Intuition in Sport and Therapy

[Guest guest]

Now and again we encounter views either supporting or denigrating the

possible role of 'intuition' in the therapeutic or training setting, some of

it being over-enthusiastically focused on 'psychic' or 'mystical' processes.

Unfortunately, this tends to deny or deride the possibility that intuition

might play a significant role in rehabilitation or sports training.

Consequently, 'rubber-stamp' prescriptions or highly logical and

deterministic schemes such as quantitative periodisation become the norm.

INTRODUCTION

Where intuition has been denigrated, it has occurred in a setting in which

intuition was defined as something akin to a vague 'feeling' which usually

runs counter to 'rational' or scientific deduction from certain observed

facts.

In cases where intuition was supported, anecdotal evidence of it being

successful in diagnosis or treatment was often proferred.

TERMINOLOGY

This suggests that greater clarity of terminology and phenomenology (and

possibly 'noumenology' or mind stuff, also) needs to be sought to minimise

future conflict.

The renowned psychologist Carl Jung categorised human behaviour in terms of

factors including Feeling, Intuiting, Sensing and Knowing (Thinking or

Cognition), so the problem is by no means new. Polarisation of thinking and

reasoning has long been an issue with philosophers, and only with the

advent of modern physics has there been a much wider acceptance of

relativistic, non-el (non all-or-nothing), non-Aristotelian, fuzzy, chaotic,

probabilistic processes in life. Ideas such as a clear dichotomy of

left-right brain function, however, have tended to remain exclusive and

polarised, as if concurrent and chaotic processes are not the way which the

barin uses to operate.

INTUITION AS A FINAL STAGE

The sooner this vestigial concept is modified the better, because the

successful operation of at least one type of intuition may be explained by

different concurrent or opportunistic processes in the brain. Thus,

intuition may well be the final 'eureka' stage (identified by Archimedes

when he was the first nude scientist discovering his famous laws of

hydrostatics in his bathtub!) which emerges after a good deal of perfectly

rational observation, learning, attempted deduction, preliminary analysis,

peer discussion, drawing, writing and relaxing had taken place.

This type of intuition as the final stage of several other contributory

events is reasonable and often even likely, if one studies books such as

Koestler's 'Act of Creation'. Thus, we can deduce that intuition is not

necessarily some type of 'spook' or paranormal sense - it might be just

another way in which problems happen to be solved in the brain. Sometimes

the connections between preceding events on the way to the final solution may

be so vague as to make the final outcome seem miraculous and even psychic.

At other times, the answer emerges sequentially and tediously (at times) from

strict adherence to the well-organised, sequential scientific method.

TYPES OF INTUITION

So, we might look at intuition as occurring in several different forms:

1. Intuition occurring within as the apparently disconnected and irrational

outcome of several perfectly logical other processes within the person.

Phases of relaxation, meditation or distraction to other events may enhance

this process.

2. Intuition apparently emerging from something outside the person, like

some voice or instruction from the 'gods' or spirit guides or whatever we may

choose to label these exogenous advisers

3. Intuition as some sort of vague feeling preceded by little or no

rational information - a sort of supersensory awareness of things beyond our

'normal' senses. This may or may not be due to the subliminal operation and

interaction between subtle cues coming from the 'normal' senses. Phases of

sensory overload, underload or confusion may also enhance this process.

APPLICATIONS OF THIS CLASSIFICATION

Of all these possibilities, therapists would probably have most difficulty in

accepting the 2nd type of intuition and this para-religious realm of

possibility will continue to provoke endless conflict which will rarely

produce any real changes in physical therapy or medicine. The study of the

other two classes of intuition on the basis of neural functioning, on the

other hand, would be more acceptable and should form the basis for making

these types of intuition or creative problem solving more likely and

accurate.

Indeed, increasing numbers of books are being written on the creative

thinking, so-called 'lateral' thinking and 'right brain' thinking (which both

have so many scientific flaws inherent in their analysis and operation),

imagineering, visualisation etc etc, so there certainly is enough interest

out there.

Possibly our Western preoccupation with meticulous, exclusive, limited,

non-overlap language and categorisation has a great deal to do with our

almost reflexive disdain for so-called intuition and 'irrational' methods -

maybe we need to apply a great deal more of the modern work on General

Semantics, Fuzzy Thinking, Chaos Theory, linguistic relativity, quantum

mechanics and so forth to the world of medicine, therapy and sports training.

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Dr Mel C Siff

Denver, USA

Supertraining/