Hi everyone! This is Antonio from Italy 
I’m left hand and I started to play guitar at 14 yo but 5 years ago I began to have hand problems. Irregular movements and stiffening. I have problems writing and doing other daily activities. I did electromyography and it was all right. So I decided to hold the guitar as right-handed. things are better and the advice is to copy the gestures of others. Sufferers can also be followed by Joaquin Farias or Joaquin Fabra. I hope I have been helpful to those who suffer from dystonia. Hello everyone!
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Welcome and Well done for trying again - different handed no less! Not sure I would have that kind of resolve.
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Welcome, thanks for joining the forum! Glad to hear it seems the hand problems have improved. We have some other discussion of dystonia, and our interview with Terry Syrek may be of interest as well. See here to search for those topics: https://forum.troygrady.com/search?q=dystonia
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Hi Antonio! Hopefully I can be of some help. I was diagnosed with FD around 2012. My symptoms were considered mild for the condition. It’s been a long journey but I would say of the last few years I consider myself cured in that, I can practice freely whatever I want and don’t feel inhibited by any symptoms. I still rely a lot on right hand tapping technique in the kind of licks Greg Howe and Michael Romeo popularized, and really kinda went with that and made it “my” thing. If I need to express “shred!!” This is how I do it now. My overall left hand speed isn’t quite what it used to be, I’ve had to slowly build that back up, but I’m at the point where I can comfortably execute Iron Maiden/classic style solos, and even some trickier ones by guys like Schenker, Roth, Friedman etc.
In fact I would credit my journey with FD as how I came to appreciate the more classic metal soloists and feel that by skipping those guys and going right into shredders, I missed a huge building block in learning how to phrase melodically and how to use relatively cliche licks that are actually really kind of the foundation upon which all the more advance stuff is based.
Anyway, recovery is part physical and a huge part mental. The mental might be more important in some cases. I trained with a fellow named Jerald Harscher who runs the www.thepoisedguitarist.com. I would wholeheartedly advise contacting him. He approached my recovery through teaching me body mapping principles (similar to Alexander technique) and more recently, approaching FD as not dystonia at all, but as mind/body syndrome in which past trauma triggers unwanted muscle tension (this is the same premise that Joachim Fabra uses to treat his patients). I would say the physical remapping of how I approach the instrument was a huge chunk, but addressing the mental side is what started putting the final nails in the coffin, so to speak.
Don’t give up. Find creative ways to work with what you’re able to do, and just know it’s entirety possible to recover!
this is very encouraging to read. thanks for sharing
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