Year 6/7 of paralysis recovery has been very exciting. Violin-wise, I'm able to get more "finger-y" when I play--I can concentrate on finer finger movements and feel like the rest of my technique is so solid that these little, quick fingers are just flying around on the fingerboard. That is really cool. In the past week I've also been dancing tango a bunch more than usual ("usual" these days, is almost no tango at all...), and I noticed the same phenomenon: my core strength and gross muscle movement is so smooth now that I can let me feet fly and really be aware of exactly where they are. No more tripping over my own feet, not realizing where they were!
My violin and tango technique are now both better than they were pre-paralysis, so it's hard for me to say whether the new awareness of my extremeties is due to repair of my huge brain lesion or not. Are these totally new pathways I'm creating? Are they repair of existing pathways? Are they pathways that always existed but that I couldn't exercise because I was too occupied with building up large muscle groups? Who knows.
I do know that I continue to struggle with a couple of muscle movements: trills and going down stairs. Soon it will be time to work on those. But for now, I'm loving having near-perfect control and awareness of fingers and feet.