Somatic Awareness

Senior contributing editor Prego de Nada penned an essay all the way back in Season 1 called Ganja Golf, and is now back with another essay on the game of golf, with a deeper discussion on the topic of somatic awareness and how it is that cannabis can help you improve somatic awareness if you use it systematically for practice.

You might want to give it a try, and Prego's advice can steer you right.

Transcript

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 Somatic Awareness

Good day to you, and welcome to Fascinating!  I am your host Rik, from Planet Vulcan.  My ongoing mission on Planet Earth:  to plant seeds of a way of thinking, a way that is based on an understanding of evolutionary processes, with the ultimate aim of helping to sustain and increase the momentum of Earth’s long arc towards prosperous and happy societies, founded on ideals of liberty and justice.

 Senior contributing editor Prego de Nada, a lifelong user of and advocate for cannabis, has continued to study and contemplate the herb and its effects, and now has more to say about this marvelous gift nature has given to Earthlings.  

 Prego previously wrote an essay called Ganja Golf in Season One, and another called Buddhist Golf in Season Three.  He proposes to draw some further broad lessons from the specifics of the game of golf.

 Prego writes:

 People who do not play golf say things like “it’s so silly, knocking a ball about a pasture with a stick”; or as Mark Twain described it, “it’s a good walk spoiled”; George Carlin, a particularly vicious critic of the game, described it as a nonsensical idle pastime with no value, pursued by the most execrable people on Earth – businessmen (gasp).  And he claimed golf courses were taking up valuable land that could otherwise have been used for housing the homeless.

 Robin Williams did an especially amusing sendup of the game which you can find on YouTube videos, and I wholeheartedly recommend watching them.  Search “Robin Williams – Golf”.

 People who do play golf, particularly those who are avid about the game and play it well, which describes me, will tell you that devoting the time and effort it takes to achieve skill in this game can create value on many levels besides the mere pleasure of playing.

 The way that the game is laid out, and the way that it is scored, takes your mind on a potentially fruitful journey, as you progress from the drive, which rewards power, to a series of shorter shots where accuracy is increasingly demanded and rewarded.

 As you play you learn about how to deal with risk – when it is better to take it on, and when it is better to play it safe.  To make a good decision, with “good” objectively determined by the results, you must assess your own capabilities and the probability you will succeed, the amount of potential upside if you do succeed, and the amount of potential downside if you miss.

 Life is eventually going to give each of us, one way or another, lessons in how to deal with risk, because you probably cannot avoid risk all your life, and you will learn that efforts to avoid the downsides will limit the upsides along with it – that’s just the way it works.

 And the most difficult rule for most people to follow:  count every stroke and mark it down – no do-overs.  Following this rule strictly forces you to face physical and psychological reality.

 And how much better to learn a lesson by playing a game than by facing severe real-life consequences?  The game will teach you the life-lessons while limiting the damage you will face; play the game the way a kitten pounces, because it’s fun. I invite you to have a listen to my podcast essay from earlier this season about the Natural History of Fun.

 The game of golf will incentivize you to maintain physical fitness, and especially to develop somatic awareness and sensory integration, which are valuable capabilities pretty much whatever you are doing.

 You have to develop accuracy.  To be accurate you must be precise, and precise here has a specialized definition; it is not just another way of saying “accurate” – the two labels are not interchangeable.

 Accuracy boils down to closeness to the target.  Precision boils down to the repeatability of your swing, especially at the moment where the clubface impacts the ball.  And the insight that comes from this framing tells you what you need to do to achieve accuracy, which is to work on your precision.

 And now we are prepared to discuss how to employ cannabis to help you work on your precision.  What should you expect and what should you not expect from cannabis use?

 The major thing NOT to expect is to perform better while you are stoned – you cannot just toke up and expect to play better.  My experience has been that on average I play my best when I am not stoned.

 Being stoned, the colloquial term for what we might refer to as the acute stage of the cannabis high, has its greatest potential value not while you are playing, but while you are practicing, because of its ability to enhance proprioception and thus overall somatic awareness.

 Proprioception is the body’s internal awareness of itself and its movement in space.

 A chronicle of my own experience, though admittedly a small sample size, can illuminate this discussion.

 I first began playing the game as a lad of ten.  My brother Stefano, age eleven, and I would go with our Dad and his friends to the Maple Valley Golf Club in Renton WA.  Stefano and I were both gifted with better-than-average natural athletic ability, even if not among the most gifted.  We quickly caught on the game and began to break 90 before long.

 However, for both of us this level of play became a plateau.  We played well enough to enjoy the game, but our respective performances were nothing to write home about, and we played the game at this level for much of our adult lives.

 I was in my early fifties when my wife bought me a series of five lessons from a pro, my one and only set of such lessons.  The most important lesson I learned from the pro was about timing, which specifically means the coordination of the upper body and lower body rotations.  

 I had also acquired a computer golf program.  In that day the technology was not all that impressive, but the game was good enough to portray certain features of the game effectively.  I was routinely carding scores in this game in the 60’s and low 70’s, and it occurred to me that I might be capable of playing to that level in real life.  Before that, for some reason, I had just accepted my then-current skill level as an upper limit on what I was capable of.

 So I set out to improve my game, motivated not so much by the prospect of the achievement alone, but even more strongly motivated by the prospect of the greater amount of fun you experience when you hit better shots.  

 In addition to marking my score, I began keeping a record on each scorecard of the number of “deeply satisfying shots” – DSS’s.  A shot would qualify as deeply satisfying if the swing was smooth, I ended up in balance, the ball was well struck, and the flight path was at least close to what I had envisioned.  Most days I would record at least a dozen DSS’s during the round, even if the score was mediocre, and on an especially good day I would have more than twenty.

 I recommend adopting this practice, using whatever definition of DSS works for you.  Not only does the practice condition you psychologically when you focus on the pleasure, but it allows you to continue to enjoy the round even if you have got off to a bad start.  Some people deflate after a bad start and think their day is ruined because a low score is now out of reach, but you can always hit another DSS and still salvage some pleasure from the rest of the round.

Interestingly and somewhat surprisingly, the evidence shows that professional golfers are more strongly motivated by avoiding bad shots than by achieving good shots; but I think for an amateur it’s more enjoyable to focus on the rewards.

 I believe that marking DSS’s helped a lot with my improvement, just realizing that even for me the possibility of improvement was there, as long as I focused on the process rather than on the results.  If you hit more DSS’s, and if you can putt, your score will improve.  

 I lived in Honolulu at the time, and I had gradually hooked up with an extended group of golf buddies, amiable companions who shared a love of the game.  I was playing two or three times per week, and practicing at the range as well.  We played all over the island on many different fine courses, and we paid the kamaaina (resident) rate, less than half of what visitors pay.

 During practice, I focused on every successful golfer’s aim, which is to groove the swing.  And I started practicing all of my strokes, including the putts, in a botanically enhanced state.  I soon discovered that for me at least, the botanical enhancement made me more somatically aware due to the enhanced proprioception.  And this is exactly what you need if you are trying to achieve precision, which is the same thing as repeatability, what we call a groove.

 I would like to relate to you excerpts from an extended conversation I had with my chatbot about cannabis and proprioception, in the hope you yourself might benefit from hearing “How I Did It”.  

 I began the conversation with a query about enhanced proprioception, and asked why I had seldom heard or read anything by other cannabis advocates which claimed that enhanced proprioception was one effect of cannabis use.

 My first query was, “I often use cannabis for workouts.  It gives me enhanced proprioception which I find to be very helpful in both strengthening and stretching.  But I don’t often hear cannabis advocates mentioning this feature.  Could it be that not everyone is affected the same way I am?”

 The bot replied with words to the effect that proprioception can overlap with heightened body awareness, attention and sensory integration.  THC affects several brain systems involved in perception and motor control, so it is quite plausible that its subjective effect on these systems differs substantially from person to person.

 It went on to state that the limited amount of research that has been conducted about the measurable effects of cannabis does not show any improvement in objective measures of balance and motor control, and actually showed a very slight decrease in physical coordination, and a greater tendency to sway.

 The one study I did find, conducted by Bess Bloomer, then at the Indiana University and now a PhD candidate at San Diego State University, did note a significant increase in noticing among a study group consisting of frequent users, although they were not stoned at the time of the testing.

 The bot went on to point out that there is more to it than what these measurements focused on, particularly, to my interest, subjective body awareness, which could very easily somehow be positively affected even when measured performance and motor coordination had been slightly degraded.

 I then told the bot that I could present supporting objective evidence of personal benefit, all factors considered, by reference to what happened to my golf handicap.  Prior to my getting “bit” again by the game in my early fifties, I had for decades been carding scores in the 80’s; but within about two years of my quest for improvement, I began routinely carding scores in the 70’s.  

 I’ll never forget my first 71, on the par 70 Ala Wai course.  That was with a totally unnecessary bogey on the last hole occasioned by a poor shot choice, where a par would have given me an even-par round.

 My one and only under-par round, a 71 on the par 73 on the Ewa Villages course (with a double-bogey on the 18th hole), took place on a Saturday after having had a particularly good enhanced practice session the day before.  Every part of my game was on, at the range and on the course, and I had the most amazing feeling that I could hit the ball exactly how I visualized it.  This feeling lasted until my drive on the 18th hole, which ended up on a hillside with the ball above my feet, and I pulled my approach shot into a hazard to the left of the green.  I salvaged a double-bogey and the under-par round.  A par would have given me a four-under-par round of 69.

 The bot reported that the major reduction I had achieved in my handicap could very likely be due to improvements in learning and motor calibration, an effect of being stoned. And this translated into better performance when I was straight, even though the performance quite likely would have been negatively impacted by playing stoned, as opposed to practicing stoned, an evaluation confirmed by my personal experience.

 It went on to explain that the game of golf is extraordinarily dependent on sensory integration, proprioception, balance, muscle tension and fine motor adjustments.  If cannabis made me unusually attentive to those sensations, I might have been able to experiment with and learn movements more effectively during practice, and the improvement remained afterward while playing without the enhancement.

 I then reported to the bot that in addition to the altered physical sensations, I found that being stoned also stimulated my thinking, and took it to places I probably wouldn’t have discovered without the enhancement; and that this effect reinforced the sensory effects on my quest for “the groove”.

 The bot summarized as follows:  What you are describing sounds less like “cannabis made my motor system better” and more like “cannabis changed the quality of the feedback loop through which I learned the movement”.

 It also said that perhaps the thought stimulation was due to removal of inhibitions, and that this was what allowed my mind to discover new ideas.  I’m not so sure that is the real explanation, however.   My own subjective experience makes me suspect that there is more than that going on, that the better explanation is that something is stimulated rather than that something is suppressed.  

 And let’s note that alcohol consumption likewise lowers inhibitions, and the salutary effects of being stoned are not in evidence when tipsy.

 Perhaps future research will shed more light on this question.

 The bot added: “There’s also a nice distinction between performance enhancement and learning enhancement.  Someone can be worse at executing a skill while stoned but nevertheless find the altered state useful for exploring possibility space and acquiring a skill.  That’s a considerably different proposition from the often-heard, but not proven, “cannabis makes me perform better” claim.

 It went on to say it could very well be that, rather than improving the accuracy of my proprioceptive system, it could instead be that it amplifies the conscious salience of proprioceptive information that is ordinarily always present but largely below the threshold of attention.  In other words, I can feel things about my movement while stoned that I normally don’t notice, and those sensations helped me to discover ideas about how to change the movement, as well as adding to my ability to monitor the sensations in real time.

 So all of this describes the path I followed to reach an improved, and thus more enjoyable and satisfying golf experience, and you might wish to give it a try. 

 Cannabis is not for everyone, of course, especially not for someone in their teens whose brain is still developing.

 And botanical enhancement with cannabis will also reveal to you things about your own mind that you are not normally aware of, and this is a reason to be cautious because you might not enjoy it.  It’s an important point, because many people are under the impression that cannabis makes you experience certain things, when it’s closer to the truth to say that it just brings things that were already there beneath the surface into conscious awareness.  

 You might for example have heard someone say that smoking pot makes them feel paranoid.  It doesn’t.  It just reveals the nature of the thought processes that are already there, beneath the surface of conscious awareness.

 So I do not recommend using cannabis if you really seriously cannot handle the psychological discomfort that might possibly accompany it.  On the other hand, you might profit from asking yourself why the discomfort is there in the first place.  And don’t let fear get the best of you and stop you from pursuing the rewards.

 Thanks to Prego for this essay.

 I invite you to have a listen to the next Fascinating! podcast and a look at the next video on our YouTube channel.  You can find access to all podcasts and videos on our web page, fascinatingpodcast.com.

 Please recommend Fascinating! to your friends if you find the lessons from nature in these essays personally valuable.

 Theme music:  Helium, with thanks to TrackTribe.

 Live long and prosper.

 Practice the art of winning without defeating anyone.

 Savor your experiences.

 Treasure your memories.

 Anticipate a happy and rewarding future.

 And respect nature’s wisdom.