287 - Mailbox: "Flow state"
Reader email response to 285 plus comments and video / flow drills/ Ian Abernathy quote
Email response from Kiwichic to this post:
“Haha the 'Intension vs Tension' paragraph is hilariously accurate - 'if you confuse tension for intensity....it can look impressive....and make you feel that you are working harder but it is, really, just an affectation and not serving you well.... Intent is from the mind rather than the facial muscles' - this is just too funny! But realistically, how many of us equate increasing tension to increasing productivity?!
This idea of being in a state of alert responsiveness without holding tension is such a valuable skill. For me it feels like the concept of being in a 'flow state', which is one talked about in ever widening circles now - from athletes, to mindfulness and meditation practitioners, to artists, to business people, and beyond.
I'm sure we've all experienced times of feeling like we were 'in the zone' and performing highly in a way that felt curiously effortless, but never would we feel like we were in the zone or flow state at times when we were holding excess tension, as tension and flow are opposing states.”
(Jeth: Yes, flow state is a much discussed in sports science/ performance circles theory put forward by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura.
“According to Csikszentmihalyi, the human mind can process up to 120 bits of information per second. When we’re challenging ourselves with a task, our mind reaches full capacity. If the activity at hand happens to be something we enjoy and we’re good at, we achieve a flow mental state — and it can leave us feeling ecstatic, motivated and fulfilled.” <1>
The goal of coaches of course, is to try and get athletes to access this state at will so as to raise performance, especially at elite levels where the learning phase is long over and the athlete would be in mastery stage by default.
Us mere mortals can recognise brief moments of it when performing a task and having the feeling of watching ourselves as observers. The idea of being physically relaxed as a habit along with the clear performance benefits lessens the chance of tension slowing performance and creating conscious awareness of this in the mind, which is a distracting factor and therefore a block to flow state.
Other ideas…
On a tangent…..
What about “flow drills”? These are chains of ideas put together that can be flowed from seamlessly tactic to tactic - a common one is lock flows. But are these “flow state”?
Well, I guess that you could try and view them as such but would you be in a state of flow watching the performance of a drill rather than the performance of fighting? That is what should concern us. Fighting is scrappy and chaotic not flowing and elegant.
So beware…. Crouching tiger may lead to… hidden bullshit!
Ian Abernathy quote
Years ago, I remember reading a quote from UK Karate expert Ian Abernathy where he said something along the lines that “flow drills are where you practice failure”, I can’t find it, so apologies to Mr Abernathy….
I thought this was a good way to put it, piecing together ideas, on the fly even, and trying to flow between them at speed without worrying about mistakes. An idea for solo practice.
With that, here’s a video of me a few years ago, practicing failure… there’s a metaphor there somewhere, I’m sure. )
Note:
<1> : https://www.headspace.com/articles/flow-state