Flow State

The concept of "flow state" or being in the zone is fascinating to me. I love it when I get those moments of joy when I am running and everything comes together. My mind is lucid, my legs feel as though they don't belong to me, I feel as if I am floating. I get in this state pretty frequently during runs, but I also experience it on the bike and in the pool.
I have written about flow before, but I just did some more digging around and found some things that really excited me and validated, in a way, my love of training and my devotion to the triathlon lifestyle.
I want you all to find 18 minutes to watch this Ted talk on flow state. It's a great introduction to the idea of flow and how important it is to happiness. We can experience flow in any area of our lives, not just exercise, and one of the keys to a happy, satisfying life is finding ways to reach the flow state in many different areas of your life..your job, your hobbies, etc.



When I wrote about flow before, one caveat I included was that I could not reach a flow state through exercise if I was out of shape. The Ted talk explained this by demonstrating how flow comes from the right confluence of challenge and skill, which would explain why I could not reach a flow state until I gained some fitness back. The challenge was too high and my skill level was too low. Now that I am in shape, I can go out for a 13.5 mile run, push the pace just a little bit, and there is my flow!

In my own personal experience, music plays a big part in reaching flow state. I can reach flow with or without music, but when I have the perfect playlist on while running or while doing an interval session on the bike, I can get so happy and high on life! I look forward to my weekly interval session for this very reason. It is a time when I can push my body (challenge is very high) while not having to concentrate on the road or anything but the music and the energy of movement. This is when I envision myself slipping though a hole or a door that is floating in space, a pinpoint that I slip myself into and lose all sense of pain or discomfort. I was amazed to see a reference to this "door" in the Ted talk. Apparently it's a common visualization among people in the flow state.
I found this interesting article on music, exercise, and flow. In particular, I found this reflected my own experience very well:

Music and Flow State

Our most recent research (Karageorghis & Terry, 1998) has revealed an interesting link between music and the attainment of flow state during aerobic dance exercise. Flow involves an altered state of awareness during physical activity in which the mind and body function on "auto-pilot" with minimal conscious effort. Some coaches refer to this as being "in the zone"; it is an almost trance-like or hypnotic state. Flow has been associated with optimal psychological state and represents complete enjoyment of and immersion in physical activity. Our study involved 1,231 aerobic dance participants who were asked to rate the motivational qualities of the music used during a class on completion of their workout using the BMRI. They also rated flow using the Flow State Scale, a 36 item questionnaire developed by Jackson and Marsh (1996). The results revealed avery significant association between ratings of music and ratings of flow. We concluded that music may have a considerable effect on enjoyment levels during exercise an selecting the "right" music may be a key factor in maintaining adherence to exercise.


I also found an abstract that pointed out the following:

Support for construct validity of flow scales was also demonstrated in that the flow trait challenge-skill balance was most highly correlated with the trait measure of perceived ability, and the authors concluded that high perceived ability is crucial to facilitating flow states (Kimiecik et al., 1998). It may be that less-skilled athletes are less likely to experience flow because both their actual and perceived level of skill are lower than elite athletes.

In other words, flow comes more easily to those who are confident and positive about their abilities. That is true for me right now. I am feeling very good about my fitness level in swimming, biking, and running, and that in turn has fueled my flow state and made me more inclined to continue to exercise!

I felt very validated by the Ted lecture because I do spend a lot of time wondering whether triathlon training is an idle pursuit. I am learning more and more that it is not, and that what we all need to do with our time on earth is to enjoy it! Nothing more, nothing less. We need to make ourselves happy. What makes me happy and what makes me feel energized and engaged in my life is exercise. I also can get in a flow state when I am engages in other things, like today when I ran with the kids at the run club at school. That was a meeting of challenge (being extroverted in a new situation) and skill (I am good with kids and enjoy spending time with them). I get into a flow state when I am helping people, when I am of use and service to my community. All of these things make me feel fully engaged with my life. It's kind of ironic, though, that the flow state creates a feeling of being separate from or outside of your body, when the only way to get that feeling of separation is to actually be fully engaged with your body and mind!