154. Flow & The Art of Non-Doing
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Welcome to Joy Lab!: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.cOach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I'm Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. And today we are talking about flow, being in flow. So we've talked about flow before, I'll link to those episodes. Um, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who really first worked scientifically on this concept of flow, brought it to the forefront.
So he defined flow as a state [00:01:00] in which we're so involved in something like in an activity that the world around us kind of dissolves. We come into a zone where that activity sort of so enjoyable, it's all that's happening in our consciousness. We become absorbed in it. And so we'll get more into this, but the reason why we're talking about flow during our month of curiosity is because being curious is really an essential factor in both the ability to create the environment for flow to happen and then to stay in that flow zone for a bit longer.
Henry: I think it's great that we're talking about this and that we're connecting flow and creativity.
Aimee: Yes.
Henry: Because what we're really interested in here at Joy Lab, what we are most curious about, is flourishing. And these are signs that one is flourishing. Curiosity and [00:02:00] flow, I think of as twins, non identical twins. They share a lot of DNA, but they're not exactly the same. I think of them both as being really high level, high level functions of the brain. I'd add humor to that, too. Curiosity, flow, and humor. I think they're the high functioning triplets of a vibrant mind. Now, I usually think of flow as something that just happens. You can't force it, so you just have to let it happen in some mysterious way. But let's talk about how we can coax it along a little bit, and so it's not left completely to chance.
Aimee: Yeah, you definitely can't force it, right? Flow doesn't show up there. I think same with curiosity and humor. I love those aspects you name as a vibrant mind. So let's, let's look at some research here that inspired this [00:03:00] episode. There's a recent study that looked more into the flow-related neural activity, so what was happening in the brain of folks who are in a flow state.
So this was a small study, but still really interesting to consider and the findings are consistent with other studies on flow. So let me explain the study quick. There were 32 participants. Each were jazz guitarists with a range of experiences and ages, but they all had the ability and the comfort to improvise.
And so that's what the researchers had them do. They each did six jazz improvisations with an EEG electrode cap on their head. And then they took something called the core flow state scale as well for each improvisation. So that's how they gauged whether someone was in flow. And here's a few of the findings.
So being in a flow state was associated with having more expertise. So there's something really interesting there [00:04:00] about how this very disciplined act of practicing and gaining expertise can then open up this more fluid, sort of creative flowing state. Second finding that I thought was interesting. In addition to expertise, there was a practice of letting go that was associated with flow. So in the EEG, this showed up as lower activity in areas of the brain associated, with executive functioning. So folks who could release sort of the conscious control of their actions, in this case, who could release the control over their guitar improvisations, how it was sounding, how they were doing it, and they were more likely to experience flow.
And so, as I said before, this study supports many others along this idea that getting into flow requires some prep work. There's research as well on something called the transient hypofrontality hypothesis, which supports this. This is a great article [00:05:00] if anybody's interested in this, I'll put it in the show notes.
But Dr. Arne Dietrich had done some, pioneering work sort of on this phenomenon under certain conditions and for a limited period is this idea that we can allow our brain to take a bit of a rest and then these other areas of the brain become more dominant. And then it almost allows us to enter these sort of altered states of consciousness, which may sound "woo woo", but there's a lot of research here with like the runner's high as the experience, states of flow during creative processes like we're talking about right now, so this is not some like levitating meditative state that we're talking about.
It's very real experience of letting the executive function of our brain take a break. And so even more practical, I think what this study and others is suggesting is that there's practice first, as I noted in those key findings. [00:06:00] And then when you've got some of those skills, then the art of letting go can make that flow state more likely.
So we're not forcing it, we're allowing it. And it doesn't just apply to runners or jazz guitarists. Thank God, because I'm not either of those this applies pretty much anywhere you might want to tap into this flow state.
Henry: Yeah, I think it's important to emphasize that, at least in this case, expertise does not mean that you have to be objectively good at something. You don't have to be Wynton Marsalis or Charlie Parker to benefit from flow. The way I understand it, flow simply means that you lose yourself in the activity. And it just feels good to do that. There seem to be two main aspects to this experience of being in the zone. One is that it is effortless. It's almost [00:07:00] like something or someone else has taken over and you just don't even really have to try. It's just flowing through you. And then the second quality is it's enjoyable. And I love this. Here's a quote from one of the researchers. "The experience is so enjoyable. The people will continue to do it even at great cost for the sheer sake of doing it." So, you're not doing it to please anybody else. You're not doing it in order to be great, like a well recognized great musician. You're doing it for your own pleasure, for the sheer joy of it. And I think that's wonderful. I want to bring something else into this conversation that I don't think gets considered very often. And that is that flow is something that we can really access as we age. You know, maybe not [00:08:00] like an athlete, a young athlete who's in the zone, like a Katelyn Clark tossing in three pointers, you know, from half court. But think of the two essential ingredients that this study points to. Experience plus letting go. So as we get older we just naturally have more experience and I really think it becomes easier as we age also to let go.~ Say ~ So maybe just to say a little bit more about letting go. It is such a paradox. Remember, the other thing that we do repeatedly that involves letting go is sleep, falling asleep. You know, you cannot force yourself to sleep, right?
And just like that, you cannot force yourself into a flow state. So it is a paradox. There is no real recipe. There's no specific steps. No action that I can take that [00:09:00] will automatically result in being able to let go. It's a release. It's a non-doing instead of a doing. And that just does not make sense to our thinking, rational mind. Which is just the point. This is not a thinking mind activity. happens and can only happen when the thinking or the striving aspect of our mind gets out of the way.
Aimee: Yeah, my shirt, I didn’t realize says over thinker which is pretty much the biggest obstacle to flow. Um, on YouTube you can see it. Yeah you can’t think your way into flow. You can't think your way into letting go. Actually, we had a letting go meditation in our April, live talk for our NMH community.
Could be helpful here. So folks in the community, you can find that in your meditation [00:10:00] library. We'll pop it into the campfire circle as well. If you're not in the community, join us. We work on how to get out of this trap of overthinking. Sometimes just wear a shirt and you look in the mirror and you're like, "Oh Lord, I'm overthinking again, aren't I?"
And I'm like, yep, step it back. Um, also super good point, Henry, that you do not need to be objectively good to get into flow. So I think we, as you, again, alluded,~ um,~ we usually think of flow happening in these elite athletes or musical greats. But it's not about a level of expertise that beats everyone else.
Like you have to be so good, that that's the only way to get in a flow. It's a level of expertise. I think that gives you the confidence or just the cognitive ability to not have to engage so many resources in the details of the basic functions of the activity. Right? So you have enough skills so the brain can explore and we can all do that [00:11:00] with a bit of practice.
I'll give an example. I'm an objectively bad builder and carpenter. But, this is maybe not smart, I feel confident enough to do these building tasks in our backyard in, in the right situations and I've done them enough and have had enough mentorship from my husband who is objectively good at this stuff, to actually allow me to get into the zone, into flow when I'm doing that kind of stuff. And I love it. So I'll pop in a picture of what we built last year. It's a greenhouse chicken coop thing. And I constructed a bit of a chicken jungle gym, adding some play areas for the chickens when they're bored in the winter.
They are not safe for humans to stand on. But I can definitely build safe structures for creatures under 10 pounds. And I really get into the flow of it, quite [00:12:00] honestly. So there is some encouragement right there to find things that help you tap into your flow state and it can be I mean, building jungle gyms for chickens.
It doesn't matter what it is, you can find that flow state.
Henry: and the chickens do not care if it's objectively good, right?
Aimee: Well, you know, they've given me some credit. I think they objectively it's stellar. But yeah, it doesn't have to be stellar by anybody else's standards. Um, so, you know, find, find those things that you want to put in a little bit of effort in to, to gain that expertise enough that you can let go a bit and then embrace flow. Try something new, perhaps. To close, I thought we could stay with the music theme from this study and learn from Charlie Parker, who you cited as well, that great jazz musician. Here's what he had to say, and I think it is a perfect instruction for getting into flow. If you're a musician, a [00:13:00] runner, a chicken jungle gym builder, a whatever, fill in the blank with whatever you want to find your flow in.
Here it is. "You've got to learn your instrument. Then you practice, practice, practice. And then when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."
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