Finding Flow and Awe
This is a follow up to the brain wave talk and the awareness talk.
Flow is when we are in that magic flow zone where we become completely absorbed by what we are doing. Fully present, fully involved.
Being in flow naturally makes us fall into a slower brain wave, slower breath rate, better focus, lower heart rate and blood pressure, with reduced stress hormones — and better ability to learn and remember — all this occurs in our flow zone.
We are in these states — the alpha or theta brain wave states, we are more productive. We operate very efficiently, we accomplish more and we do it in a way we can slow down or reverse the aging process.
By finding our flow zones we can be in our active days but regenerating and rebuilding as if we are in our sleep phases 🙂
When we are in the slower brain waves of theta our DNA behaves better and our stem cells replicate, migrate, and adhere more efficiently. If we can reach the delta brain wave state in our waking movements we would even be able to lengthen our telomeres during times when most of the world is shortening theirs.
In addition to the benefits physiologically, more Flow & Awe in your daily life correlates with more joy in your life. How do we find our flow?
Flow is an experience — it is a state of consciousness. Many times its not even a willful shift of consciousness but a natural drawl to the state.
Not everyone finds flow in the same way; let’s figure out what experiences help you easily fall into your flow:
Do you remember the last time you got so absorbed in something you lost complete track of time? An enjoyable absorbed that uses a skill — not social media scrolling loss of time!
What were you doing?
This is the experience we want to recreate in our lives.
Flow is a positive emotion that may not last for a long time. It comes with very important and cumulative positive effects — the more flow moments we have in our in our life the higher our positive emotions and satisfaction are, and it gives more meaning in our life. So you won’t be in flow all day ~ instead you’ll have experiences of flow and connection accumulating throughout your day.
It’s like a positive emotion — say joy, we don’t experience joy for two days straight — joy is a positive emotion that comes for minutes at a time and then moves on. Those minutes add up throughout the course of your day and leave behind positive emotions. Flow is the same way ~ How many flow experiences can you have in a day?
One key feature in finding your flow is to find an activity you enjoy or are passionate about. It has to have the right mix of enjoyment and challenge of which you have the skills for — a medium to high level of challenge in something that you have a medium to high level of skill in.
- If it’s challenging but you don’t have the skills for it frustration will keep you out of the flow.
- On the other hand, if it’s too easy, boredom will keep you out of the flow.
It’s a balance between being challenged and feeling able to rise up to the challenge 🙂
It’s personal!
What brings one person into a flow may not bring you into the flow. Just like we need to figure out the yoga practice for ourselves to be most effective — we also need to figure out what activities will most effectively bring you into your flow.
Let’s see if we can figure out what kind of circumstances and conditions help you get into your flow. For example; games, people who enjoy games get in flow in a game — what constitutes a game?
- Goals! Having goals helps with flow. Clear Goal of winning the game – when you sit down to play poker you have a clear goal of winning the hand.
- Enjoyment
- Something that is meaningful to you or you are passionate about. If you had some spare time you could use any way you wanted — and you were not paid for it … what would you choose to do?
- You get immediate feedback — whether you play the card right or not. Feedback helps us find our flow.
- Being able to concentrate fully without interruption! This is where your yoga and meditation help give you the strength of mind to concentrate — however there is more to it than that. Even if you have the power to concentrate — If you are interrupted by something outside of your control you still will not find flow.
- Focused attention is a quality of mindfulness, however practicing mindfulness will not put you in flow. Mindfulness naturally happens when you are in flow. However, when you are practicing mindfulness you will be distracted from a flow state.
- Internally motivated. Able to follow through and complete what you start. However, it’s not about accomplishment; for example an artist when in the flow will finish a painting, set it aside and start another. It’s the experience is more gratifying than the end product.
- This is called an autotelic personality. Autotelis is a Greek word that means self-creating your goals. It is self-imposed; you do it because it’s important to you and brings you satisfaction.
- It requires an intrinsic motivation to lead to success — if we are doing something for extrinsic motivation it will not put us in flow.
- Like my learn&thrive section — when I was creating this and paying my website developer and paying people to help me enter content I kept getting questions like, what am going to do with this? How is it going to create income? All I could say is I’m not sure yet, I am drawn to doing this. And I still am!
Sense Withdrawal aka Yogic Pratyahara and getting in Flow
Getting in the flow does involve some of our senses — but not all. Usually one or two sense is totally absorbed in what you are doing and the rest of your senses withdrawal to send more energy to the sense you are using.
- The yogic limb of pratyahara is about this, withdrawing senses to use the energy elsewhere. When we start to withdrawal our senses it slips us into the theta brain wave state ~ withdrawal of external stimuli puts more energy to our internal work.
Flow zone and emotions
When we are in the flow we are in a neutral emotional state — when you’re experiencing flow you are not necessarily feeling joy or happiness because you are very absorbed in what you are doing — all your psychic energy is engaged in your activity. It’s after the flow moments you experience happiness and joy 🙂
The more frequently we experience flow the more likely we will be happy, experience positive emotions, and have a meaningful life.
We can find flow in relationships! 🙂 Both personal and work. This is a good area to find flow in, as it also builds community and friendships.
- Do you have a friend that you never have enough time to talk with? You start to talk and you just flow from one subject to another and seem to have so much more talk about than there is time for.
- Or how about a friend you have not seen for 10 years and you can sit down and pick up where you left off like you have not missed a day together. This is a sign of getting into the flow with your friend.
However if you are thinking about what question you are going to ask next, or wondering what time it is, or letting your mind wander — even if you are mindful that you are having a thought, you will not find flow.
Flow can happen at work too. With some clients an hour goes by like it was 15 minutes … and other clients we are 20 minutes into the session and I think “still 40 minutes to go?”
Flow can improve our relationships and give us more positive experiences and emotions throughout our days.
What is Awe?
Awe is the feeling of wonder we get in the presence of something vast — it challenges our comprehension of the world around us. The most common sources of awe are people and nature; such as the birth of a child or the beauty and scent of a flower, or the starlit skies when you are out in nature away from city lights.
It can also be found in the everyday; noticing the leaves of a ginkgo tree turn from green to a beautiful bright yellow, observing a hawk in your yard, the power of a wave, or witnessing a random person do an act of kindness.
Awe is another recent area of research, researchers are discovering awe helps with clear thinking. Awe goes beyond the momentary feeling, moments of awe have longer term positive effects on our mental health, physical health, and social connections. Its even been shown that awe reduces markers of the inflammatory IL-6.
- Awe feels good, it sets off a cascades of joy and gratitude.
- It encourages curiosity, creativity, and exploration
- It increases dopamine levels.
- Puts you in your PNS, improving autonomic balance.
- Awe keeps us in the present moment, where tend to slip further away from the mundane.
- Awe encourages critical thinking
- Its humbling
- Awe takes one out of self interest into interest of other people
In this research they spoke of goosebumps, awe can bring on goosebumps. It turns out goosebumps are not just a human experience but a mammalian response too. Through goosebump evaluation they found mammals of all types experience awe. And humans all over the world experience awe, they even traveled into remote areas of Bhutan where the locals had no Western interactions and found experiences of awe.
How do we find awe? We need to practice our awareness. Awareness of the miracle of the earth all around us. Listen to the birds and observe them, pause along side a stream, watch the wind blow through some trees, feel the sun warm your skin. You can even find awe at your own accomplishments!
Notice; notice what is around you. There is awe around us everyday, we just need to notice it, take time and dwell on it, then take the awe-ness with you as you go about your day.
More tools to find flow
PERMA is an acronym for a model of well being — these elements also help you find your flow. (This comes from the field of Positive Psychology.)
P = Positive emotions – Tune into your emotions often. Be aware of when you can shift them to be more positive. Positive emotions help in finding awe in your life.
E = Engagement -you are drawn to a natural engagement with it.
R = Relationships – In a healthy relationship you will slip into flow during conversation.
M = Meaning – It’s meaningful to you.
A = Achievement – in that you have the skill available to do it.
We are at our best when we’re in our flow using our skills and abilities to their fullest.
A Meditation to help you get in the flow:
- Sit tall, shoulders relaxed.
- Relax your tongue on the roof of your mouth. This releases the hypoglassal nerve (12th cranial nerve, controls movement of tongue) that runs from your tongue into the vagus nerve. This signals your body that you are in a safe space, and you can relax
- Slow your breath rate down, with slightly longer exhales. Any comfortable slower pace with extended exhales is good.
- Picture a large empty space behind your eyes.
Feel how this allows your brain, your eyes, your cheeks to all relax. This alone shifts one into the alpha or slower meditative brain waves. - Consciously slow your breath just a little more to about a 5 or 6 second inhale and a 6 or 7 second exhale.
- Visualize your physical heart, heart space or heart chakra. Now imagine you are breathing right through your heart space. As you inhale, inhale something you love; a person, pet, or even a place you love —inhale it into your heart. Let it increase the love in your heart.
- Take your attention to your out breath; with each out breath imagine a beam of love flowing out from your heart toward this person, pet, or place you love. Infuse them with love. Hold this image for a few breaths.
- As you do this you will slip into theta, delta, or even the gamma brain waves. Gamma is the wave of happiness, integration.
- Now inhale and bring the beam of love back into your heart and visualize it flowing to any part of your body that needs healing, or that feels tight or restrictive.
- Now relax your mind, and return to resonance breathing for 5 breaths.
This simple meditation can slip you into gamma waves, making it easier to find flow and awe. Most people experience a gamma brainwave state that lasts for just a couple seconds. With some time in this meditation you can spend more moments of your days in this state of the integrative brainwaves or gamma state. In this state you feel wonderful and it makes it easier to notice the awe in our world.