“When there’s no-one else in sight
In the crowded lonely night
Well I wait so long
For my love vibration
And I’m dancing with myself” - Billy Idol

The best thing about playing chess against yourself is that you always win because you always know what the other guy is planning. A friend of mine recently tried to argue that it is not a “real game” that way though, but I am not trying to fool myself into thinking that it is. I do, however, find it quite instructive.

When playing both sides of a game, you are forced to think through the implications of every action, because there is no one else there to take up the slack for your failure to do so. No one else is going to come along and save you by throwing a curve-ball into the equation. You must go through all the steps yourself.

And you must be honest with yourself. You cannot set one side up for a fall which the other side of the board can then come and waltz through. Playing this way can make you aware of how often you do this to yourself in real life: only half plan through something, wait for it to fall apart “on its own”, and then blame the “other guy” for decisions you yourself put into place. In fact, this is probably a lot more popular game among the human population than chess ever was or will be. And that is the thing I like about chess: it’s about life, the microcosm. It has taught me so much about how to live better: how to take responsibility for my decisions, how to think through to the best position, how to use all the pieces available (mine and my opponents) to create the outcome I desire (even though I still always lose: that’s the other thing about playing against yourself), and so so much more.

Playing against myself has taught me a lot, for some reason, about the “end game” in chess. I don’t know too much about strong openings, but I know at least how to get out there and mess things up in the middle and make action difficult for the other guy. But up until I started playing for myself, I never really could wrap my head around how to go and decapitate the other guy: how to trap somebody into a checkmate with a couple of nice pins and skewers. A well-executed check mate is an extremely satisfying thing - even if it is against oneself. Hell, maybe even moreso. It is incredible to observe your own emotional reactions as you play against yourself: how could you ever get angry about something you yourself did or did not do? And yet there you have it. Chess is just life in miniature.

You know that expression about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing? Well I always thought that was just an expression. But there are a series of experiments in which patients had their corpus callosums cut in an effort to eliminate uncontrollable seizures. The corpus callosum is responsible for inter-hemisphere communication within the brain. Cutting it radically impairs “normal” brain functioning:

A patient with a split brain, when shown an image in his or her left visual field (the left half of what each eye sees), will be unable to name what he or she has seen. This is because the speech control center is in the left side of the brain in most people and the image from the left visual field is sent only to the right side of the brain. Since the two sides of the brain cannot communicate, the patient can’t name what he or she is seeing. The person can, however, pick up a corresponding object (one within the left overall visual field) with their left hand, since that hand is controlled by the right side of their brain.

There is also a rare neurological disorder lovingly referred to as “Alien Hand Syndrome” in which the hands, literally, do not know what each other are doing.

It is theorized that Alien Hand Syndrome results when disconnection occurs between different parts of the brain that are engaged in different aspects of the control of bodily movement. As a result, different regions of the brain are able to command bodily movements, but cannot generate a conscious feeling of self-control over these movements. There is thus a dissociation between the process associated with the actual execution of the physical movements of the limb and the process that produces an internal sense of voluntary control over the movements, with this latter process thus creating the internal conscious sensation that the movements are being internally initiated, controlled and produced by an active self.

It sounds a bit like what I have been referring to under the umbrella term, “proprioception,” which I have been using to refer to something like “awareness of sensation”. Not perhaps the most scientific explanation, but it has helped me understand quite a great deal from a practical experiential standpoint.

It is actually through juggling that I have come to understand, more specifically, the interaction of the brain hemispheres. I think the pattern I have been doing is the “reverse fountain”, wherein you juggle two in each hand from inside to outside. The easiest way to learn this is, of course, to individually practice juggling two in each hand, and then eventually putting them together simultaneously. It is, however, easier said than done. Getting even a little bit good at it has taken a lot of patience and practice. But it has also taught me a lot about how my brain and body work together (or don’t, sometimes).

Two simple exercises to try with four ball juggling. Actually, you only need two balls to try either of these out:

1. Juggle two balls in your left hand. Put your right hand behind your back. But visualize and attempt to *feel* as strongly and concretely as possible that your right hand is actually moving in perfect symmetry and in time with your left hand as you juggle. Basically what you are doing is creating something like a “holographic model” of how your right hand should be moving. Now switch hands so your right hand is juggling, and your left is being concretely imagined.
2. Switch back to juggling two balls in your left hand. But this time, close your left eye. The switch to the right side and close your right eye.

If you’re as bad at juggling as me (or worse, because I have gotten at least semi-proficient), then what is likely to happen is that when you juggle lefty but close your left eye, you pretty quickly drop the balls. Obviously, part of what is at issue here is depth perception. It requires both eyes - binocular vision - for accurate depth perception. But that is only part of it.

And this is where my own pet theories come in, based exclusively on my own experience. Your left hand is connected to your right brain, yes? So is your left eye. By blocking vision out of your left eye, then, you put yourself at a double disadvantage. Your depth perception takes a huge hit (although this can be mostly overcome with practice), and you are forcing yourself into a weird hemispheric communication crisis. The left side of your body is being activated and controlled, but you are using the right side for feedback to correct that activity.

What I found through extended experimentation with these and other configurations of right/left activity was that it may very well be the case that - for the most part - the right side of your brain literally does not know what the left side is doing, and vice versa. The two only communicate very minimally as to the actual activities of the sides of the body they control. And for the most part, it seems as though each one contains only a sort of “best guess” as to what is happening on the other side. You mostly only become aware of this when you are attempting to exert fine motor control and mirror it back and forth to both sides of the body. What I have noticed is that the “best guess” contained within one hemisphere about the status of the opposing side is quite often simply wrong. It is based on faulty assumptions and habitual responses. And when you challenge the accuracy of it through these sorts of cross-hemispheric and cross-body tests and exercises, it quickly breaks down.

Which is where the first half of the exercise comes in: the part where you use one side to actively model how you want the other side to behave. You then, of course, have to reinforce the model you created through repetition. Repetition is key because it helps you build muscle memory. And until you have muscle memory for any new activity, it will seem forced and stilted and wrong. The most important thing I have found about muscle memory, though, is that it is extremely important you establish good patterns early on. If you are just fumbling around haphazardly, you will inevitably repeat and entrain into muscle memory less than ideal movements. Which is where your brain comes in so handy: your brain is perfectly suited to thinking through complex problems, breaking them down into component parts, and then modeling sequences to develop the muscle memory required for the execution of new skills. If you become good enough at this sort of modeling and muscle memory building, it can become almost like you gain the ability to “download” new skills: almost like Neo in the Matrix. Because that is what that movie is really about: developing the proper and natural relationship between one’s mind and body, which enables you to live in an almost superheroic fashion.

The key to a lot of this type of learning, then, it seems is to actively play out “both sides” of a complex problem. In the case of chess, it may be playing both sides of the board. In the case of juggling or other more physically-oriented activities, it will inevitably involve mirroring complex movements across both sides of the body and brain. The point of all this is widen your perspective, so that you are seeing moments in fullness, rather than in part. And in my own limited experience and experiments with all of this, that has made all the difference in the world. It has taken me out of my limited way of looking at the world, and into a new and better relationship with the fullness of everything that is unfolding around me.