A Tool To Help You Flow
Consciousness, from my experience, is our inherent ability to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings.
It is our capacity to recognize our thoughts, emotions and experiences as part of our unique identity.
It involves the integration of sensory information, cognitive processes and self reflection, allowing us to perceive the world and ourselves as a coherent whole.
At its core, consciousness is what allows us to know ourselves and to explore the depths of our inner world.
We are born conscious, and along the way our ego takes over to dull that connection.
Over time, our minds begin to take data from the present, and compare it to the data from the past and use it to make predictions about the future.
This is the natural function of the ego that is a really valuable process to have as a human. But it can also be a curse.
It keeps us living in a future tense state, very rarely in the present and gripping onto our everyday experiences with control and anxiety.
If we don’t understand how to build a better relationship with our ego, then we can go our whole lives never fully breaking free from its control.
And the best way I know how to do that, is to build a practice that moves me beyond my ego into the unknown place of my consciousness where I can become more aware of what is in my way.
When we are in a more conscious state, exploring ourselves, we are blocking the past and the future and we are dropped into the present state of being where we can feel more, see more and experience more.
This state is often referred to as the flow state.
We’ve all heard of the concept of flow before. It is often used to describe an athletic pursuit or creative act.
It is an intoxicating state of being.
When you’re in flow, you are free from the monkey mind.
It’s the absence of self consciousness where we feel and perform at our best.
Our sense of time evaporates and this beautiful richness and effortlessness appears.
We feel more balanced, calm and optimized.
The godfather of flow, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes it as “beyond boredom and anxiety.”
It’s the ultimate state of consciousness that we seem to find ourselves in by accident or in small bursts.
But what I’ve come to learn is that it is no accident and it should be something we optimize for every day because it is the most ideal state of wellbeing.
And I’m going to show you one way to do that today through what I call Autonomic Flow.
The Autonomic Flow Theory
Our entire waking life is governed by our autonomic nervous system (ANS), we just very rarely pay much attention to it.
Our ANS operates unconsciously to regulate functions like heart rate, breathing and digestion.
It dictates our physical and emotional responses to stress and relaxation, constantly keeping us in balance, but we rarely notice its influence until we feel extremes like anxiety or deep calm.
All day we are oscillating between the sympathetic part of our nervous system responsible for alertness and focus, or the parasympathetic system which supports rest and digest.
But when we enter the flow state, we are uniquely tapping into both of these two parts of the ANS simultaneously.
The focus and alertness from the sympathetic nervous system provides us with heightened awareness, while the parasympathetic system ensures calm and effortless action.
This state is the perfect harmony of natural function, optimizing our nervous systems for peak performance and well-being.
The Flow Cycle
Much like our sleep cycle, the flow cycle follows 4 distinct stages.
The struggle stage is where you are stuck in your thinking mind, analyzing, thinking about the past or the future, ruminating on thoughts.
Here you are actively experiencing the release of stress chemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine and your brain is operating in a beta wave pattern.
As time moves on, you begin to enter the release stage. You move away from the thinking mind and into a more focused state.
You release feel-good chemicals like nitric oxide and you slip into an alpha brainwave pattern.
The release stage transitions you into the flow stage where your awareness is heightened and you drop into the present moment.
Your brain floods with dopamine and endorphins and you enter the theta brainwave pattern where things begin to slow down, you become more intuitive and creative and everything appears effortless.
This state can last anywhere between 25 and 90 minutes and with training can last much longer.
Like deep sleep, deep flow can only last for so long, and what is needed after a good flow session is some time to recalibrate. This is where the recover stage comes in.
We need to reset the chemicals that allowed us to flow and tap into the delta brainwave pattern to release serotonin and oxytocin that allow us to relax and digest.
This is like overtime in a basketball game, where our learning is accelerated and our brain is conditioned to take in more information and experience our reality more clearly.
Discipline + Surrender = Flow
This is the algorithm for flow.
When you follow a discipline, ritual or set of practices, and have the willingness and ability to surrender, you can enter the flow state much easier.
We can use the flow state to help us with athletic performance, creative expression, work and self exploration.
And I tap into this state regularly, moving through the cycle of flow to support me with all kinds of different things.
Today I want to share with you the deep work ritual that I use to massively improve my work and my productivity output.
I typically only work 3-5 hours a day and manage 2-3x more output using this method.
Practice: Autonomic Flow Exercise
A 90-minute deep work ritual (ideal for solo work at a desk or work station)
Set the setting: find a space where you can have peace and quiet for a minimum of 90 minutes. Clear the workspace and clean it up, removing any distracted clutter.
Focus: The key to any good flow state practice is singular focus. Select one major project you want to tackle and understand the individual elements that you need to work on to achieve your desired outcome
List: on one single sheet of paper, write down the primary focus and each of the individual steps you need to complete, in order. Do this to avoid task switching and to keep you in a forward momentum.
Clear the mind-field: on another piece of paper dump out any thoughts that are in your mind that are not related to the task at hand. Your grocery list, the argument you had with your spouse, whatever is in your way from dropping in and being present.
Strap in: grab a pair of headphones (noise-cancelling are best) and turn on this playlist.
Go: when you’re ready to begin, click play on the first song in the playlist - this will start you off in a beta brainwave pattern and help you move through the struggle phase and into flow efficiently.
Most people never reach flow, because they can’t move beyond the struggle and they get easily distracted by their thinking mind.
This playlist is designed to take you through the struggle beta brainwaves, through alpha, theta and delta where you can activate flow for a full 90 minutes with ease.
If you feel complete before the playlist ends, make sure you skip to track 24 and 25 to give yourself some time to recover.
Like I said, the recover phase is important for recalibrating the chemicals in your body that create flow. 10-15 minutes is all you need.
If you end up trying this out please shoot me an email and let me know what you think!