The Electronic Ear and sport (Pierre Suire, Madrid 1974)

Lecture given by Mr Pierre Suire, Administrator of the Association d’Aide Pédagogique d’Amiens, member of the Steering Committee of the Fédération Française de Tennis de Table, at the 4th International Congress of Audio-Psycho-Phonology, Madrid, May 1974.

Elite sport cannot be reduced to athletic condition and technical mastery: at equal technicity and physical form, it is the body image — the conscious integration of the body schema — that makes the difference in competition. On the basis of an experiment carried out at the INSEP in Paris on ten elite athletes under the supervision of Professor Tomatis, Pierre Suire — sports administrator and federal director — shows how the Electronic Ear restores laterality, recharges the athlete cortically, defuses stage-fright (through mastery of the vagus nerve) and strengthens the bodily memory of automatisms.

Body image and sporting performance

To excel in a sport, it is plain that complete athletic qualities are required and that one must have a perfect knowledge of the techniques and rules of the chosen sporting discipline. These conditions being fulfilled following the various specific training programmes to which the athlete will be subjected will not, however, suffice if in any case he has not reached a high degree of bodily consciousness, every sport practised requiring a complete engagement of the human being through the mediation of the body.

One may even affirm that every psychological approach should precede every technical one. Knowledge appears as the reflection of the knowledge of others, and it follows upon a personal discovery and a discovery of one’s ego. Technique can be taught and understood, but that is not sufficient: it must be gradually integrated into a body schema in order to give a motor sense, a harmony, a balance, a unity of action.

What is meant by a body schema or body image in an athlete?

First of all, when one speaks of body image, one does not mean the external perception that one may have of one’s own body, nor a photographic image. In fact, one might say that the body image is the image one forms of oneself. It is in reality the integration of mind and bodily mechanisms. Man makes of his body an extension of his thought.

It is already 150 years since the French philosopher Maine de Biran analysed this problem by founding his psychology on the feeling of the “Self” perceived in voluntary effort, and his ontology of metaphysical subjectivity stresses the value of effort in accomplishment, which allows one to grasp the inner experience of transcendence.

The body must not be directed by the mind: there must be a dynamic expression of direct and instantaneous intentionality, a concrete harmony of the totality of the being. The ego must act directly without distance between movement and being, in a total integration.

For instance, the archer in the ultimate instant when his eye meets the target is already wholly in projection upon it: all spatio-temporal coordinates have vanished, and being, arrow and goal are concentrated and form but one whole.

It is the same with a footballer whose body image must integrate the ball. The footballer who has a poor body schema will automatically have difficulty placing himself in relation to the trajectory of the ball. This is because the ball-object will remain external to the dynamic of the body schema, which should encompass all the significant elements of the project. The body remains a spectator and deploys its own space-time dimensions outside the path of the ball.

Professor Tomatis’s perspective

In his book La Libération d’Œdipe, Professor Tomatis takes up this question of body image in matters of sport and notably says:

“Certain sports or techniques go so far as to become an extension of the body, such as tennis, Basque pelota, or billiards. The dialogue between the body and the ball, or between the body and the cue ball, calls for a deep knowledge of posture, in an approach designed to mobilise intelligence in view of playing with an object. It is a matter of knowing in depth the kinetic properties of a body and of exploiting all its possibilities, in order to satisfy as best one can the requirements of an imposed rule. The learning processes call upon human ingenuity for the establishment of the rules on the one hand and for their observance on the other, in accordance with the body image facing the object.”

In a sporting competition, at equal technicity and physical form, it is the one who, with respect to the other, possesses a better body image — that is to say, a better field of consciousness — who will carry off the victory. Having attained this summit, he will be master of his powers of concentration and self-control, which his adversary will lack.

One thus sees the full importance that body image holds in sport, and the acquisition of this notion is one of the great preoccupations of every coach in order to bring his player to obtain this image, that impalpable object of the psyche.

The experiment at the INSEP

The discovery of audio-psycho-phonology and the approach of this science immediately made me understand the immense contribution it could make in matters of sport. As the director of a sports federation, I was all the more sensitised to this subject as I was aware of the problems we faced in the field of the sport psychology of our athletes and of the difficulties we encountered in trying to resolve them. I knew that one could, thanks to these new techniques, on the one hand measure in an athlete the degree of mastery of all his coordinations, and on the other restore a deficient homogenisation with the help of the Electronic Ear.

I must furthermore mention that, immediately after acquiring this conviction, I wished to apply these new means in order to measure the reactions and the improvements. I was able to conduct this application with ten elite competitive athletes at the Institut National des Sports in Paris, under the supervision of Professor Tomatis. I should say at once that the results were those I expected and proved particularly spectacular in some cases. These results having become known, the application of audio-psycho-phonological methods to sport is now being studied with attention by the French Ministry of Sport; and recently, at the request of the Delegate of the Comité National de la Recherche Scientifique to the Under-Secretariat for Sport, Professor Tomatis came to the Institut National des Sports to give a lecture before the National Directors of the various sporting disciplines.

How will one proceed to bring an athlete to a better body image?

Above all, we shall subject him to a series of tests aimed at ascertaining the degree of neuronal control by means of the tests known as “laterality” tests.

Laterality — a dynamic structure

When one speaks of laterality, this implies the notion of right or left, and it is common to think that the notion of laterality stops at the fact that, when a subject writes or practises a sport with the right hand, he is right-handed — and conversely left-handed. One might also think that the footballer who uses his right foot to shoot does not use his left. This is a profound error, for in this precise case the left foot is as important if not more so than the right in ensuring the support; and the precision of the shot can be given only if all the right and left gestures are perfectly balanced and coordinated.

This notion of right or left that comes to mind leaves us if we watch a gymnast moving on the parallel bars or the horizontal bar. We can no longer discern either right or left: all is integrated, and great gymnasts are those in whom all the harmonious movements unfold without jolt and who possess an ideal body image. There is no right or left, the individual being a globality acting within the muscular and sensory phenomena with an equal quantity of right and left potentiality.

It must be known that of 5 neurological fibres that depart from the brain, 3 are crossed and 2 are direct (and vice versa), and that, moreover, at the level of the spinal cord, the direct bundles are larger and stronger in intensity and dimension than the crossed bundles. This diffusion seems to be the fundamental element for saying that “there is a right or a left” is a myth: laterality in fact answers to an entirely dynamic structure.

The two brains from which the neurological fibres depart do not have the same function. The left brain being the active brain and the right brain the controller, it becomes plain that if one allows the left brain to attain a homogenisation or conveys it, the subject will become faster in his movements, more precise. In the end, he will obtain a more thoroughgoing mastery of his whole body, a perfect body image.

Perfect laterality is laterality pushed to the maximum on the right. The explanation comes from the simple physiological fact that all the neurological circuits that go to the brain are 200 times shorter on the right than on the left. It follows that the bringing into harmony of all the potentialities of an athlete whose motricity is on the right will be effected much more rapidly than for an athlete whose motricity is on the left.

As regards the latter, we shall likewise hyper-lateralise him, knowing that if his motricity is on the left, he is not cortically different and that it is the same left brain that must carry out the work of control through the right. Whether motricity is on the right or on the left, it is always the same left brain that will do the active work. It is by acting on the latter that we shall be able to obtain a perfect homogenisation.

At the outset, the laterality tests we shall perform on a subject will indicate the state of his coordinations at all levels of motricity and sensoriality. According to the response given by these various tests, we shall be able to begin to redress the deficient points. To reach the goal, we shall have recourse to the ear.

The ear, dynamo of the cortex

It must be known that the ear has several functions. One of the most important is the fact that it is the essential organ which recharges the brain in electrical potential. It acts as a dynamo. The ear alone can supply more than 80% of the cortical charge and has under its control, at the level of the spinal cord, all the anterior roots that correspond to the emergence of the nerves leading to all the muscles. There is therefore not a single muscle of the body that escapes the control of the ear by way of the auditory nerve.

One sees at once the importance of such a recharge in matters of sport when one knows that, thanks to the Electronic Ear, one will be able to condition a subject to receive sounds of very high harmonic richness, which will lead him to become ever more dynamic — and therefore less fatigable and more resistant to effort.

Since we are acting in the field of sport, let us recall that conditioning will in fact be effected by a muscular phenomenon, since the Electronic Ear will influence two muscles: those of the hammer (malleus) and the stirrup (stapes). The latter is the smallest muscle of the body, with a dimension of 6 mm.

The vagus nerve and stage-fright

A point that is also very important is the fact that the eardrum is innervated by a nerve which holds under its sway the whole affective life and which is called the pneumogastric nerve or vagus nerve. Knowing that it is the nerve of anxiety and of stage-fright, one can measure the importance it can have for an athlete. It is a reaction of this nerve that can cause in any athlete in competition an underperformance. Many examples could be cited of subjects accomplishing an exceptional performance outside competition who, confronted with adversaries in a championship, cannot renew this performance for the sole reason that their emotivity gets the upper hand and they thus lose all their means.

This nerve also innervates the pharynx and gives rise to angina; it innervates the motor larynx, the one which can leave us speechless following too great an emotion; it innervates the sensitive larynx, which gives the sensation of the lump that rises and falls, manifesting anxiety; it also innervates the neck, the bronchi, the heart and the coronaries — vital organs for an athlete. At this level, I should mention that the electrocardiograms performed by the doctor of the I.N.S. on the 10 athletes undergoing the treatment under Electronic Ear made it possible to observe a better cardiac recovery after the effort made during a competition. It then innervates all the viscera as far as the anus.

The importance of this nerve cannot escape anyone, especially if it is known that, if one succeeds in mastering it at the level of the eardrum, the subject will always remain tonic in competition whatever the stakes, and emotivity will no longer have on him any but an inconsequential hold.

Cortical recharge, team communication and memory

Through the ear, the sonic information we send to the brain through the Electronic Ear will thus enable any athlete to obtain a recharge of the brain and consequently to obtain the elaboration of a perfect laterality, and so greater psychic possibilities.

Furthermore, the fact of having given an athlete a wider field of consciousness will enable him to have better communication with others, which will facilitate his integration within a team. All directors and coaches dealing with a group sport know the difficulties they encounter in obtaining what is called “team spirit”. The failures they have in this field arise from the fact that the psycho-social phenomena that take place within the group at every level are not interpreted in the same way by all the participants. To achieve this, all the players of one and the same team must succeed in passing from the individual social space to the social space of the group, must succeed in fact in obtaining what is commonly called the same wavelength.

The Electronic Ear will make it possible to obtain this same wavelength, which will be translated into the same listening curve. Each, having acquired a more open ear, will better understand the dialogue of the other, and all the problems of inter-individual communication will be facilitated.

Lastly, among the contributions that the Electronic Ear will make us, those bearing on memory will not be the least. Through the right nerve, we shall be able to gain access to the almost isolated region in which is situated the cerebral network where lies the seat of nominative memory, and thus to set off much more pronounced phenomena of memorisation. The subject will thus obtain a better bodily memory, which is the cerebral memory of all sporting automatisms.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we may affirm that the experiment carried out at the INSEP has brought us the proof that the Electronic Ear can bring the athlete a preponderant aid, allowing him, freed from all psychic blockages, to progress much more rapidly. The athlete, having acquired the fullness of his means, will thus reach a level corresponding to his potentialities.

— Pierre Suire, Administrator of the Association d’Aide Pédagogique d’Amiens, member of the Steering Committee of the Fédération Française de Tennis de Table. Lecture given at the 4th International Congress of Audio-Psycho-Phonology, Madrid, May 1974.