In order to move efficiently and respond to the demands of skiing, we orient our consciousness partly to our body and partly to our mind. The physician and psychotherapist Alexander Lowen mentioned that this duality is limited only to the conscious because below the level of consciousness we are neither a thinking mind nor a living body but a unit.
Due to its extensiveness, the concept of consciousness cannot be defined in a single way. Some definitions are:
- Mental activity of a person which allows to feel present in a given environment.
- Clear and reflective knowledge of the surrounding reality.
- Moral sense or knowledge to evaluate one’s own and others’ acts.
Other definitions:
- According to Brentano, consciousness implies intentionality, that is, it is always consciousness of something.
- As indicated by Bianchi, conscience alludes to the capture of internal and external changes that occur in the person-environment interaction in order to apply the necessary adjustments to his responses, this being a function of his psychic life.
- Revonsuo maintains that consciousness is a present continuum that connects, moment to moment, the subjective experiences forming a tendency, a kind of behavioral flow in our existence.
- According to Peterfreund, consciousness is the set of sensations, feelings, impulses, and fantasies that are difficult to quantify or even verbalize.
We are able to act according to this duality because there is no thinking without a feeling, a sensation, or an emotion. In certain intense skiing emotional situations, we feel that our self-esteem is confronted, then we tend to act under a certain form of unconsciousness in that the emotion dominates us and takes away the awareness of the real situation.
Awareness of reality is the instrument by which we can modify our behavior. Moral awareness appears when we realize that we intend to do or have done something we should not have done. This type of conscience is linked to our supra-individual needs in terms of respect for norms, consideration of ethical demands, justice, and the recognition of right and wrong.
Levels of Consciousness
Sigmund Freud, with his classification of unconscious, preconscious and conscious, and William James with the physical, the mental, and the spiritual, have been the precursors of the notion of levels of consciousness. Another model determines the focus of attention towards the external (consciousness) and towards the internal (self-consciousness).
Currently, there are classifications that describe different levels. One of them is the distinction between unconsciousness, consciousness, self-consciousness, and meta-self-consciousness.
- In a state of unconsciousness, we are not aware of what is happening and cannot respond normally as, for example, in fainting, in a coma, or in general anesthesia.
- At the level of consciousness, we focus attention on the environment and spend a great deal of time in a conscious state interacting with environmental stimuli without necessarily supervising these operations.
- At the lowest level there is activation of consciousness, in which the organism proceeds through simple basic manifestations. Then follows sensorimotor consciousness under the modality of analysing and processing sensory information to generate complex motor responses. Primary consciousness would be the highest level of consciousness, while peripheral consciousness remains at the limit of primary consciousness. Reflective consciousness is that in which thoughts about our own experiences are generated.
- Self-consciousness, or self-awareness, is the ability to pay attention or focus on ourselves. In this state become aware of our own existence, our sensations, thoughts, and feelings. We become a self-reflective observer by processing information not about the environment but about our own mental, sensory, and motor functioning.
- The maximum level would be meta-self-awareness, i.e., beyond self-awareness. Here we would become aware of our self-consciousness as a form of extended consciousness in which we represent our own past and the anticipation of the future.
