CHAPTER 9

Flow Into

SuperMind

You can learn to turn on the flow state to transform your daily life.

—Herbert Benson, The Breakout Principle

Johanna was an outstanding violinist. She had played the instrument since she was a small child. Because she loved to play, she practiced for hours, but over time she started feeling pain in her hand and wrist. Her teachers told her she was trying too hard and that the stress was affecting the way she held her bow, causing cramps and carpal tunnel syndrome. But Johanna knew something her teachers did not. She wasn’t stressed because she was trying too hard; she was stressed because her bow hand had started to shake from an inherited neurological condition that caused tremors, and it was taking all her effort to control it. Her worry about the tremors caused her to stress out even more, which threw additional tension into her hands. She started worrying so much about it, it affected her performance during competitions. Fearful of ruining her career before it had even really started, Johanna came to see Bill, who suggested that clinical hypnosis might help her cope.

Bill taught Johanna how to put herself into a trance when she picked up her instrument to play. When she would play the violin in this alert but relaxed and focused state, the familial tremor would disappear and she would enter into a state of “flow,” so absorbed in the music that she lost all track of time and her surroundings. The hypnotherapy allowed her to practice without tension, and as she became good at triggering the trance on cue, she began to replicate the same relaxed state while playing professionally. In a trance, she could focus on what she enjoyed and what she could control rather than worry about what a judge or audience would think. She knew when she made mistakes, but she had the strength to move past them and not linger over her errors. Johanna became so good at putting herself into a trance that no one knew what she was doing except her mother and Bill. Only a trained clinician would have recognized the signs: the slight dilation of the pupils, the relaxed attentiveness, a lack of muscle stress, and extreme focus.

Later, Bill taught Johanna to rapidly shift her focus back and forth between the music and the audience to draw them in to her contagious expressiveness. Communicating with the audience in this personal way allowed her and her listeners to intimately share the experience and enter into a collective state of flow. She gained professional acclaim and played with some of the world’s most famous musicians. Her career soared while she learned to control her own brain and eliminate the tremor while she played, though it did return as soon she was no longer in a trance state.

Johanna was not only able to recover her confidence, she also was able to recover her love for playing, the whole reason she became a violinist in the first place. You could say that flow gave her back her mojo. It can do the same for all of us.

In the previous chapter, we explored the concept of the whole brain state. Physician and neuroscientist Alan Watkins, the director of the Complete Coherence Institute in Britain, suggested that this state of coherence is the biological underpinning of what elite performers call “the flow state.”¹ Flow, a term coined by Mikaly Csikszentmihalyi, author, professor, and former chair of the University of Chicago Department of Psychology, is the opposite of Mind Wandering. It is the word he used to describe the state we are in when we’re so involved in an activity, when our attention is so hyper alert and narrowly focused, that time seems to disappear.² Others might call it the zone, the runner’s high, or the martial arts’ mushin (no mind). It’s the state we’re in when we’re reading a really good book and don’t realize that three hours have passed. We naturally move into flow states whenever a task is pleasurable and takes intense focus; it is a transcendent state where we are at one with an activity. In fact Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness, called flow the maximum state of positive emotion.

There are nine characteristics of the flow state³:

1. You feel that you are performing at the perfect level of your abilities, where you’re not coasting but not too challenged, either.

2. You’ve merged so much with your activity you can’t judge yourself.

3. You have clear goals.

4. You receive body/mind feedback; that is, you’re aware of your success and failure so you can make adjustments.

5. You have complete concentration and focus.

6. You experience a total sense of control.

7. You lose all self-consciousness.

8. Your perception of time is altered.

9. Your task is an autotelic experience; that is, the task has intrinsic enjoyment.

The flow state is now thought to exist on a continuum beginning with micro flow states, where you are absorbed in an activity and lose track of time, to more intense flow states, where you have such difficulty separating yourself from an activity that your sense of reality is altered. We can enter flow states many times a day, any time we go into a state of narrowed focus and become so absorbed in what we’re doing there is no sense of passing time. However, flow is connected to our biological ultradian cycle, the 90to 120-minute cycles through which our cognitive processes surge and fade. The struggle and flow phases of the cycle are periods of activity, and the release and recovery phases are breaks in the flow state. Our brains can focus intensely for around 50 minutes, but then we enter a phase-down period where we automatically move into a state of absorption or trance. In this phase we often stare into space. Then our mind wanders, and sleepiness and mental “fuzzies” take over. At that moment we need to take at least a 20-minute break, where we completely change channels and concentrate on something new, or rest or take a walk. When we try to push ourselves beyond our recovery state, we stress ourselves and make it hard to retrieve flow again later.

Why It’s Good to Go With the Flow

Recently in Scotland we experimented with accessing flow by doing the Bungee Bounce. A chest and thigh harness that were connected to rubber tubes and hooked 50 feet up to a geodesic dome structure strapped us in safely. We began to fling ourselves high up in the air and bounce on the rubber mat on the ground to fly higher on the upswing. The experience was exhilarating and lasted only three minutes, but we lost track of time and blended with the activity. Afterward, the feeling was amazing. We felt high on our own brain chemicals. Try as we might, it was impossible to conjure up a worry, angry, or fearful thought. The energized feeling and moving beyond the physical limitations of gravity left us emotionally lighter. We were left feeling completely confident and worry-free for an hour and a half. As the feeling faded, it became a resourceful memory to draw upon in the future. This activity is similar to the many movements in the flow genome project where the leaders work with people standing on exercise balls, and in devices used to turn them upside down.⁴ The time it takes to create the flow state can be relatively short.

Dr. Csikszentmihalyi researched people for whom achieving flow is key to their success and renown—athletes, artists, dancers, gamers, rock climbers, and others—and discovered that those who enjoyed the most peak experiences, or flow, were also the most worry-free. They were unafraid to pursue challenging experiences and felt little fear of the unknown. In fact, he learned that our sense of flow, as well as its duration, tends to intensify as the physical activity in which we engage becomes more challenging and contains some added danger. They also had a high sense of fulfillment and were good problem-solvers.⁵

His flow research found that for an activity to trigger flow, it must make us stretch a bit to reach our goals but not be too hard that it raises our anxiety. Conversely, if the challenge is too easy, we risk becoming bored. Only when we are able to strike the right balance between a challenge and our skill can we enter into the ecstasy of flow.

What does any of this have to do with our research on the effects of worry? Over the years, we, too have studied the cognitive state of athletes and peak performers at our clinic, and we confirmed something else Dr. Csikszentmihalyi discovered: It is impossible to conjure worry or any negative feelings, indecisive motivation, or intrusive thoughts when in a state of flow.

Not only have we found flow to be seminal to keeping worry at bay, we have found it sustains ideal performance and stimulates mental and physical healing. The more flow experiences you have, the more alive you feel. Since, as Czikszentmihalyi discovered, people who enjoy peak experiences often also suffer little from worry, we’ve concluded that an excellent way to banish worry is to try to incorporate flow into our everyday lives.

How does flow block worry? Quite simply, it’s impossible to concentrate intensely on an enjoyable activity and worry at the same time. When you cross over from mere enjoyment to the flow state, you actually alter your awareness of the world around you. Things seem less frightening, and challenges less daunting, because flow cancels all the conditioned mental programs that limit your beliefs, moving you into a state where all possibilities and no dichotomies exist. In the flow process, the brain moves through all of the frequencies—Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta, and Gamma—and your conscious mind shuts down judgment. Alpha waves calm the nervous system and Beta puts you in a state of alert relaxation like you might have if you were, say, playing tennis. Theta waves silence your inner critic, the “uh-ohs” or negative thought, and your worry. You even sense less pain because in this stage the brain releases natural painkillers. Your sense of self momentarily disappears; you and the activity have no separation. If you play baseball, you, the pitcher, and the ball are one. If you are a musician, you, the instrument, and the music are one. In addition, flow increases creativity. When you enter a state of flow, your mind begins to call up novel ideas and interesting ways of thinking about issues that open up new possibilities. Flow leads to heightened pattern recognition. In fact, a conductor who intentionally trains his choir to enter the flow state will often elicit better sound and flexibility of expression.

Flow is not just something experienced by performing artists, writers, and musicians, and religious leaders, though. One research study found that flow increased intrinsic motivation and self-determination with architecture and business students.⁶ A 10-year study done by McKinsey found that business executives were five times more productive when in flow, and employees in flow make the best teams for a company.⁷ Blending together and working as one entity helps team members lose their egos and shut off their worry and fear.

Intentionally working to trigger flow is important because flow experiences increase your willpower to break bad habits and accomplish extraordinary feats. Often when you are on the edge of a breakthrough to living in the next level, flow helps you stretch a bit farther to make it happen.

In flow, truly remarkable things are possible. For example, in his book The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Performance, Steven Kotler attributed some extreme sports achievements and personal life successes to flow, such as space diver Felix Baumgartner, who took a supersonic free fall in a special suit from the edge of space and survived. The experiment demonstrated a potential evacuation strategy for astronauts if their space ship failed. Less risky but effective is the use of neurofeedback by executives in business to develop more peak performance.⁸ But you can achieve flow in simple ways such as exercise, meditation, or self-hypnosis. The extreme clarity and calm emotional detachment of flow increases performance, problem-solving, and creativity days after the flow activity. The reason is that while in flow we unconsciously make problem-solving adjustments in a nano-moment, but later, even when we’re no longer in flow, we feel the aftereffects and continue to see alternative routes to our goals. And when we’ve consistently felt like we’ve made good decisions, our confidence and belief in ourselves goes up, and our worry goes down. So it’s in our best interest to get to a state of flow as often as possible.

Unfortunately, flow can be lost if you are easily shaken by self-doubt or other people’s judgment. The good news is, like every other mental state, we can train ourselves to enter a state of flow at will.

Overcoming the Mind’s Limitations

Gary was a talented pole-vaulter attending college on an athletic scholarship. His brother, also a pole-vaulter, preceded him by four years and had set a high standard for achievement. Gary felt burdened by pressure from his brother’s accomplishments. As a result, he couldn’t jump beyond a certain height. His coach, felt certain Gary could do better, and referred him to Bill for hypnotherapy to help him overcome his mental block.

Bill discovered that in Gary’s mental movies, he was constantly failing to exceed his own previous accomplishments. After putting Gary into a trance, Bill asked him to review his favorite vault. His eyes closed, Gary began smiling and using his hands to unconsciously hold an imaginary pole. To remind him what he was capable of, Bill asked Gary to mentally review other jumps he’d successfully made.

Finally Bill pointed out, “When you stand on the runway, you really don’t know exactly how high the bar is even though you are told the height, and when you clear the bar, there is always room to spare.” This suggestion helped Gary move his mind away from how high the bar was and focus on the automatic activity of running and planting the pole and vaulting. Just visualizing himself succeeding made Gary feel confident that he could accomplish the next vault goal. Bill suggested that he remember this feeling whenever he picked up the pole and felt it in his hands. He should remember how he felt in this state, thus creating a hypnotic trigger for the flow state the moment he feels the pole in his hands.

The next day, Gary’s coach called Bill to tell him Gary cleared a height 6 inches higher than he ever had before. The day after that, the coach called to say that Gary had cleared an additional 6 inches of height.

Gary achieved peak performance by shifting his attitude, learning how to quickly clear his head of doubt and worry, and learning to enter into the flow state at will.

Cycle of Flow

Harvard psychiatrist Herbert Benson found that the brain activates different waves on the way to achieving the flow state, which he called “breakout.”⁹ In other words, to get to that low Alpha, high Theta brain state, you have to transition through many of the same brain-wave stages we’ve covered in this book. According to Benson, stage one of the cycle is the struggle phase. Everyone struggles when they’re trying to solve a problem, have a better athletic performance, learn a piece of new music, or sit down to write a book. That struggle can frequently lead to worry. This stage triggers higher Beta frequency, causing stress hormones to flood into the system, such as epinephrine and norepinephrine. Our blood vessels constrict, and our heart rate and blood pressure go up. This is how the fight or flight reaction manifests itself when you are trying to solve a problem.

Stage two of the flow cycle is the release phase, in which you begin to let go of the stress and create more Alpha frequencies. In a process similar to the Mind Wandering we discussed in Chapter 3, you completely leave the problem you have been working on and focus your attention on something pleasurable, like taking a walk in the park, or anything calming that takes your attention away for a little while from the challenge at hand. In this stage, nitric oxide releases into the system and sweeps out the stress hormones.

Stage three stimulates the Theta and Gamma frequencies. Coinciding with these frequencies is the release of dopamine and anandamide, which as we discussed in Chapter 4 is in the family of endocannabinoids. They have been shown to help us heal, even if only via placebo effect, because we produce them when we believe we are taking or doing something that will make us feel better. In this stage, we also release endorphins that produce feelings of well-being. It is in this stage that we give up the struggle for control over our performance.

Finally, stage four is the recovery stage in which the brain stimulates the Delta frequency and releases serotonin and oxytocin. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter often associated with good mood, and oxytocin releases during bonding experiences. It is in stage four that you move into improved “new-normal” patterns. Flow changes old thoughts and emotional patterns, reduces your stress response, and releases enormous healing power in your body so you don’t go back to your old worry self. In fact, you can’t return to the old you.

How to Start Triggering Flow

Remember: People who are stuck in a worry mind need to begin with the early exercises in this book so they can start by interrupting a pattern. Then they need to re-associate new possibilities to break out of their limitations, and re-pattern and condition themselves to reach positive states. Only then are you prepared to work on flow. You are building mental muscle so you can achieve the state of flow more regularly. The question is: How do we train this expanded state of awareness?

Depending on where you are in your own emotional mastery, many activities can trigger the beginning flow state, from jogging, visiting a cathedral, being in nature meditating or praying, or remembering a beautiful place you visited in the past. You could repeat a mantra or special word for a few minutes. You could lose yourself in a pleasant experience, including visiting a novel and tranquil place. You could volunteer. Focusing on a particular sound or visual image, especially a work of art or architecture, or listening to classical music, stimulates the initial flow state. Yoga, meditation, or martial arts practice opens flow states. Training in extreme sports, including running, skiing, or skydiving, can lead to intense flow states. Though less risky, singing in a choir or playing a kind of music where your focus demands that you blend into a group can give you an intense flow state. Even reading, solving puzzles, or playing computer games (Luminosity is a good website for this) can trigger flow.

It doesn’t actually matter what you do, so long as it’s a pleasurable activity that requires your undivided attention. As you get better at your activity, keep pushing your goals further so you continue to challenge yourself and you don’t get bored. That said, don’t set impossible standards, either. You always want to be practicing right in the sweet spot of your abilities, where you’re challenged but not so frustrated you’re tempted to give up.

Hypnosis

Several of Bill’s worried clients have achieved peace and peak perfection by learning how to hypnotize themselves. Why did Bill suggest hypnosis? Because it takes you through similar brain stages as flow. When you are in a trance state, you cannot worry.

No doubt you have had the experience of watching a movie and losing track of time. Perhaps, you have been driving and lost in thought, momentarily forgetting where you are. These are hypnotic states of mind where consciousness is altered and your perceived reality shifts. Although researchers and experts in the field disagree about how to precisely define a trance, there is a general agreement that hypnosis entails:

1. A shift from broad focus to narrow or highly focused attention.

2. The use of memory and imagination.

3. A shift from conscious behavior to automatic. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. Even when therapists place clients under hypnosis, they actually invite clients to place themselves into a trance, whether it is through a specific induction or focusing on a spot on the wall until the eyes tire, or listening to a story. We see elements of hypnotic trance and trance behavior with athletes, musicians, other performers, and businesspeople and scientists when they perform at a high level. They are selectively attuned to information they need to carry out their particular task. They block out extraneous stimuli, lose track of time, find what they do pleasurable, even though it may be physically and emotionally demanding, and report being in the flow state or the “zone.” The trance state is very similar to the state of flow.

In fact, Lars-Eric Unestahl, sports psychologist, suggested that the state of hypnosis was similar to the state athletes enter when they are performing at their best, and designed a sport psychology concept around this called the Ideal Performance State. He noticed that these athletes only attended to relevant tasks, experienced time distortion, no pain, and effortless actions.¹⁰ This zone of optimal performance often is acquired through intense focus and the use of visualizing the perfect performance. By mentally reviewing a former great performance in detail before a new routine, the sports athlete or performing artist moves into the optimal state to repeat the best experience.

Flow Helps Solve Problems

The unconscious mind may be our most valuable asset. It is the ultimate solution generator and co-creator of million-dollar ideas, works of art and music, and spectacular architectural designs. The unconscious mind is the driver for flow states.

Elmer Green, well-respected biofeedback developer and researcher of higher states of mind, developed a process he called “interrogating the unconscious mind.” While in a relaxed state of mind, he frequently asked his unconscious for answers to math problems. He often found that in this state, spontaneous imagery popped into his mind that helped him solve problems. For example, he received astounding information that helped him answer a math problem that had been unsolved by experts for 100 years, and published the findings in the journal Science. Green believed that asking the unconscious mind for information while in a state of flow gives us access to a kind of mental library that contains all of the knowledge and information in the universe.¹¹ Here’s an interesting experiment: If you want to find a book in your personal library, sit in a chair among the books and ask your unconscious mind to show you where it is. Without putting pressure on yourself, relax and peruse your bookshelf. Often you will suddenly notice the book title.

Lee Zlotoff, producer and writer of the popular MacGyver television show in the 1980s, discovered that flow could help him when he needed to access his creativity to develop scripts quickly. MacGyver was a non-violent action hero and always solved problems with simple tools and a presence of humor and humility. After the series ended, the character’s popularity soared and became a global meme for turning “what you have into what you need.”¹² Zlotoff accidentally discovered a powerful tool when he took his mind away from a problem by relaxing while taking a walk or a shower, only focusing on the present moment. In essence, he took himself into the second stage of flow. Frequently, he shifted into a fleeting third stage, which was the flow state. Several hours later creative ideas would emerge that would help him write the next script. He learned that his unconscious mind would always come up with new ideas. Zlotoff received new ideas from the unconscious where much information is accessed. He demonstrated one more time how anyone from any profession or walk of life has access to the creative mind from being in a state of flow.

Take an Incubation Break

When you need a new idea or to re-work some creative project, it is useful to take a break from the work itself and completely change your environment. By getting into nature and listening to music or exercising, you alter your awareness. When you interrupt your worrying about a solution, you let go of your struggle and move into a trance state of narrowed focus, or flow. The unconscious mind is essentially an idea incubator, constantly processing information and formulating new solutions to the problems that occupy your conscious mind. Incubation breaks, however, allow the unconscious mind to super speed new ideas without the interference of worry or fear that you won’t come up with something new. In fact, you never have to worry that your unconscious won’t give you solutions. The key is to get out of your own way by taking the mind into a calm state by taking a shower or a walk in the park. When you use this approach, you avoid worry and the tendency to force things to happen. The mind will give you plenty of ideas to solve most problems.

Over the last 10 years, there have been many studies done on incubation to enhance problem-solving. The results across the board have shown that unconscious associative processing has a generative power to bring disparate ideas, past experiences, and connections together to form new ideas. People often approach problems with limited information or trial and error approaches, and these tactics block the ability to think outside the box. A time of intense study is required in your area of expertise followed by letting go of the outcome you hope for. When you discover that everything you ever learned or experienced is recorded at the unconscious level, you begin to appreciate your available reservoir of internal resources that will put ideas together you could never have come up with consciously. With practice, when you enter flow, and at the same time achieve the whole brain state, worry disappears.

Simple Process to Receive Guidance From Your Unconscious

You can solve any problem and keep the flow state activated by following this protocol.

Begin the incubation process by occupying the conscious mind on something else without thinking about the problem. Ask a question of your unconscious mind and write it down. This might entail asking for new ideas for a creative project or a book or for guidance regarding a decision.

Spend several hours or wait until the next day to see what pops into your mind.

Ask your unconscious mind to give you the information when the time is appropriate. You may notice that some news article catches your attention or you have a fascinating dream. The information comes in a variety of ways.

Peak Performance in the Flow State

Jeffrey Fannin and Joe Dispenza found their advanced workshop students had similar flow state experiences when they worked with them in open focus training. This is the practice of focusing on space in a meditative state, which we discussed in Chapter 8, that creates the whole-brain mental state.¹³

Christopher Bergland, science writer and extreme athlete who investigates the zone state in performance, identified a state of extreme flow that he calls “superfluidity,” which he believes is the source of his real breakthroughs in ultimate performance.¹⁴ This is a state that is episodic and harder to come by, but once you experience it, you will find endless energy and feel completely unified with the activity. This experience only shows up after much mental and physical training so you must develop skills to operate from a state of mastery. Bergland mused about whether we could plug into a universal source of energy available to all of us. He noted that his experience was like the description in Ecstasy in Secular and Religious Experiences by Marghanti Laski, who found that the triggers for this intense flow state were found in nature around water, trees, dusk, sunrise, and bad weather. Flow frequently occurs when we place ourselves in more natural environments.

The Institute of HeartMath in California, interested in brain and heart communication, researched and measured energy fields that extended from the heart and the brain of every human. They found that these two organs influence each other and apparently have electromagnetic, electrical, and perhaps some unidentified energy fields that flood every cell in the body.¹⁵ The brain’s energy is enormous, but the heart’s magnetic energy field is 500 to 5,000 times bigger than the magnetic field of the brain. This means that not only are our own bodies bathed in interacting energy fields, but when we are around others, our fields are interacting. This means when you enter flow, you invite others around you to share the state. When you turn off worry by shifting into flow, your fields extend further from the body. Science is discovering that the state of flow may be a bridge to that higher connection and potentially activates advanced human abilities. It is the path toward mastery of your mind, body, and biology,

When you practice flow by doing any of the activities we discussed, you open yourself to a life of no regrets. In our clinical work we found that it is possible to create a new self, almost without worry. When you spend time focusing on developing the best version of your self, you have greater possibilities in a future you most want to experience. This is your personal peak performance: life.

Final Thoughts

This whole book has been dedicated to showing you that your mind holds the secret code to living a worry-free life. Because you take your mind with you no matter where you are, changing your outer circumstances rarely changes your state of mind. But learning how to achieve a healthier mental state is the key to mental and physical peace.

Life mastery is the ultimate goal that completely changes your experience in the world. By managing your physiology, by controlling attention, through shifting your breathing, or refocusing your attention, and practicing the brain change tools we’ve discussed ultimately dissolves inner tension and allows you to enter the whole brain state in coherence. When you are in balance and flow, you’ll feel no fear or worry. You’ll operate from an inner state of calm peacefulness, and transform yourself. You positively influence others, your business, and your spirit.

You can live your life not only free from worry, but also beyond the old uncomfortable and often debilitating states into a more creative, productive, and, with practice, ultimately a more satisfying reality. The process we have described in this book, based in the latest neuroscience, tells you exactly how to make this happen. By learning to interrupt worry states, use neuro-association to connect new understandings, practice neuro-repatterning to condition new states of mind, practice the whole brain state, and, finally, trigger flow, you create a new you.

Excited? Accept our invitation to live with a worry-free mind.