A few days ago, my wife asked “You love skiing so much, I wonder why didn’t you race with the Masters after you retired?”
When I heard that, I was at loss for words; right, I couldn’t answer her on the spot, and wondered why I had so little interest for ski racing.
Eventually, though, the answer came to me. It was all about the rules, the regimentation and the exacting timing that are what ski racing is all about, and all the strict boundaries it forced on me. I didn’t want them and didn’t find them pleasurable enough to warrant them.
I love to ski the all mountain, in all kinds of snow, terrain and trees and felt that the grueling discipline called for by training all the time, running gates and being hemmed into that competitive discipline weren’t for me.
In fact, I drew much more pleasure from improvising on challenging terrain than being summoned to follow a specific line around poles, with stringent rules and a repetitive regimen. After digging deeper into the subject, I discovered that several studies had shown the benefits of practicing improvisation for musical artists and the advantages improvising musicians had over their non-improvising peers.
You might say that comparing skiing to music is stretch, but bear with me. A study by researchers from Columbia University shows that trained improvisers can more easily detect different nuances within interchangeable chords and that their brain makes better distinction between different types of musical structures.
More specifically, studies by Charles Limb, a music aficionado who’s also surgeon and otolaryngologist, show that during improvisation, the parts of the brain associated with self expression are highly active whereas parts involved with self-monitoring are quieting down which enables dampening of inhibitions and better access to creativity.
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