3D+: Flow – optimal experience

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Welcome to the 2nd post in the new series on postmodern spirituality. Let’s talk about what’s called “flow,” those times when we have “optimal” experiences, such as the “runner’s high,” great sex, making music (well :=) or solving math equations. Flow is a major component of spirituality. The most beautiful people in the world are those whose lives are filled with flow. Perhaps you know someone like that. More below:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist at the University of Chicago.
He has studied the conditions within which people have “optimal experiences.”
He summarized his findings in a wonderful book entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.jpg
I read the book when it first appeared in 1990. It spoke to me and I had a number of “ahah” moments. Csikszentmihalyi went on to spend his career on studying flow in humans.
Here is the Amazon link to the latest edition. It has the “Look Inside” feature, so you could see the table of contents.
https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/...

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is

the state in which people are so involved in
an activity that nothing else seems to matter;
the experience itself is so enjoyable
that people will do it even at great cost,
for the sheer sake of doing it.

People can experience flow in any type of activity. However, it is not typically experienced during relaxation, such as watching television.
Flow rather is experienced

when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits
in a voluntary effort
to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

I like this concept of “flow” very much. One of our daughters is a talented artist: to see her immersed in drawing or painting, as often on computer as on paper, is to recognize someone in flow. We’re hoping that she will live a life filled with flow immersed in her art.

Let’s unpack his definition a bit. So, flow is experienced:

1. When a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits
Yup, TV won’t produce flow, because we’re passive recipients, not active participants.
A documentary may bring us new knowledge and insight, and a good movie may produce in us a mental connection and many profound emotions, but it doesn’t produce a stretching of the mind to its limits.

My son has mobility issues and was never able to experience flow in sports. But he regularly experiences flow through the stretching of his mind to its limits through math and computer games. He does tertiary level math “for fun” in his free time. It’s a genetic gift from Lovie; I struggle to add and subtract :=)

He doesn’t want to study math, because “that would ruin the fun.” It would turn math into work and inhibit the flow he experiences in doing it for fun. At the moment, he’s studying a B.Sc in game computing in Ireland, which is where the flow he experiences through playing video games has led him. From the photos, it seems he’s adapting very well: the Guinness certainly is flowing :=)

Experiencing flow when a person’s body is stretched to its limits is fairly self-explanatory. We just saw the Olympics and the para-Olympics are now presenting similar stories of flow, achievement, and disappointment. Like yourself, I’ve experienced flow through the body in various – and often surprising – physical activities.

I played rugby until I couldn’t anymore, because of the flow I experienced. Well, getting clobbered regularly helped increase my appreciation of the flow experiences, such as scoring or tackling well or selling a dummy pass. It’s hard to say it, but I experienced flow in combat, which made the army a home for me. A bad home, but still.

Csikszentmihalyi (try saying that three times fast :=) says that flow is experienced,

2. In a voluntary effort
I certainly have never experienced flow in anything I was forced to do. Like practicing drill on a sunbaked tarmac for hours on end. Or doing household chores, that ever-present necessary evil :=) “Wax on, wax off, my left foot! The laundry is my job and I adopted what a friend of ours called it - “Mount Never-Rest.” Dancing is highly conducive to flow. Notice, however, how being forced on to a dance floor inhibits flow.

In a voluntary effort then. The flow in great sex requires a patient, voluntary self-giving. Athletics and sports provide many flow examples. In South Africa, there is a great ultra marathon called “The Comrades” (http://www.comrades.com/)
Comrades marathon.jpeg
It is 87 km (54 miles) and takes place in the winter near Durban. One year, they run from the mountain down to the coast and the next year, they run the up route. More than ten thousand participate, not one of them being me. The length of a rugby field was my limit for voluntary running :=) I used to watch it on TV - incredible stories of people voluntary pushing their bodies to and beyond it’s limits. A vivid memory is of 80-year old Wally Hayward – a Comrades winner in his youth – crossing the finish line, leaving an audience in tears of joy.
Comrades Marathon Wally Hayward.jpeg
So, flow is experienced “when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort.” What kind of effort?

3. to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile
So the rush a gambler in Vegas experiences could be this, that, or the other, but it’s not “flow” in accomplishing “something difficult and worthwhile.” Is that a value judgment? Sure it is. Similarly, buddy isn’t experiencing flow when he zips around the cocktail party being all charming and whatnot from having snorted cocaine in the bathroom.

What of the team that watches their giant domino puzzle entry into the Guinness (there it is again :=) World Book of Records topple exactly as they had painstakingly planned, organized and built? Of course it’s flow.

We have one orchid – the most long-lived one so far. Orchids like things just so. We’ve had all kinds of accidents that disturbed our orchid’s sense of “just so,” and then they just give up the ghost and shrivel. Humbling, is what it is. So if someone presents an orchid at the annual show of the National Orchid Society of Great Britain and wins, the flow of accomplishing something difficult and worthwhile is real.
orchid show.jpeg
To recap then, flow is experienced “when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

I look forward to your comments and reflections. Please tell us your stories of flow – well, perhaps not the ones about great sex :=)

So that is the definition of flow. The ancient Greeks said similar things. Aristotle, for example, said that “flourishing” is the ultimate goal in life. It is achieved through three intertwined elements. If I may paraphrase from his Nicomachean Ethics, flourishing is achieved through:
1. rational activity (sustained, reasoned action)
2. in accordance with excellence
3. over a complete life
(http://caucus99percent.com/content/personal-resilience-aristotelian-virt...)
Aristotle-father-of-logic.jpg
I think that Aristotle’s description of flourishing is also a description of a life filled with flow. Spirituality is about a life of flow, a life of flourishing. When my eyes close for the last time, I would like it be within a sense of having lived a “complete life.” Perhaps you do too.

It’s wunnerful to talk postmodern spirituality with you. I look forward to your reflections.

Peace be with us (if we find flow in life),
gerrit

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RantingRooster's picture

I'm a musician, video creator, all around creative freak of nature. As a musician, when I and others are on the same "wave length", I call it "swimming in the elements of the Fantastic", because it's like swimming in "something", elements (energy / creativity / Flow as you say...) and it's just a fantastic "feeling". In that "state", its like I don't even have to think, all the years of practice, rehearsing and whatnot, just kind of "flows" through me, into the strings of my guitar and out my amp.

I'm into heavy metal and I once read someone's definition of heavy metal, and they described it as "an element of the fantastic", so..when I'm "jamming" with folks and we hit our "groove" (flow), we're swimming .....

Nice to read you again Gerrit! Drinks

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

Gerrit's picture

essay. Thanks very much for it; I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

mhagle's picture

I looked at the table of contents to the flow book. Looks good.

Flow is a pretty great thing when you are in it.

My kids are teenagers and it is hard to avoid being scared out of your mind. And the climate stuff.

So . . . I really enjoyed your earlier writings on stoicism and look forward to more! Haven't thought about flow for a long time.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Gerrit's picture

topic we will cover probably a number of times from different angles. My ptsd taught me that. It's an anxiety disorder, which is fear-based. I learned that fear always lies behind anger. And I've worked so hard in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) to learn good mental habits and lots of nifty tricks to catch my mind in fear and change it's path so that it flows to compassion and positive action (resilience, eh :=) rather than anger and destructive behaviour. CBT's "Fear is the mind killer" stuff really works :=)

And climate change is THE issue of our lives and our fears for our communities and children will skew our spirituality unless we work hard at becoming more resilient. It's all inter-related. We should talk about it more specifically one day in a post.

Thanks, my friend with the great harvest!

Thanks, Marilyn

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PriceRip's picture

          In the 1960s I ran (what has become to be called) parkour in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Nowadays a pleasant "walk in the woods" suffices. Being mindful of your surroundings while contemplating the unfathomable leads to a most enlightening frame of mind.

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Gerrit's picture

nature is very conducive to flow.

And we will talk much more about humans and nature and flow and spirituality and healthy living. Urban life (and electricity, for that matter) produces a qualitative and quantitative change in human consciousness. The altered human consciousness is, perhaps, good for urban human cohabitation in an unnatural environment, but I have zero confidence in it being sustainable. And I am damn sure that living unmoored from nature is ultimately unhealthy in myriads of ways. In fat, I'm convinced that urban living is at the root of climate change. After all, when we are insulated from the climate changes, we can't comprehend them or the need for action, eh?

Thanks for this, mate,

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PriceRip's picture

          Living unmoored from nature is a real problem in an urban setting but some in rural areas are equally ignorant of reality. I have had the pleasure of getting to know many people in rural Nebraska that really understand what we might call the source of life and maintain the ability to wonder and learn. But, there are those that think as though they are the masters and that the land and nature must be subdued.
          The center of this disconnect is (not surprisingly) corporate farming practices. The people of rural Nebraska are as culpable as any for the excesses that have facilitated the acceleration of climate change. I wish I could blame urbanization but I am constrained by the reality of rural america to think differently.

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Gerrit's picture

their share of alienation from nature. And like you say, corporate agriculture is the dark heart of the catastrophe.

If I was king of the world, I'd ban the legal form of the corporation altogether. The elites have built up the lowly corporation through the legislative and judicial branches to be legal godzillas, able to destroy everything in it's path with impunity. If commerce took place through cooperatives, partnerships, and sole proprietorships the checks and balances would bring greed to heal.

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earthling1's picture

What instantly came to mind was the ole sayin'......
When the creative juices are flowing.
Thanks for the beautiful walk.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Bollox Ref's picture

Most of the time we were crap, but once in a while, we'd hit it and just enjoy the experience.

It helped if we'd practiced beforehand.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Gerrit's picture

embarrassed by my mistakes to experience flow. But every now and again...

Cheers, mate, enjoy your day, g

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yellopig's picture

Mostly about the value judgment part. For me, sometimes things that are "not worthwhile" or that I've been "forced" into can be a source of the flow experience.

To me, the key issue is immersion. I can definitely get a flow experience out of anything that I can engage with fully. It doesn't even have to be much of a stretch for this to work.

For example: we used to have a group that played tennis every week. Now, I really hate exercise, and I never run. Heh. I used to dread these tennis evenings so much. I felt I was "forced" into it... Until I got there. Then it was just a matter of sucking it up and doing it, and then it was great, while I was doing it. Later when I was sore, and worse the next week, I just couldn't think of why I was putting myself through it.

Immersion in the actual playing of the game was the key.

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“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett

Gerrit's picture

yourself even in forced situations, then I should also be able to do that and others too. What springs to mind instantly is my mulish streak. I do have an outsized mulishness, which I am trying to overcome. That must be why I've never experienced flow in forced situations. I will try to pay attention to that when I am in forced situations next.

Thanks for the insight, my friend.
Enjoy your day, g

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GreyWolf's picture

"One of our daughters is a talented artist: to see her immersed in drawing or painting, as often on computer as on paper, is to recognize someone in flow."

There are basically always words, or thoughts, running through my mind - it is really maddening.degas sketch.jpg

lady pastel.jpgExcept when I was immersed in drawing, or painting. Really immersed.

I did't 'know' it at the time, but words went away. I tried to describe it to others later, that words, or thoughts, would finally stop, and I was only 'thinking' in colors, or shades of light ...

And, now that you mention it, similar to running Cross Country as a youth, or really good sex (before my wife died.) I should draw again ... I'd be happier.

Also, it's one of those odd coincidences that I just recently read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl ...

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