Arsenal And The Sleepwalking Striker
Step back. Don’t focus. Look away
I saw a documentary about the brain. There was a section where sleepwalker’s were filmed wandering about their homes, cooking food and talking. The frontal cortex (rationality) and hippocampus (memory) are fast asleep, but the limbic region (emotions) and an area of the cortex (motor activity) are wide awake. Essentially, the body has escaped the shackles of conscious control and is able to engage with the world solo.
There are literally thousands of “computations” happening in parallel all the time in your brain. From basic mechanical control to analysing and interpreting data from the outside world. The brain is on full steam ahead, all the time. Conscious intervention is unnecessary in most of what you’re getting up to. Instead, consciousness magics up the subjective experience of being you. Your ego then takes possession of all these systems happily working away in the “background” and renames the whole process “I”. Consciousness creates a coherence in your experience. The same “you” wakes up in the morning that went to bed the night before.
Although in the case of the sleepwalkers, another “you” wakes up and starts getting on with things, while the “you” of which “you” are conscious, is still fast asleep and not participating in the nightly activities.
I started wondering what the feeling of being a sleepwalker was like. Who was wandering around the home at night, cooking food and talking? Was there a sense of self? Did the sleepwalker feel like a different person than the waking fully conscious being? Who was this person with agency that can take over and start captaining the ship?
There are hundreds of millions of years of evolution packed into your body. Most evidence seems to suggest that complex conscious experience of modern humans is relatively recent. I might ask who is this newcomer “I” that has recently barged aboard and commenced captaining the ship with an arrogant belief that there was no ship to captain before they came aboard. But as sleepwalker’s reveal, the Body is pretty good at merrily sailing along without Captain Consciousness’s somewhat self-important intervention.
And then I started thinking that Consciousness and the Body might not always be on the same wavelength. Could it be possible for a conflict to occur between the desires of the conscious mind and the needs of the body? Or, conversely, when they are on the same wavelength, what might that feel like?
I’ve talked about flow in professional footballers before. They describe Flow as feeling an experience of separation, a kind of dislocation from themselves where they drift off and witness their own actions without conscious intervention. Almost as if their conscious selves have done all the important social work of becoming a professional footballer, and can now take a step back and allow the deep evolutionarily infused processes to get on with things like playing football, cooking food or talking. Teams can even experience Meta Flow, where the whole team syncs together in a symphony of unconscious togetherness.
And, of course, there are those other days. Where nothing goes right, almost as if there were an a un-synced conflict between the conscious mind and the processing body. There’s a little tension in the room. And it might not be obvious. You might feel great and ready and up for it. But the body just won’t play ball. The timing is off, the touch a little leaden, the reflexes a little damp There’s a gap between plan and outcome and consequently the conscious mind steps in to take control. Except this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Because consciousness doesn’t have the skills for the engine room. It can’t get its hands dirty. The best thing for Captain Consciousness to do is to make room for the body and get out of the way. Calm things down. Have a little mindfulness (or mindemptyness?).
This mind-body conflict might explain those weird days where things go awry and there’s no explanation (that first half against Chelsea?). Or the seemingly out-of-the-blue drop in form that strikes every single footballer ever (Ødegaard right now?). The solution to these off-days might be the opposite of what we think. Step back. Don’t focus. Look away. Don’t try harder. Try less. Let the body have the space it needs to do its thing in peace. Stop doing. Try just being. Pay attention. Listen but don’t comment.
And then, thankfully, sometimes you get those dovetailing delicate days where everything slots into place. Eddie’s hat trick days. The first and third goals the ultimate examples of thinking less and being more. If Eddie was sleepwalking, those goals were scored by the midnight marauder. They were the body in fine fettle. Instinctual moves and strikes. The first touch for the first goal can’t be thought through in real time. It can’t even be learnt. It can only be practiced a million times until finally it’s ready to perform on its own, when it’s in the mood. I wonder whether Eddie needs to get out of his own head more. Let the midnight marauder take over a little more often.
Maybe confidence is an example of body and mind in balance, complementing (and complimenting) each other. Although, as confidence is always more of a feeling than a rationalisation I wonder (like most things) if the body isn’t actually the more influential partner in the partnership? Whatever the case, when flow happens and confidence reigns the football is brilliant. In both the second half of the Sheffield match and the Seville game I saw that confidence flowing (I even felt it, infectious stuff confidence, people call it a mindset, maybe it’s a body-set). A lot of quality and composure. A lot of time and patience. Just like you might feel after a good nights sleep.
On a final (and not narratively flowing) point. So good to see ESR get a start. Now there’s a player who lets his body get on with things. A player who floats about, his body seemingly liberated from his mind, free from the weight of thought, instinctual. And Tomi getting his first goal for Arsenal. It’s the stuff dreams are made of!
So there you go Wonderlanders. I hope you enjoyed this weeks AW. And just a little reminder about The Crow. If you want to have a free 3 months following The Crow then just email me and I’ll sort it out for you. Why not give it a go?). Have a great week and sleep well.
Loved this one. “Consciousness doesn’t have the skills for the engine room.” Indeed!