It’s been awhile since I’ve kept my promise of occasional ninjas, so, we’re taking a break from writing topics this week.
Our topic instead?
Flow.
It’s a state and a feeling. If you’ve experienced it, pat yourself on the back. Flow is sublime. It is essence. It is truth and ease and ecstasy. It’s unity of body, mind, and spirit. When your whole being is focused on an infinitesimal goal and your whole being is working in concert to achieve one small thing. The sensation of effortlessness. Flow is the closest to perfection I will ever come.
I am very sure there are scientific studies by psychologists and academic journals by exercise physiologists explaining exactly what flow is, why it happens, what brain chemistry is set off when it occurs, and what sensations it creates empirically.
That’s not what I’m sharing today, though. I’m sharing my personal experience of flow. It is a feeling that evades description, but I will try, as is the writer’s creed.
I most recently experienced a flash of flow in a Zoom-hosted karate class. We were drilling combinations we don’t usually use in kumite (sparring). We weren’t doing anything flashy or particularly difficult. And one of the sequences just felt right. Like the first sip of water when you’re parched. Or a warm mug in your hands on a cold night. I could feel the connection between my intent and my feet and the ground and my hands; as I threw the punch my body was liquid, moving exactly as intended.
But then I reset for the next combination, and the flow was gone.
It never stays long.
It used to stop by more often. When I was training for my first-degree black belt, in the months leading up to my test I fell in and out of flow almost every time I stepped into the kumite ring. Almost every time I worked out. I can’t tell you why reaching flow is so infrequent for me now, though I have some ideas.
I’ve experienced flow while writing, too. There are fewer physical parallels to describe when I reach a creative flow state. Instead of being grounded in what my body is working towards, my mind untethers and soars. Physicality, like the hardness of the stool I’m sitting on or my awareness of my fingers flicking across the keyboard, fades away. When I’m writing in flow the story is sprinting ahead of me. I can see the scenes I’m painting with letters unfold seamlessly. I remember describing once that “the scene whooshed out of me.” That’s what it feels like. A full hour can pass while I’m in flow and I’ll be completely unaware, completely at the whim of the stream of my thoughts.
When I’ve experienced flow in karate, it’s almost always this extreme sense of control, a hyper-awareness of every individual thing happening in the moment, from the movements of my body to the position of my opponent and their precise angle of attack. Creative flow is the opposite. It’s a lack of control: a relaxation from the grounded physical world. When I come out of creative flow, there’s always this satisfying hum of contentment vibrating through me. Perhaps the mental equivalent of the languidness you might feel after a good hard [insert exercise of your choice].
I’ve experienced flow state in one other place: on the back of a horse. This was akin to flow in karate, where even though it has been years, I can, right now, remember the greenness of the blades of grass and the thud of Zani’s hooves on the ground. But added to the mix is a deeper sense of connection with the horse I rode. The unfathomable sense that it was not just me charging towards the jump but us. We were synchronized with each other and with every stride came closer to our shared goal.
Flow is something I always feel like I’m chasing. I never expect it; I’ve never been able to will it to occur. It feels like an epiphany: this is what you are meant to be doing. But then the moment ends, I lose the flow, and I feel as unbalanced as ever. Just another clumsy, struggling collection of limbs and thoughts.
I’ll keep chasing it because those flashes of flow are my ultimate truth. If I could but grasp them, perhaps I could learn to master myself.
In sum:
May the flow be with you.
– M