.

Take a moment to look back honestly at your relationship with your instrument leading up to the onset of musician’s dystonia. This might include:

Impatience: Driving through physical fatigue to master a passage or a playing technique.
Frantic Push: A constant, anxious pressure to meet rigid performance goals.
Perfectionism: Viewing mistakes as personal failures rather than helpful feedback.
Comparing Ourselves to Others: Worrying constantly about what others think.
Conditional Self-worth: Defining your value as a human being based strictly on musical “achievements.

”This hyper-focused, high-stress approach creates the perfect neurological storm.

And beneath it all are the roots of ego.

If you approach your rehabilitation with that same frantic, impatient, goal-oriented mindset, you will only reinforce the very neural loops that caused the musician’s focal dystonia. You cannot bulldoze your way through neuroplasticity retraining.

Shift from "Fixing" to "Learning

"Recovery requires a radical paradigm shift. You are not a broken machine that needs to be "fixed" so it can return to an old, stressful way of operating. You are an artist embarking on a profound process of re-education. Wondering when this will be over, waiting to feel whole again until you’re recovered, and falling into a victim mindset only get in the way.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Embrace the Neuroplasticity Process

Rewiring the brain requires safety, calm, and consistent, deliberate attention. Eventually, you will experience the new pathway that’s been under construction. This has to happen with the right focus and persistent, insistent effort.

2. Learn to Release the Emergency Brake

Many musicians use far more physical effort than is actually required to play their instrument. Focal dystonia recovery requires you to become an expert in efficiency. You must master dropping unnecessary tension and cultivating a sense of freedom and ease—psychologically and physically—that you likely didn’t have before focal dystonia symptoms became obvious.

Unexpected Gifts

If you treat musician’s focal dystonia purely as an enemy to be defeated, the recovery road will feel long, agonizing, and bitter. But as I’ve learned, if you can accept it as a severe, albeit uninvited, teacher, it can transform you.

Musicians who successfully navigate focal dystonia rarely return to being the same player they were before. They return better. They play with less effort, more resonance, and profound joy and gratitude for the opportunity to share music. They become freer because they had to dismantle the rigid structures—both mental and physical—that were holding them back.

So, how long will it take?

It will take as long as it takes for your nervous system to feel safe again, for you to reprogram brain-muscle communication, and for your mind to surrender the frantic push.

Stop looking at the calendar. Instead, dive headfirst into the learning process. The freedom waiting for you on the other side is truly worth every single patient step!

Rewrite Self-Talk

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:59:44 GMT

Rewrite Self-Talk to Pave the Way for Musician’s Focal Dystonia Recovery

Take stock of how you talk to yourself. Are you an inner critic, or your own inner coach?

Our subconscious mind acts as an objective data recorder. It stores every message we feed it. When we fill our internal dialogue with negativity, unease, and limiting beliefs, our subconscious tends to accept these as facts
When I was in the thick of musician’s dystonia symptoms, my inner critic ran the show. I constantly heard thoughts like:

"Why are you wasting your time? You’ll never get better."
"You’ll never return to performing again."
"This recovery training doesn’t work!"

Some mornings, I felt trepidation about musician’s dystonia training and interacting with my trumpet before I had even gotten out of bed, and was greeted by a barrage of sabotaging thoughts. These fed the anxiety and panic I was experiencing—a dysfunctional pattern that I had unknowingly bought into and was feeding.

When you are rewiring your brain and body, you need all hands on deck and united in your success. Think about your own internal conversations. What do you tell yourself after a “failed” audition? How do you react after a subpar performance? What thoughts pop up when you approach a difficult measure of music that you dread because you don’t believe it will ever feel solid? What do you say to yourself before a musician’s dystonia training session? How about afterwards?

Awareness is the first step to making change, and recognizing my own deep-seated pattern of negative, self-critical chatter marked a major turning point in my recovery journey. To create an optimum learning environment and start calming my nervous system down, I had to intentionally forge a new path. I started monitoring my thoughts throughout the day and used two specific strategies to program a new mindset:
A three-to-one ratio: For every single negative thought I caught—or word I spoke out loud—I deliberately stated three positive things that I could buy into. These were grounding, intentional truths like:

"I am making progress."
"I love the physical feel of the mouthpiece."
"I love sharing music with others."

Visualization: When a destructive thought surfaced, I imagined blowing it up in my mind and watching it drift down in harmless pieces, like a popped balloon. Then, I’d add my three positive thoughts.
You may find other strategies that work best for you. The important thing is to observe what’s happening and implement a plan to change negative dialogue. This has to be approached as technical work that you do anytime, anywhere. The brain would rather stay on the current, aberrant path, which includes the negative thinking that is so often intertwined with other focal dystonia elements.

Once I got the hang of monitoring and revising the critical chatter, I felt a distinct shift. What started as a forced, conscious effort transformed into a natural habit of positive, nurturing self-talk. It was simply a matter of becoming aware of what I was doing and taking action to develop a new dialogue with myself—one that set the stage for learning and recovery.

The Day Greg Spence Blew Everyone Away

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 03:03:38 GMT

The Day Greg Spence Blew Everyone Away

By Peter Owen

Having shared the stage with stars like Shirley Bassey, Michael Buble, Wayne Newton, K. D. Lang and Hugh Jackman, Greg Spence can lay claim to being one of Australia’s finest trumpet players.

You may have seen him on Dancing With The Stars, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, the Logie Awards and Channel 9’s Carols by Candlelight. Greg Spence is trumpeting royalty.

But golf? Well, that’s something entirely different.

Greg, who now lives in a beachside apartment at Coolum after moving from Melbourne, has been a golfer for 35 years – hitting the course only occasionally and, in his own words, playing ‘very crappy’ golf.

When he arrived on the Sunshine Coast, he decided to take the game a little more seriously. He joined Peregian as a Lifestyle member and started practicing. Greg, who teaches trumpet online, has never been afraid to take the path less trod.

A right hander all his life – at all things – Greg decided he would in future play golf left-handed.

He talks about ‘neuroplasticity’ and the brain’s remarkable ability to adapt. When we learn something new, he says, we rewire our brain to adapt to new circumstances. Do it often enough and it becomes automatic.

Greg put it to the test.

Without a coach or anyone to supervise his progress, he daily visited Peregian’s practice range, hitting hundreds of balls – all left-handed – and he gradually honed a new swing.

“I’m absolutely certain my swing now is better than it was when I played right-handed,” he said.

He entered the Sunshine Coast Spring Classic – a 72-hole tournament played across four of the Sunshine Coast’s finest courses – and it was with some trepidation he lined up on the first tee on the first day at Maroochy River.

But he’d played 18 holes of golf every day for a fortnight leading up to the event, launched numerous balls at a screen he’d assembled on his balcony, and he was ready. Greg smashed his first drive down the middle of the fairway and, for the next four hours, showed just how much his brain had adapted.

He returned a score of 40 stableford points – equal with eventual Classic winner Richard Robinson and three more than any other competitor – and was the clear leader of B grade as the players headed for the second day’s play at Twin Waters.

“I didn’t get carried away with my performance at Maroochy River, though I certainly enjoyed playing well,” Greg said. “It’s all part of a six-month project. You have your good days and you have your bad days.”

Greg found out about the bad days when he visited Twin Waters. He managed to accumulate only 20 stableford points, with only one other player recording fewer. He went on to score 24 points at Twin Waters and 19 at Peregian. But Greg was not upset. “This project is an emotional roller-coaster,” he said. “But I believe in it and I’ll stick to it.”

And he can always tell the doubters about the day the trumpeter led the field in the very first Sunshine Coast Spring Classic. Playing left-handed.

This article is an excerpt from Noosa Today