GUE EDGE MANIFESTS SUCCESS

– THE RITUAL OF THE DIVE

Rituals are a part of our lives, from the religious and ceremonial to the everyday and mundane. They can provide us with a sense of structure, comfort, and even safety. For divers, rituals can be especially important, as they can help to ensure a safe and successful dive. One of the most important rituals for divers is the GUE EDGE pre-dive sequence. This standardized pre-dive check helps divers confirm they are prepared for the dive ahead. It is a valuable tool for reducing risk and preventing accidents. Let’s look at the benefits of the GUE EDGE sequence and other dive rituals. We will also look at the psychological impact of rituals and how they can help divers to perform at their best.

The pre-dive procedure is not only about repeating important information about the dive. It also serves as an important ritual that makes everyone ready.

hen the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski visited the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea in the early 20th century, he noted the elaborate preparations fishermen would make before setting out to sea. They would carefully paint their canoes with black, red, and white paint, chanting spells as they did so. The vessel would be struck with wooden sticks, the bows stained with red ochre, and crew members would adorn their arms with shells.

Malinowski recorded a long list of ceremonies and rituals the islanders would perform before venturing out onto the open sea. But when the fishermen went out into the nearby calm lagoon, they did not use these rites. Malinowski concluded that the “magic” rituals performed by the islanders were a response to help them cope with the unpredictable might of the Pacific Ocean. Johnson, “The surprising power of daily rituals”, BBC (Sept. 14, 2021)

Rituals hold an important position in our lives. From religious and ceremonial to those daily (and often overlooked) practices that keep our lives on track, most of us regularly practice some kind of ritual.

Gue Edge

GUE divers are no stranger to this, as they begin each dive with an important ritual: the GUE EDGE pre-dive sequence. For those unfamiliar: GUE EDGE is an acronym designed to help GUE divers follow a standardized pre-dive check. This review ensures that all team members are ready for the dive, that they all confirm under -

Wstanding of the basic dive parameters, and that their equipment is ready and functioning as intended. It is usually performed prior to entering the water, but it can also be performed at the surface just prior to descent if conditions allow (manageable waves, weak current). The procedure is led by the team leader, with the team members confirming or stating all required parameters.

We can never dismiss the obvious practical utility of GUE EDGE: Each of us has found some key element of equipment out of place on the first “E” (it’s always my drysuit hose—always). The safety that is the hallmark of GUE comes from (at least in great part) detailed attention to and management of the demands of each letter in the acronym, as applied broadly to our diving.

Added value

But even practices with substantial utility like GUE EDGE can have a secondary purpose echoing in ritual. To this end, GUE EDGE is more than a simple acronym, and it has value beyond its obvious utility as a risk management and harm prevention tool. This added value lies in how we use it: a requisite, repeated process before each and every dive. GUE EDGE thereby serves a secondary purpose as a series of shared acts, checks, commitments, and acknowledgements that emphasizes the team’s cohesion and readiness for the dive ahead. In this sense, GUE EDGE is an important ritual that GUE divers use to center themselves, inspire confidence, and manifest control. It signals the start of the dive, sets the divers’ minds to tasks at hand, and (at least for many) provides a familiar, calming, and centering routine to shake off anxiety and increase focus.

Formal and informal rituals

Now, before you go all “Eyes Wide Shut” on me, Quest reader, let’s agree on a few assumptions. I’m not suggesting GUE EDGE holds the station of a “capital R” ritual. Each of us is likely familiar in some regard with some form of ritual, and this proper title is likely best reserved for those practices with, for example, a religious, spiritual, or ceremonial connection. Each major religion has an array of rituals that are keenly practiced by its followers. Governments have rituals like the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance or Coronation. Social organizations may conduct initiation rituals or other ceremonies for new members.

But more to my point here, each of us likely has a list of less formal rituals that we have weaved into certain regular activities. These “little r” rituals are the structure we add when none may be needed; the things we repeat because they bring us joy, reduce our stress, or make us feel part of something larger than ourselves. Perhaps this is morning coffee and a crossword, a pre-work run, or simply listening to a favorite podcast on a commute. Perhaps you close your day by reading a few chapters of a good book. Whether you read for pleasure or more formative purposes, this nightly ritual helps to bring closure to your day and prepare your mind for rest. Perhaps it’s a bedtime story with a child or important questions around the dinner table. Each of these important acts has practical value (e.g., teaching a child to read), but our engagement with them has a meta-purpose that exceeds the act itself. It signals the start or the end of our day, it puts our mind in the mode we need for the tasks to come, it reduces stress, and/or it provides a sense of family, unity, or cohesion with others. These are invaluable, and we use rituals daily to achieve these important purposes.

Shared values

Divers are no strangers to rituals, and GUE has in its culture several rituals that prepare and guide us toward safe, goal-oriented diving. Even less critically, how we pack our gear, don our suits, and even when we use the bathroom be- fore the dive is often sequential, rehearsed, and repeated—not just for the practical utility, but because doing it that way makes us feel a certain way that we find valuable to our dive day.

“Ritualistic practices can help to bring a degree of predictability to an uncertain future. They convince our brains of constancy and predictability as ritual buffers against uncertainty and anxiety…” Johnson, supra.

GUE EDGE stands out as perhaps the most universal and consistent dive ritual GUE divers practice. When the team leader gets to the “G”, everyone knows it’s “go time”. Like many rituals, GUE EDGE is symbolic. The repetition of its component parts signals to each teammate the preparedness of the unified team. Shared rituals like GUE EDGE demonstrate the like-mindedness and common values between participants. It reminds the team that each component member is highly trained, practiced, safety-focused, and goal-oriented. Indeed, GUE facilitates the nearly immediate integration of a GUE diver into a GUE team through standardization of equipment, procedures, etc. Nothing signals this more clearly than the GUE EDGE check between divers diving together for the first time: It signals a deeper connectedness that welcomes trust. See Legare and Watson-Jones, “The Social Functions of Group Rituals”, Current Directions in Psychological Science (Jan. 2015).

Growing confidence

Scientists and researchers have attempted to measure the impact ritual has on our lives in various ways. “Take a look, for instance, at some of our most cherished cultural and religious rituals.

You’ll notice just how much repetition and scripted rigidity are built into them. This isn’t happenstance; these behaviors fulfill a fundamental psychological need. They give us a sense of structure […]. They convince the brain that things in our world are predictable, ordered, and safe.” Hobson, Ph.D., “The Anxiety-Busting Properties of Ritual”, Psychology Today (Sept. 25, 2017).

Dr. Hobson suggests rituals create certainty through their basic structure, which is compounded over time. “The more we do them, the more meaningful they become, both to us and to others with whom we might share them.” Indeed, the more we run through GUE EDGE, and the more we run through it with the same teammates, the faster our confidence in our abilities and skills grows.

Dr. Hobson’s work distills the power of rituals into three overlapping categories: regulation of (1) emotions, (2) performance goal states, and (3) social connection to others. Hobson, et al., “The Psychology of Rituals” (2017). This is fitting—and GUE EDGE seemingly satisfies all three of these metrics.

Athletic applications

The ritual of GUE EDGE isn’t novel. Rituals play an important role in sports and extreme athleticism. “In performance domains, most notably in sports athletics, there is some evidence showing rituals serve a regulatory function. For instance, performing rituals during athletic events, like right before shooting a free-throw in basketball, helps players perform better, especially in highstakes competition and stress. The thinking is that rituals help improve performance because

Brad Beskin has been diving actively for approximately twenty-eight years. He first became involved with GUE by taking Fundamentals in 2002, and then Cave 1 with Tamara Kendal in 2003.

Brad Beskin

He is now a proud GUE DPV Cave diver and is looking forward to undertaking the GUE technical curriculum in 2023. When he is not diving, he earns his living as a civil litigator in Austin, Texas, and he also finds time to act as Director of Quality Control and the Chair of the Quality Control Board for Global Underwater Explorers. they mobilize motivational and regulatory states, either through improving concentration, creating physical readiness, or boosting confidence.” Hobson, Ph.D. “Rituals decrease the neural response to performance failure” (2017). And it expands into dynamic corporate and start-up cultures. “In all the […] companies we studied we found leaders making extensive use of ritual. [W]e found that creating or reviving club rituals was almost the first thing that a new coach would do—especially in a team turnaround situation. Smart business leaders do the same…” Guenzi, “How Ritual Delivers Performance”, Harvard Business Review (Feb. 25, 2013).

What dive rituals do you practice to inspire confidence, reduce anxiety, or manifest focus? Does GUE EDGE have this secondary effect on you?

“What dive rituals do you practice to inspire confidence, reduce anxiety, or manifest focus? Does GUE EDGE have this secondary effect on you?

Depending on the circumstances, GUE EDGE can be performed on land or at the surface before the dive.