Skiing consciousness is a mental function of the brain developed by degrees, and Rosenthal (1964) describes three. The first and most basic is founded on the perception of the senses, but we may not have thoughts about these perceptions. In this case, we visually perceive signs on the environment but we could not be conscious of their meaning.
The second degree of consciousness is through direct perception of anything that captures our attention while skiing. We are abstracted in our descent, living the moment and experiencing the loss of the Self that produces the well-being in our skiing flow, but we do not retain this experience because we do not reflect on it.
The third type is the reflective consciousness in which we are conscious of ourselves experiencing certain events. We recognize not only what we perceive but we know what we are undergoing because our sense of Self is located in the first place since we are having reflective thinking about the experience. This kind of consciousness is used to reflect on perception about something as well as if we have performed movements and actions correctly, but this can lead to excessive internal attention of what we are experiencing, which may leave aside our external attention to the environment.
Concluding, we may be conscious of our skiing sensations, perceptions, and thoughts. Sensing does not involve cognitive content, then, we are conscious of our states of consciousness by perceiving them. First, we should sense and perceive our skiing and then think and reflect on what we had sensed and perceived.
According to these considerations, you can apply the following recommendations in your own skiing:
- Develop the perception of your senses in any situation you can.
- Be conscious of your sensorial experiences and then reflect about them.
