Last week, the lakes and creek rapidly thawed, and as I ran along the Minnehaha Parkway, I was thinking about flow. Defined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as a state of optimal experience in which the self-conscious self-concept (“the information we use to represent to ourselves who we are” [64]) drops away and the mind and body are totally, and happily, engaged in an activity. In flow, we experience absorption and “freedom from the tyranny of time” (67) in part because the “disciplined concentration” (41) it takes brings all information we’re aware of into the stream of consciousness that is moving toward our goal. And that goal is not extrinsic; the experience is autotelic, an end in itself.
Flow is the opposite of “psychic entropy” (39).
As I ran along with the water flowing over its frozen bed, I thought about how strong the urge is in us to arrive, get to a place where, establish ourselves, get set up, get to the bottom of, figure it out, have closure, reach a state, and so on. I think these are erroneous attempts to alleviate psychic entropy, and as we pursue these illusions of stability and fixity, often we’re only increasing our sense of disorder.
I’ve been working hard to deconstruct these myths of fixity in myself … mainly by reminding myself to relax and flow. It turns out, I was interested to find, that it’s the endocannabinoid system that contributes to these phenomena during a run. According to recent studies, it’s not endorphins that cause that happy, loose-jointed, flowing feel of ease known as “runner’s high” but endogenous cannabinoids performing their evolutionarily determined function of making running enjoyable. The anandamide – named for the Sanskrit ananda, meaning bliss – binding to receptors in my brain and nervous system reduces anxiety, making it easier to let go of thoughts that feed limiting beliefs.
This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I’m fixated on some thought cluster, and I run for miles barely noticing my body or the world streaming by. This is only when I’m really dug in… One thing I’ve picked up from my brain-book binge, most recently The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist, is that this kind of narrow focus and fixation on thoughts, especially thoughts that buttress the sense of self, is by and large a result of left hemisphere dominance, whereas the more open, creative, idea-synthesizing flow that happens at other times is associated with the right hemisphere. I wonder what running and all the brain-chemical, nervous-system, and physiological processes it launches has to do with opening up to a more right-brain, gestalt perspective, which seems to happen more often than not. I’ve always enjoyed this creative outpouring when swimming laps, too, and even work out writing problems while cutting through that wavering matrix of milky light.
The most wonderful thing about flow, and runner’s high, is that it’s ephemeral, a pull to the present moment, “flowing, and flown,” an opening to awe like the transient glow of sunrise…
sunrise over Nokomis
Quotes are from:
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, New York: HarperCollins, 1990.