Working in Movement

It's frustrating when your body doesn't do what you want it to. But when you make your living using manual skills that suddenly abandon you, it's more than frustrating: it downright threatening. Focal dystonia poses challenge to Dilbert creator tells the story of cartoonist Scott Adams and his ordeal with focal dystonia, a movement disorder involving involuntary spasms. Adams had always hand-drawn his cartoon strip, so the dystonia was pretty serious business for him. The article describes how Adams used a computer-driven drawing tool to regain his touch and keep the corporate satire coming.

Though Adams' new tool is a computer, part of the novelty of his approach involved using his brain, literally:

"[I figured] if I could find something that allowed me to draw that didn't have the same look and feel to my brain," he said, "my brain would not stop me from doing it."

That is, he sidestepped his habitual drawing into a new situation that his brain doesn't recognize as a habit. Freed from the habitual situation and presented with novelty, Adams' sensory motor system can adapt without automatically triggering the spasms. Hopefully for Dilbert fans, the new approach will continue to work.

Good story with a nice ending. But one of the other things that caught my eye in the article was a quote from Barbara Karp, deputy clinical director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke:

"Sensory training" for focal dystonia patients is a "hot field of interest right now," she said. In some studies, patients are learning to read Braille to retrain the sensory area of the brain that may provide feedback on motor performance. If they can correct the distorted sensory processing, said Karp, they might be able to correct the motor problems.

It's the idea of "distorted sensory processing" and it's relationship to movement that made me take notice. And, in my experience, you don't need to suffer from dystonia or any other disorder to be effected. Just ask the hapless duffer on the golf course if (s)he's really swinging the golf club the way (s)he thinks (s)he's swinging it. I've even heard some golf instructors say "feel isn't real." But you can apply that to almost any sport or almost any movement activity.

Naturally, as a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method, I see similarities between the method and the approach Karp referred to. There's more information on this sort of approach to dystonia. An interesting discussion of the Feldenkrais approach can be found here. How To Resolve Dystonias: A Movement Perspective gets more at the idea of sensory retraining. And the Feldenkrais section of Playing the Piano, Playing with Fire is part of a more comprehensive look at approaches to musical performers' injuries.