Force v. Flow, part 2

In the last post, I wrote about the difference between force and flow energies. In this post I want to discuss ways to find, practice, and increase flow energy. There are two main steps to knowing flow energy more intimately and to cultivating it more committedly: 1) learning flow and practicing it, and 2) mindfulness to the difference between force and flow.

Cultivating Flow:

1) Find an activity whose intention is flow energy: yoga, tai chi, mindful walking. An easy entry point is a practice called Yoga Nidra, a yogic practice designed for more restful sleep. In Yoga Nidra we cultivate an energy that is relaxed, but alert, and aware. In essence, we practice dropping deeper and deeper into flow and away from force. Once this practice has become a part of one’s repertoire, we then have a frame of reference for the difference between force and flow.

2) Do things with the intention to do them in flow energy: with this difference in mind, and with mindfulness to force energy, bring yourself back again and again to flow energy. Everything can be flow when practiced as a such. Don’t wash the dishes to get to the next chore. Wash the dishes, as Thich Nhat Hahn has taught us: to wash the dishes. You don’t need to be practicing or performing your sport to practice flow energy, but rather, you can practice it all the time. Turn force into the exception rather than the rule.

3) Make an inventory of things that bring you out of flow (traffic, math tests, interactions with a certain someone, fifth set tie breakers, sprints); where do you rush? Where do you try too hard? When doing them, notice the dislike, discomfort, disease, and try to drop judgment or discontent. Lean into it. Allow it rather than fighting it or pushing through. Try slowing down, evening out the energy, exploring the difficulty or dislike. Enter it.

4) Of course, none of these steps matter if you aren’t breathing diaphragmatically. Learn this and do it all the time. It is the queen of all regulation strategies, and the portal to almighty flow.

Mindfulness to Force Energy is actually an umbrella form of mindfulness that comprises many levels:

1) Mindfulness to force emotions: frustration, impatience, anger, and even frenetic forms of excitement can be windows into the fact that we are in force energy.

2) Mindfulness to force thoughts: angry thoughts, racing thoughts, resentful thoughts, disbelief, rabid competitiveness, enemizing refs, rivals, crowd, and even one’s own entourage are all indicators of force energy.

3) Mindfulness to physical sensations: tension in the shoulders, belly, face; furrowed brow, clenched jaw; heat in the face and forehead; feeling “keyed up,” energized but at several levels too high.

4) Mindlessness to time: time is moving too fast or too slowly. You are rushing where pausing is called for. You are multi-tasking where one-mindedness is called for.

If this all sounds like a big deal, it’s because it is. Not only is force energy associated with bad performance outcomes, but it is often a window into deeper truths about the self. Maybe I am in force energy because I don’t like this activity. Maybe force is masking a confidence gap. Maybe I am in force energy because these are someone else’s goals and values I am representing. I am involved in false-self activity. In force energy I can win, but it will come at a cost. In contrast, it’s very hard to fake flow. If I am doing something that I love, and that resonates with my true self, it is much easier to find flow. If it is flow-syntonic, it is probably self-syntonic. In flow, we perform better because we are articulating something real, true and urgent about ourselves. And these are things we just can’t force.

Force V. Flow, part I

When I was at my competitive peak, with an intense practice and tournament schedule, one thing I particularly loved was the very intensity of it all: pressure  drills, court sprints, plyometrics, track workouts, squat thrusts with lots of weight on the bar, a really tough match or tournament weekend.  The soreness of it all was "weakness leaving my body," I believed, and acquiring the intensity that I lacked as a junior athlete definitely made me a more confident and steely competitor.  I've written often in this blog about the virtue of hard work.  But, for as fondly as I look  back on that period, I  also recognize that there was a certain  energy that attended all that work, fueled by my love of the intensity of it: there was a kind of force.  The force turned the intensity into a kind of do-or-die mentality.  I really pushed  through workouts, and I really pushed through matches.  At the time, I thought this intensity was my saving  grace, my superpower.  But, looking back, I see that it was all perhaps too intense.  I was too intense in practice, with no time for the crucial aspects of fun, flair or spontaneity, and too intense in competition, too edgy, too perfectionistic, the lens of  my gaze too narrow to enjoy the experience to its core.  I got hung up on bad calls, and I definitely got too judgmental with myself when I bunked a workout or lost a match that was within my grasp.  While there's much that could be said about this from a personality, or even maturity standpoint, today I'm focusing on the energetic nature of it, its quality of force.  Force energy is the energy that wants to make it all happen, that thinks that pushing is the only way through difficulty.  But, the flip side is that force has a certain violence to it, and as such, can have some serious negative consequences, as I'll outline below.  Of them all, the most detrimental is that it actually impedes peak performance and peak experience.  By pushing so hard, by having so narrow a focus, the richness of the  experience is lost, and with it, the joy.  I'm proud of my  competitive record,  but if I could  do it again, I'd try to temper the force energy, and dip below it to find an ease within the effort, the eye of the  storm.

To clarify more about the opposite of  force energy is  what Mihaly Csikszmentmihaly (1990) has called  "flow."*  Flow energy isn't lethargic or  associated with bad outcomes.  It isn't lazy or passive.  Both force and flow are, indeed, goal directed, but the temperature of their focus is different, with flow being a cooler, less harsh energy.  The intensity is there, but the violence is gone.  "Try easy," is what my yoga teacher, Baron Baptiste would say in my first encounter of the concept.  What a riddling thought when you are trying to get yourself into one of those angular yoga poses.  Drop the efforting in the effort he's saying.  Drop the panting, the pedal-to-the-metaling.  There are two critical areas of divergence between force and flow energy: the attention and the intention.  Let's look at it this way:

Force Energy	Flow Energy
1. While there may be an intensity of focus, its temperature is hot, the focus is laser-like, and its vibration is frenetic. As such, it can get unmoored.	1. The focus is equally intense but its temperature is cool, the focus is anchored. It is a state of immersion.
2. The intention of force energy is on the final product, on getting there, on completion.	2. The intention of flow energy is on what is happening, the process.
3. The attention of force energy is superficial, on the surface of the task.	3. The attention of flow energy is on the core of the experience, its essence.
4. Shallow, suppressed, uneven, and vertical breaths comprise force energy, making the action more difficult and scattering the energy.	4. The breath is long, even, horizontal, and focuses the attention and supports the intention of the action.
5. Negative emotions of impatience, anger, and disappointment color force energy.	5. Flow energy allows access to emotions like contentment, gratitude, and even joy. Peak experiences happen with flow energy.
6. In force energy, we are usually having a dysfunctional relationship with time: we expect too much in too little time, we can’t believe how slowly time moves when we want it to speed up, and our bodies are out of sync with the rhythm of the universe. Force energy is asynchronous.	6. Flow energy is in perfect conjunction with time; time goes away; time flows without being noticed; flow energy is not a race against or with time. Flow energy and time are synchronous.
7. Force energy begets conduct issues, injury, and is at war with reality.	7. Flow energy, by definition in sync with reality, is easier on the body, on the nervous system, and more readily begets peak performance.

I hope it's also clear that  peak performance and peak experiences happen in a flow state.  The problem is that many aspects of being an athlete funnel us toward force rather than flow: 1) most athletes who are looking to improve and win practice hard, and so, practice with a certain amount of force; 2) many coaches, in yelling and emphasizing results, are directing practice and play towards force energy; 3) many activities that athletes practice are, by their nature, difficult, and difficulty often steers the attention towards force; 4) modern life with its pace, its value on individualism and competition over collaboration and collectivism, orients the organism toward force energy; 5) finally, since we are bathed in force energy as our cultural amniotic surround, we often have no frame of reference for flow energy.  We have to stumble upon it, or channel it from the flow state we may have once known but have since lost.

In the next post, I'll talk about how to cultivate this primordial treasure to start enjoying peak performance and peak experience.  Stay tuned!

*Csikszentmihaly, M. 1990.  Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  Harper Collins.  New York.