"Flow" - undoing semantic stretch/ambiguities
It was such a beautiful word, but then... pulled and stretched apart, beyond recognition. Maybe the first step to restoring "flow" to its former glory is to wash away the semantic ambiguities, and provide a clear distinction of what flow refers to. And then, we can evaluate, if not objectively, at least a little more carefully and with nuance, whether some thing is characterized by “flow”.
Not one, but two...
“Flow’ is a word pointing at two related but distinct concepts.
1. The Flow-State
Mihalyi Cziksentmihalyi (a grandfather of positive psychology) coined the term flow to describe a psychological experience which he called "flow-state”. The term flow came from the interviewees of Mihalyi’s research: they spoke of a feeling of being carried by a current or a force. Mihalyi found that this “flow” state of mind came about during moments of complete mental engagement with a task. Due to this complete engagement, the mind is unable to process itself, and conception of self drops out of awareness. Mihalyi believed that the flow-state is imperative for a fulfilling life, and characterized the moments when we feel “most human”.In this case, flow is not a movement. Flow is a state of mind, a moment in time that emerges from being in a place where challenge intersects capacity in the right proportions.
2. Flow as Movement Skill
Just as important as the psychology of flow is the movement quality of flow. This refers to movement executed in a particularly efficient way; often, it is pleasing to watch because the underlying efficiency communicates a high level of intention and quality.Defining graceful or fluid movement will always be contentious, but if we look, we can discern… or so I thought. Now, I’m not so sure...What Mihalyi did for the state of mind of flow, Ido Portal has done for the practice of flow in movement, by developing original and effective deconstruction-based tools/models for developing flow within movement, i.e., the "closed system flow" and "Isolate -> Integrate -> Improvise".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAJlOeklpqQThere is a link between the movement-skill and the flow state: those who pay so much attention to detail as to produce a fluid movement will also be fully engaged in their task. Which came first, the engagement or the attention to detail… we’ll never know, maybe neither.
Developing Flow-States and Movement-Skills
Flow is a state of mind you can experience and it is a movement quality you can cultivate. The flow-state is found, the movement-flow is created.Both the flow-state as well as the movement-skill can be achieved through Ido’s models of isolate/integrate/improvise and closed system flow. By mastering elements, learning to sequence them, and ultimately improvising with them, you give yourself a singular opportunity to enter the flow-state specifically through the process of producing something beautiful, something that from outside appears to flow.
Resources/References
Mihlayi TEDx talkMihalyi InterviewMihalyi LectureFlow: the psychology of optimal experience (book)Ido's article on Closed System FlowFlo(a)w (Ido)Ebbing Away (Ido)
Blind in hindsight: phrenology and modern science
Modern science owes a debt of gratitude to phrenology for laying down the theoretical groundwork that opened the door to modern neuroscience… yet phrenology is maligned as a poster boy for bad science. Its history reveals some truths we would stand to benefit from recognizing: our cultural ignorance of how science progresses, of what is “scientific”, and the convenience of rewriting history, are all part of this story.
Phrenology: the story
Phrenology is thought of as feeling for bumps on the head to predict personality and intellectual capacity. Even Wikipedia, which we take to be an objective and grounded source of information, fails to provide the real history.Phrenology is the brain-child (haha) of Franz Joseph Gall, who believed boldly against the mainstream that the brain is not a homogenous unit, but consists of subsystems. Gall also believed in the malleability of the skull and the relationship between size and activity of nervous tissue, and this resulted in a secondary principle of phrenology, that mental faculties correlate with the size of brain regions.More notably, phrenologists sought to prove, against the mainstream, that the brain is the seat of the mind.Phrenology is now, as it was in the 19th century , considered a pseudoscience. But “pseudoscience” is a specious term, easy to support in retrospect, often wielded to support popular dogmas. Bechtel and Richardson, in a philosophical/historical text of science (“Discovering Complexity”), describe the appellation “pseudoscience” as a “rhetorical flourish designed to enforce a particular point of view - an ideologically conservative view in particular”. In this case, the conservative and popular viewpoint of the time was that the mind was essentially unexaminable.
Blind in hindsight: rewriting history in search of whipping boys
Early opposition to phrenology was based on anti-materialist and antispeculative movements. Opposition was not because phrenology was non-empirical; indeed, phrenology WAS empirical, though not experimental.Prior to phrenology, Cartesian notion of cognition suggested that the brain was an inert transmission device for the soul to the physical realm. In addition, the Cartesian model viewed the brain as a homogenous unit. Phrenology led the attack against this Cartesian idea of a spiritual source of cognition and a homogenous brain, and introduced the idea that the brain consists of centers subserving specific functions.Phrenologists were mocked for their contrarian ideas, now widely accepted, that the brain consists of discrete parts responsible for different faculties. This perspective was elaborated upon by the two celebrated scientists Pierre-Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke, providing us ultimately with the theoretical groundwork that opened up modern neuroscience."We eat the breadcrumbs" of phrenology, but refuse to pay homage.
Social ignorance of science: what does it mean to be “scientific"?
The denigration of phrenology reveals something about our society. We mock the phrenologists… because phrenologists made predictions that were proven false.Yet in this, phrenologists are no different than any other (accomplished) scientists. The notoriety and association with pseudoscience reveal something disturbing about the human condition - our fear of failure. Yet failure sits at the heart of scientific progress. So we laugh and rewrite history, instead of realizing that this very line of inquiry brought us the basic insight responsible for how we understand the brain…In the end, the only thing wrong with phrenology was that it was parts of it were proven wrong; the process of generating the theory of phrenology actually reflects the true scientific spirit. Like all scientific beliefs, true and false, it has been used to support absurd and even unethical ideas, and had a large share of dogmatic and unscrupulous adherents. But to claim that phrenology is a pseudoscience is to do a major disservice to history and the scientific spirit.It is sad to see how capable we are of rewriting history to maintain our indignation for failure in science. Science flourishes through failure, and our condemnation of failures reveals two major things about us as humans: the rejection of progressive thinking by experts, and the susceptibility of the masses to the experts (burn the pedestals).
Decide for yourself...
See the principles of phrenology below, and see if it sounds like pseudoscience to you...1. The brain is the organ of the mind2. The brain is not a homogenous unity, but an aggregate of mental organs with specific functions3. The cerebral organs are topographically localized4. Other things being equal, the relative size of any particular mental organ is indicative of the power or strength of that organ5. Since the skull ossifies over the brain during infant development, external craniological means could be used to diagnose the internal states of the mental charactersTo introduce against the mainstream, and subsequently normalize 3 major principles (at the cost of 2 wrong ones) is a better track record than most scientists will hope for. And even that regions can grow as a function of use (for example, the hippocampus is larger in London cab drivers, due to a higher demand of spatial orientation).We need to come, as individuals and as a society, to nurture the scientific spirit, the tolerance for our own and other’s failures in their lines of inquiry. Of course, this doesn’t mean persisting in a failed direction, but even then, there is something to be said for persistence when confronted with contradictory evidence…
Resolving health and ethics in diet (how the decision to be a good person caused me to move on from veganism)
I spent 7 years of my life vegan. It's not something I "quit" or "gave up", but moved on from. From a health perspective, it wasn't sustainable. From an ethical perspective, I realized there is complexity to the situation of animal welfare and meat; there are other options that sit outside the two incumbents of conventional meat consumption and abstinence from meat.Both from the health and ethical perspectives, the decision of what to eat is highly individualized. But it should be known that there is a dietary perspective based on reflection, introspection, and consideration of ethics, that includes consumption of meat. And it definitely doesn’t accept the status quo of modern animal welfare and meat production. Actually, it is finding a line of inquiry that doesn’t settle for the isolated questions of health or ethical, but instead brings them together - being a good person necessitates having a healthy body.
7 years a vegan
At some point in my youth, I realized I was highly disturbed by meat, that I could barely stomach animal flesh. A decision was made to systematically avoid animal (by)products. There was also a pseudo-moral component to this, and it became convenient to link my genuine concern for animal welfare with eating. Though I didn’t use the term often, I ate a vegan diet, and considered myself slightly superior to the traditional vegan, as I refused to push my values down anyone's throat.Over the years, I began a steady descent into exhaustion, overtraining, and nutritional deficiency. I didn't recognize it at the time, but there was a persistent fogginess, depression, and serious regression in my training.It would be 7 years before the idea to eat meat entered my anemic brain.
Confrontations with myself
I sat at a boardwalk overlooking the bay. Machiavelli was expounding, via "The Prince," the weakness of his contemporary culture (a description that I believe aptly fits out current existence), and the courage of ancient pagan societies, especially regarding the defending of personal liberty."The pagans, because they believed worldly honor to be the highest good, showed greater fierceness in their actions. This is demonstrated in many of their customs, as compared to ours, beginning with the splendor of their sacrifices… the extremely bloody and fierce act of sacrifice in which hordes of animals were killed. This savage aspect of them tended to make the participants savage too."Essentially, it was this kind of relationship to the physical world that kept man good. I don’t intend to promote bloody sacrifices, but I do agree with Machiavelli when he identifies the loss of moral virtue in mankind as a consequence of a divorce between mankind and the physical world. Savagery is what kept man aware his physical existence and responsibility to the world.I am not making the point that bloody sacrifices should be brought back. But this observation caused me to consider the possibility that our relationship to the world around us is not so simple as I’d have liked. I realized I would have to reconsider the place of meat in my life.
Thought experiments
I began with a simple thought experiment: if consumption of meat made me a better person, would I consume it? This question, a taboo of veganism, ignores whether or not meat actually confers such a benefit. But I needed to answer it, to know my true motives.This revealed to me a disturbing truth: I was not avoiding meat because I believed animal welfare benefited from my veganism, but because meat disgusted me. This is a very high form of hypocrisy; I wasn't being morally superior, I was simply being a coward.If I was avoiding meat because it disgusted me, and if I did not believe truthfully that veganism promoted animal welfare, then… I was simply vegan by a habit of aversion, and not a commitment to an ethical practice. And moreover, if consuming meat made me a better person, I had a responsibility to overcome this aversion, even if it meant undergoing a process of exposure to what was repulsive to me.
Implementation
So I decided I would test this idea - I would tentatively introduce meat into my diet. I would maintain a sense of the tragedy of meat, in part by turning to Jewish prayers that provide reverence to the eating experience, and a general sense of gratitude to the animal on my plate.I began my excursion from the holy land of vegan-ism with a can of bumblebee tuna. I awkwardly forked the tuna into my mouth; lightning didn't strike. (It's a singular experience, that moment when a 7 year habit is turned on its head). Next was a can of sardines.The improvement in health was obvious. I was finally able to support my training regimen in a sustainable manner. I started sleeping normally again, the cloud that had settled in my mind was gone.But more importantly… I have since become a better person, in many many ways that would not have been possible with the mental limitations I experienced under the influence of a vegan diet. I see this as relating to mindfulness; meat provides substrates necessary for supporting mindfulness, which is so important in overcoming personal demons (including those relating to being a good person).In a way, looking for the way to eat that makes me (function as, not simply see myself as) a good person looks beyond ethics or health as isolated concepts…
Paleo and Beyond
The transition to eating meat would come with some nuances. I had informed myself on the "paleo" view of nutrition, and found it convincing. Not necessarily the evolutionary model, but the biochemical and physiological arguments were compelling.I subsequently began experimenting with various approaches. After a while, I realize I was caught in the same prison that kept me vegan for so long; my habit became an identity, and it was dogmatic in nature. So I decide to break that dogma. After several years of a strict paleo approach, I decided to reintroduce certain foods. Some produced negative effects, some were not bad for me at all. So I created my own approach, based on this individualization.
And beyond the beyond
But I was still prisoner to some ideas. I began to wonder… what if I broke all the rules, now that I set them for myself?The result was unexpected. Nothing changed, except I had a new fire born of the realization how independent I was of the foods that entered my body. So I went back to my strict approach, but with the freedom that comes from knowing that you don’t rely on a particular food or diet.
How to get good at everything
The only way to get good at everything is to make the progress in one area feed another.This is the way a person with a large vocabulary is capable of improving more than a person with a smaller vocabulary. This is also an idea in mnemonics, where the more nodes you have, the more associations you can make, the more prolific your learning can become. It is the creation of a spider-web, and the more nexuses you have, the more strands you can draw across and the stronger that web becomes.
A review of the Ido Portal method
We’ve followed Ido Portal’s work obsessively for 8 years; it’s been a special journey for us both. At that time, nobody was talking the way he talked, teaching the way he taught, saying the things he said. Ido, with his small team, single-handedly created an entire “field”, opened up movement as a legitimate passion and obsession. And now, years later, he’s still the pioneer in this field. Anybody wanting to get into movement… there’s one go-to guy, and zero reasons not to get involved. Whether it’s online coaching, a workshop, or a movement camp, make the effort to learn from the best.