I, like I'm sure many of you dealing with FD, find the harder part of all this is staying positive as you make progress that seems to later just slide back to where you were, or that after many good days of rehab, you still cannot call upon those techniques in the moment.
I've been reading a book on meditation as I'm a bit new to all this and it has been helpful. Many of the tips for freeing you mind are exactly what we need to apply to our condition.
For example, as I struggled through a hard week of rehab last week, I found meditation very difficult, even though it is part of my daily routine for months now. Unfruitful rehab sessions followed. A couple times when I went to play something for a student and my hands simply did not cooperate, I let it get the best of me internally. Of course nothing will work that way.
We know that stress is a major factor for FD, but we cannot always control the shit the life flings at us. It is common to get kicked while you are down. Sleep is also a major factor, which is always related to stress. Two things helped me get back on track:
My buddy Chip who has spasmodic dystonia who I talk to often when things suck, said "of course your rehab is not going well right now. Your whole living situation is in the air that has been stable for 10 years on top your career instability. How could you not be stressed?" Just the simple understanding of my emotional state and stress gave new freedom again to my rehab today. Awareness can easily overcome feelings.
Instead of striving to make progress each day or to play well, we simply need to let go. Really, the only solution is to almost "not care" if we get better. As soon as I let go of any feeling of attachment to the outcome of my practice, my hands flow. Not completely, but convincingly enough to know that if I can keep it up I will fully recover.
Here is an excerpt from the book I've been reading that I found helpful in the chapter titled "The Wisdom of Letting Go":
"For a person with an untrained mind, attention can become entangled by grasping as it moves towards pleasant experience and avoids unpleasant fellings. Notice how you respond when you don't get what you want".
"An unmindful experience of something painful can ignite the underlying tendency to aversion, further conditioning resistance, hatred or fear. And an unmindful encounter with a neutral encounter may trigger the underlying tendency to delusion. Subtle neutrality often goes unnoticed. In the absence of clear attention, preconceived ideas easily distort perception, perpetuating ignorance. Consistent awareness of the present-moment feeling, wedged just between simple contact with a sensory stimulus and the grasping of reaction, can not only cool the agitated mind but also uproot the source from which the suffering springs".
Hope this is helpful for some of you, it definitely got me back on track. Abrazos- E
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