#the rest is the disheartening state of creative spaces today

[getvalentined]

Vincent Valentine of the Elite Four from Pokémon Holy/Meteor, releasing never on the N!ntendo Switch.

I put way too much effort into this for a dorky one-off, but here we are! I have a whole backstory for this AU but I will not bore you all with the details.

[conjured-osteon]

Hiatus

{-Kicks rocks an mumble grumbles- I SWEAR this account was fully intended to have more activity but I'll be going on a Hiatus till further notice. If curious, I've added more under the cut but to keep it short'n'simple; Rough start to the year that only continued hasn't helped my creativity an instead stressed me out. (Triggers in the Tags, just in case.)}

{Starting this explanation on a softer note, I find myself having a hard time focusing on my lovely characters an this blog. Not to say I'm intending to get rid of it! But when you get nervous trying to reach out to others or don't get responded to it can be a bit disheartening an I never know what to do as a plan B. (Plus I know we all have lives outside of this. I'm just an unfortunately nervous person an sometimes the Logical Thinking gets bopped by the What If's) But I also have Bouncing Interests so at times my drive will go from full throttle to Zero without any warning because something else has gripped me like a vice.

I have been desperately wanting to work on the blog but as mentioned above, lack of interaction kills the motivation an leaves it kinda stressful cause I dunno what I can do to do better, especially when not wanting to be a pester or bother anyone. Otherwise I HAVE met some wonderful people who are a delight to chat/plot with and I am so, so, so sorry I've been inactive the past month :'D I take responsibility for that radio silence of mine.

And onto rougher notes... New Years Eve I had to say goodbye to my childhood dog. She lived a good, long life an it's still upsetting not seeing her around after nearly 15 years. Holidays already grate me so the addition only made it worse and then some other details surrounding it just, made it especially bitter for me. I've suffered depressing/anxiety fueling dreams involving her almost every night since. Following as a few days ago; one of my cats passed away. Another example of old age but losing a pet never comes any easier over the years.

Around December is when my mental state really started taking a nosedive, one I thought was going to be a temporary thing seeing as I was working odd hours for events from my usual shifts, not resting or eating properly Truth be told I'm bad at that in general bUT, grieving over the approaching vet visit on top of other stressors that came during the Holiday season. A part of the mindset I was thinking it would pass was due to the fact I don't register things that have happened/are happening immediately, an so I just guessed I was having one of my delayed responses from other things and handling present stress... Cept, it continued on in waves for several weeks in comparison to a day or two. Aaaand earlier today while I was working, I got so stuck in my own head, so tightly wound up by meaningless thoughts, arguments with not purpose and physically over stimulated into self directed aggression by getting MF'in' hiccups that I ended up reaching out to a Cr!s!s Hotline when I found I couldn't even make myself contact friends/family. My strongest Rational and Logical Thought was I needed to talk to someone before my predicament made itself truly hazardous. Immediately after, I called my partner so he'd be aware. I'm doing better at the current moment, quite chilled out actually an I fully intend to bring this all up with my Therapist this week.

I hate worrying others and I falter to express what's going on due to the always hovering thought of I'm just looking for attention, or I'll be ruining another person's day because I'm being a child. Something I've struggled with for a long time that I'm hoping-- Trying, very hard to work through.

Soooo yeah- I guess this is me saying I need to step back for my mental health. I'm still so bummed out by having to do this but I really, really want this to be a fun space I can look forward too at the end of my day without my own nagging negativities getting in the way of it.

DMs will continue to be open but I'll be much more MIA from here than I was prior, this time with reason behind it.}

[sootcloak]

Crow’s Shadow: Repair Required

The first part of a short, serial-style work I’ve been cranking away at for far too long. This is part one of a (planned) three-part series. You can find the second part, Carrion Circle [Here]. I’ll add another link to the third part once it’s up. Beware of some major spoilers for Stormblood if you’ve not gotten through it yet, and some general spoilers for the MCH quest kinda. Lastly, if you’re a purist when it comes to in-game lore, you should be warned that I take some creative liberties in regards to the character around whom this blog is centered. Also I hate this hellsite’s text post coding, it makes the formatting look so goddamned wrong.

3064 words, featuring Hilda the Mongrel, Rostnthal the Reborn. Centered around a wounded OC, a tense cross-country trip, and the looming specter of a dangerous foe.

    Hilda stares with a rare, dumbfounded expression on her face. Curled in a ball on her old, ratty armchair is a familiar, Lalafellin woman. Her sickly, pale skin, greying blonde hair, and scarred face were unmistakable. Vavara had become a common sight around Foundation ever since the gates were opened after the Dragonsong war. Her work alongside the Manufactory and Lord Stephanivian was shrouded in some level of discretion, but it was no secret that she was an expert in Garlean-style magitek.

    But the whispered words which surrounded the woman seemed an understatement, if her eyes were to be believed. It was rare to find Vavara out of her usual Company-style overcoats. The few times she was caught out of uniform, she was in battle-ready armor instead. Now Hilda understood why. Her body, small and compact as it is, is almost entirely mechanical. Covered in intricate layers of dull, grey plates and brassy webbings of cogs, she looks not unlike the tools and machines of Idyllshire. Like clockwork muscles and cable tendons, her body is simultaneously relaxed and completely rigid. Here and there, where the metal fades, she can still see skin. Sickly, near-grey, and oddly textured like a doll’s porcelain, but still skin. Tangled in a blanket, eyes shut, and body snoring in strange, buzzing whirrs, it takes a few moments of shock to realize two more things.

    First, Hilda hadn’t ever told Vavara where she lives. Nor had she given permission for the huntress to remain with her.

Second, one of Vara’s arms is missing. Just gone. A bare, brass socket lies exposed to the air where it would meet her left shoulder. Hilda glances around, but the limb is nowhere to be seen. There is, however, a note on the end table besides the table. The messy, big letters on the page are of an immediately recognizable hand.

        Hilda,

    Vavara was out testing one of Stephanivian’s new gizmos last night. Something went wrong, it’s all a bit fuzzy until we can look at the damned equipment, but it blew up in her arms. She soldiered on as well as you’d expect from her, but when we caught up to check on her we found her in shambles. We were all as surprised as you probably are - what with all the metal bits and all. Save for Stephanivian, that is. Seems he was already aware of her illness condition state whatever you call that. She was adamant that she not be seen like this, so we needed a place to keep her where untrusted eyes wouldn’t find her.

    So I borrowed a key from Joye and let her in. She should be asleep until tomorrow morning, or at least that’s what Stephanivian says. He’s making replacement parts for her damaged bits, but he couldn’t give me an exact time to give you as to when they’ll be done. I’ll have Joye run over as soon as he has an estimate.

    I know it’s a good bit to ask of you, but we all owe her and hers a solid turn. This is a good chance to make good on that. Please look after her for a bit, and don’t let her run off and do anything dangerous, no matter how angry she may look. She’s too busted up, at least based on how we found her, to really argue with you.    

    Keep her safe for now,

    Rostnthal

    Hilda’s hands crease the paper, her eyes drifting back and forth between it and the sleeping woman. 

    “Well shite. There went my plans.”

    Vavara’s eyes open to the dim, flickering light of a nearby hearth. Her body hums with angry, buzzing pain. As she takes in a ragged, grinding breath her eyes scan around the unfamiliar room. She can feel the damage all throughout her body. She can feel the way her breathing hitches every three-and-a-half seconds. The way her right arm can’t rotate exactly as it should. The way her eyes won’t focus. Her ears are ringing, ever so slightly. 

    There’s dust in the air, quite a lot of it. The furniture strewn about the stone room is old, patched, and covered in a thick layer of dust. The armchair she’s nested in leans to one side, one of the legs having been replaced by a few stacked stone bricks. The wood floor is rough, coarse, and looks like the kind which would give splinters just for standing on it. The hearth, a simple stone fireplace built into one wall, is surprisingly clean. The ashes are swept, the firewood is fresh. The fire is painfully bright. The heavy rugs thrown beneath some of the seating in the cramped, dusty living space are all torn and resewn. Her eyes trail to the bare walls, where a series of hangers stand.

    Through blurred sight, she can see a leather jacket and a rimfire hanging in it’s harness. From color alone, it’s clear they’re neither Vavara’s old service overcoat or her custom revolver. A wave of cold anxiety washes through her, her feet finding the floor and stumbling towards the door. 

    She only makes it a few feet. One of her legs crumples at the knee with a disheartening, metallic crunch. She bites her lip, forcing back a whimpering cry before it can rise in her chest. Instead, she takes a few gasping breaths, each huff sounding like a music box turning through broken cogs. Finally, she gets up the strength to push herself up to her feet again.

    She dully registers quick, urgent footsteps coming from behind her. A steady, insistent hand finds its way just beneath her arm. The tense springs fused with half-dead, ceruleum-greyed skin have a sickening texture, like that of a corpse held together by staples and rope.

    “You’re too hurt to be runnin’ about. Ye’d best come along.” Hilda says, hiding the way her throat closed in a queasy, silent gag. Vavara’s remaining arm twists back, trying to grasp at Hilda’s arm. It clicks and creaks, something inside the joint protesting with quiet, metallic groans.

    “Hey.” Hilda pulls and twists her around. Their eyes lock for a brief moment. Vavara’s dull, foggy eyes sparking with a quick moment of recognition.

    “Hilda?” Her voice is a surprisingly deep rasp. The  grasping hand goes still, it’s steel claw-tipped fingers relax. “Is that you?”

    “Who else? Let’s get you back to the chair.” They shuffle back to where Vavara woke. After grabbing an old crate and dragging it in front of the worn armchair, the two sit next to each other. Hilda sucks in a breath, and breaks the brief, momentary silence.

    “I imagine things feel a bit rough. Been on the bad end of an explosion once or twice myself. Here, read this. It’ll do some of the explainin’ for me..” She hands the crumpled letter from Rostnthal to her, waiting quietly as it’s opened back up. Vavara’s eyes slowly, carefully track across each messy line of text. When she looks up to Hilda again, the other woman is already speaking.

    “Joye came by earlier today, while you were still out. Said parts were being manufactured, but some things needed to be brought in from out the Holy See. It’ll have to get cleared by the Temple Knights, checked for contraband and the like. All said and done, it’ll take about three weeks for them to get all your uh… Parts?” She looks to Vavara for confirmation. There’s a single, quiet nod.

    “Yeah, it’ll take about three weeks for them to get all your parts made. Till then, you’re gonna need someone to watch your back, I’d imagine. I know one of your friends has an arrangement with Count Fortemps, so if you’d prefer-”

    “No. I’ve no intent on relying upon his charity. I have not earned it.” Vavara’s voice is a steady, rasping hiss. No malice or ill-will is born in the words, just a stubborn, quiet kind of pride.

    “It’s not always about whether or not you’ve earned it, just-” The glare Hilda gets before she can finish is petrifying.

    “Fine, fine. You can stay here, then. Can’t promise I’ll be here all day, but you’re resourceful, and so long as I get you a cane you could even get around by the looks of it.”

    “No.” Vavara shakes her head.

    “What? Then where will you stay?” Hilda says, eyeing her up with concern. Vavara’s face is a knitted, frustrated mess barely concealed by her usual stoicism. Her narrowed eyes, knitted brow, and curled lip speak volumes. It was rare for her to emote at all, let alone so clearly.

    “I was only meant to be in Ishgard for two days, at most.” A strange, tense note rides in Vavara’s voice. Concern, or outright fear? Hilda hadn’t seen her like this since she’d returned from Ghimlyt, spending days on end beside the Warrior of Light’s bedside, waiting for him to awaken. Guilt-racked and uncertain. When her voice picks back up, it’s a mess of anxiety and fear. Each word comes out faster, not raising in volume but in intensity.

    “I cannot stay here. I have to return. I need to-” She stops herself, coming to a sudden and abrupt halt. With a clenched jaw, squinted eyes and a tense neck. she pulls a breath in. The tension does not leave her, resting on her shoulders and in her jaw.

    “Thank you for watching over me.” Vavara says, opening her eyes to match Hilda. “I will need that cane. I have a journey to make. Please tell Stephanivian I will return to collect the parts when I am able.”

    “Now hold on.” Hilda squares her shoulders. Her eyes unwaveringly stare into Vavara’s. 

“You’re barely able to see straight. It took you near a full minute to read through a half-page letter. You had to ask if it was me. I don’t remember looking much like another half-breed.” A potent frustration rises in Vavara’s body, but before it can exit in a shout, Hilda continues, Brume accent kicking into her words as she grows more insistent.

    “I’ll be coming with ye. I’ve deputies with the Hounds for this exact kind of situation. And before you try and tell me I’m not, I’d remind ye that I’ve already seen why yer always either in battle-gear or a great-coat. Whatever secrets yer keeping still, ye can keep them. None of my business. But yer health? All the Hounds’ve had their skins saved by ye at least once, meself included. I owe you this much, at least.” Hilda stands as she finishes speaking, walking across the room to wear her jacket and rimfire are hung. She snags them in one hand, turns and gives a confident smirk.

    “So let me just run and get that cane.”

    She’s out the door before Vara can muster a reply.

    Later that evening, the pair stand outside the Gates of Judgement. Vara’s shrouded in her overcoat, her usual brimmed cap pulled tight over her head, greying blonde hair spilling out of it in messy tangles. Beside her, Hilda holds the reins of two birds as they’re hooked up to a small wagon. Some traveling supplies, a small smattering of goods, and some specialized supplies Stephanivian rushed to prepare all sit in nondescript, covered bundles.

    “You shouldn’t come with me. You have work here.” Vavara says. For perhaps the first time, Hilda notes how her breath doesn’t make mist in the cold air. She can’t help but wonder if her instinct was right, if the woman she’s known for years now, who’s saved her time and time again, is just a corpse pulled by metal marionette strings.

    She casts the thought from her mind.

    “And I’ve pressin’ debts to settle with you. It took no small amount of talking to convince Joye not to tell Rostnthal we were goin’. Else you’d have two peepin’ nannies.” Hilda’s forces a grim laugh.

    “It’s dangerous.” The statement hits like a sack of bricks. There was little anyone within the Warrior of Light’s circle deemed worthy of such a warning. Least of all the woman who frequently gives him a run for his money. 

    “Always is.” Is all Hilda can muster in response.

    “You should stay. I don’t want you hurt.” The words come out slow, still rasping with that metallic hiss under the wind. Barely audible.

    “I can’t protect you.” Vavara’s hand goes to the empty sleeve on her left. She looks up with foggy, dull eyes. Were they always so dim? She’s one of the Dunesfolk, aren’t their eyes supposed to be like glossy gems? Again, she casts the thought away.

    “Please. Stay.” Vavara’s words sound pleading.

    “Eh- ‘Ilda?” A deep, rumbling voice smashes the growing anxiety in Hilda’s chest. Heavy, crunching footfalls grow louder from behind. Both she and Vavara turn to look at a familiar, salt-stained face.

    “An’ it is!” Rostnthal reaches them in no more than three strides, his excitement plain on his face.

    “An’ Vavara’s ‘ere too, I see.” He briefly glances to the cart, still being loaded.

    “Ye headin’ somewhere?” It’s not really a question. His eyes fall onto Vavara’s. “Ye sure yer fine to be travelin’?”

    She nods.

    “Good!” He guffaws, a single loud bark of a laugh. “If yer good enough to be out-n’-about, then so am I! I’ll keep with ye. After all, it was cuz I was too drunk to test the prototype cannon that you ‘ad to. I get hurt like that, chirugeons patch me up over a couple nights. You?” He gives an awkward, knowing shrug.

    “So, it’s my fault yer in this mess. I’m comin’.”

    It isn’t really negotiable. Even as Vavara’s takes a rattled breath to retort, he’s already stepped up into the cart proper. 

    The chocobo-hand stands up from besides the cart,

    “All good to go!” He shouts over the wind.

    The three step up, and Hilda spurs the birds on towards Gyr Abania.

    “Ye packed some booze, yeah?”

    Vavara shakes her head. The groan he makes can be heard from the Gates.

    Rostnthal’s voice echoes along the snowy paths of Coerthas, oft-untrodden paths suddenly as lively as a back-alley bar. He’s taken mindful, measured swigs of his flask. He snagged some few supplies from Dragonhead at a painful price, but he had very little considering the length of the journey. Sensing the growing tension, Rostnthal had sung every diddy he knew at least twice from his spot lying in the back of the cart. He’d sung the one about the slaver at least four times, and the one about the Admiral more than eight.

    “So what’s all the urgency about?” Hilda’s question breaks through the bars of off-key song. 

    “I left someone in the wild mountains, where I take my rests between work. He is unskilled, though his training has shown promise. An old enemy of mine resurfaced during the Ala Mhigan Rebellion, and has since been hunting me, and I him. Should I leave my student in one place too long, he’ll be found. And he’ll be killed.” Her words are clipped. Rostnthal’s singing stops.

    “Y’took an apprentice? So the ever-cold Lady Ashenheart does have some warmth left in ‘er.” He sounds genuinely perplexed. “An’ here I thought ye were all business and bad blood with the Empire. Rumors’d’ve me believe ye’d never have time for teachin’.”

    Her gaze towards him could curdle milk. He just laughs his guffawing laugh, gently slapping her good shoulder with one hand.

    “My strength comes at a cost, unlike that of my peers. It requires that I rest for long periods of time after difficult excursions. In recent times of repose, I took to training three such students in total. Two of whom have long passed beyond a need for my guidance, if they ever truly did need me at all.We have not spoken in some time, I have no fear for them. The man who hunts me will not seek them. My current student, though, is untrained, reckless, young, and a danger to himself more than his opponents.” Her voice lapses in and out of nostalgia and strict concern as she speaks, eyes shutting as she speaks.

    “Sounds like a handful of a kid. An’ this ‘unter. Ye think he might meet us there?” Rostnthal’s voice dips into a grim resolve.

    “I do.”

    “Care to share, or are we just going in blind as newborns?” Hilda says, eyes locked on the road and her surroundings. The sun is low, and shadows stretch across the road cast by trees and stones and looming mountains. It will be dark soon.

    “His name is Llain. He and I were once… Compatriots. He is possessed of a strength similar to mine. I will admit freely, he is better suited to it than I have ever been. He took to steel, ceruleum, and magitek as a bird does to flight. He has done so more safely, and more efficiently, than I have. We have not crossed blades directly for too long, to make any assumption on his methods now as opposed to the man he once was would be dangerous. All I can say is this: A direct confrontation is something we will not win. He is a worthy and cunning foe for even the mightiest among us.” Vavara says. Each word is slow, methodical.

    “So we just grab the kid an’ make dust?” Rostnthal thumbs at the cap on his flask, glancing up at Vara with his good eye. She just nods. It’s enough.

    Vara’s hand rests uneasily on the grip of her revolver. In her nostrils she can smell smoke and oil and flame. In her eyes, though snow and tree and stone race past her, all she can see is a burning Castrum and a vengeful shadow in the fire.

    How simple her escape felt then. How powerful those first, few, small implants made her feel. Her clockwork muscles tense. Perhaps if she’d been more careful. If she hadn’t allowed herself to become so gravely wounded so frequently, she would still-

    A tap on the shoulder shakes her out of the old memory. She looks up at Hilda, whose eyes are still locked forward.

    “We need to go through the night, or should we rest?” She asks, tone all business.

    “You rest. I’ll drive.” Vavara answers. Hilda just groans, before stepping awkwardly, carefully into the back next to Rostnthal and snagging a fur blanket from one of the many bundles.

    Rostnthal waits a while, and then starts to sing again. Fewer lively, old tavern diddies, and more of the songs skalds would sing when night came to call.

[lisakellner]

Why the Right Mindset Matters

And how it affects your art career.

Why the Right Mindset Matters

This morning, like so many others, I woke up to my racing mind and all the tasks I have to accomplish today.  While this is pretty normal for many people, my mind likes to wake me around 4:00 am. 5:00 am if I’m lucky. I lie in bed, my head swirling with thoughts, ideas and to do lists, until I get up and start my day.

Mornings are great for getting stuff done.  Early mornings are even better. The silence in the air is conducive to clearly thinking without distraction.  The problem occurs when you start your day with your todo list.

Setting the tone for the day is the barometer between being reactionary and being visionary.

Do you let your day’s to do lists decide your day or do you decide it?

Here’s where mindset comes in.  When you create the right mindset to start your day an incredible thing happens.  It’s subtle, but it is definitively there. A shift occurs in your thinking and your actions.  Instead of the day happening to you, you get control of the day.  And when you are in control, the day progresses forward moving the needle on your career objectives, not an accumulation of tasks. When my mind is moving a million miles, it is so easy to succumb to it and all the things swirling around inside.  It seems obvious to start the day checking off boxes early and getting things done. When I begin my day this way, I end the day feeling exhausted and depleted.  This is not a sustainable cycle to be on. Pretty soon, I am just drained.

Setting the tone for the day

Creating the right mindset first thing in the morning enables you to focus on the whole, not the parts. It sets the tone for how your day will be.  Instead of bouncing from one thing to the next and being easily distracted, the right mindset keeps you centered throughout. You become unwavering in your resolve. When you begin an artwork, it is essential to prepare your canvas properly, mix the right paints and get your brushes in order.  Starting the right way affects the outcome of the work. Same is true for your day’s activities.  

You are not the sum of a bunch of to do lists so don’t start your day with what does not define you.

The right mindset is a rechargeable battery power for your energy.

When you begin your day getting into the right mindset, you begin with a fresh mind and body.  All of the stresses and clutter are purged away, leaving you with clarity and focus. This is the optimal place from which to accomplish your life goals each day.

Chuck Close has famously said, he doesn’t wait for inspiration he just shows up in the studio, no matter what.  But what if there is a better way to show up in the studio? A more optimal way of interacting with the tasks of the day, the goals of the year. Paying attention to your mindset and making it your priority centers you so that you can take on anything and not be distracted or disheartened doing it. When I miss a few days of my morning routine, my energy begins to wane.  I get caught in a loop of tiredness, ticking off boxes and mindlessly moving from one thing to the next.  I used to think I could cheat and miss a few days without any consequences. But it always catches up with me and I simply don’t like how I feel.

A morning routine that produces an optimal mindset is a generator of creativity.

As artists, our most important asset is our sense of creativity.  Giving it time and space to be cultivated is essential to our work.  You simply can’t do this when you are spending most of your time reacting to the day or when you begin the day depleted.

I have been tweaking my own morning routine for a while now, adding activities that set the optimal tone and clear out any negativity. What I’ve noticed in practicing this is how much lighter I feel.  I am no longer easily swayed from my intentions. My mind is clearer and my sense of creativity is boundless.

So, how do we get into the right mindset?  We go into this in depth in, “Get Everything You Want”.

Don’t start your day with your to do list.

Instead, think up some morning activities that are calming and soothing.  What do you enjoy doing that makes you excited to begin your day? Try something new.  Shake it up a bit. There is scientific proof that when you do things differently you activate your brain and create new learning patterns.

You can grow new brain cells.  Here’s how - Ted Talk by Sandrine Thuret

Connect your body and mind through movement

I used to be a runner, getting up early to run 4- 7 miles a day.  I would drive to a beach town in New York and run the beach, watching the sun come up over new York city. The first mile was always the toughest.  But as my mind and body settled into it, the running became seamless and I was in a flow state. This flow state was the single reason I would go to all the trouble to run this early in the first place.  It was a great way to start the day centered. Now, I do yoga and meditate daily, throwing in some hiking, kayaking and walking when I can.  My yoga practice single handedly sets the tone and settles my mind. And believe me, my mind needs some settling. When I don’t practice my yoga and meditate, a shift occurs and not a great one.  Because I am used to the feeling I get when I am centered and in the right mindset, I am keenly aware when I am not.  Connecting my body to my mind brings a wholeness to myself and enables me to start from this place of calm clarity.

Make space in your mind for new possibilities.

A routine that generates a positive mindset is like a vacuum cleaner for all of the accumulated debris that is resting in the crevices of your thinking brain.  You need to maintain your thinking space just as you would maintain your working and living spaces. Personally, I am not a linear thinker.  I can easily get distracted by that debris lurking in the corners of my mind.  Doing a daily clean out is essential to where my mind focuses and what it can achieve. When you have a huge career objective that you are trying to achieve, it is essential to make sure that your brain is working for you, not against you.  Do it a favor and give it a good cleaning. Create a routine that sets the day and clears out the clutter.

Establish a mindset that supports you, not one that sabotages you.

In Summary:

How to get into the right mindset for optimal creativity:

Set the tone for the day with a great morning routine.

Don’t start your day with your to do list.

Connect your body and mind through movement.

Make space in your head for new possibilities.

Create new habits that allow for this such as yoga, mindfulness practice or hiking.

Establish a mindset that supports you, not one that sabotages you.

And now I would love to know your morning routine and how you create the right mindset.  Leave your comments below and thanks for being here!

[theparaminds]

As much as it’s taken for granted, light and clarity could not exist without their antithesis’ of darkness and misdirection. Maxwell Young is looking for such light, looking for the moment where he is blinded by reality and pulled back into the world he has found himself disconnected from. It’s an emotion of realization that, at all times, he is two degrees separated from the core to humanity and daily existence. He has become an omniscient narrator to himself, instead of allowing the story to write freely. 

He can describe his current state through films and sounds he connects to, but in words, the answer is revealed in pieces and often is not aligned with his heart. With more emotional experiences in the last year, he has less he can relate with and a deeper need for answers. Epiphany is always on the horizon, always an eluding answer he desires. But seemingly, an untouchable feeling that rests far and away. Away from reality, away from his art, and away from tomorrow. 

Yet Maxwell Young is close. He trudges on because the beauty of life itself has struck him. His heart is full and his mind is hungry. While he may be in search of an answer, he is not lacking love, nor is he lacking trust in himself. It is now a period that’s beyond confusion, it’s closer to hope. The belief that his efforts and heartwarming vision will take him further than he has prior. And in that sense, in that hope, the light is already there for him. But now, it can only grow brighter and become ever so consistent. 

Our first question as always, how's your day going and how have you been lately?

My days going good, a slow weekend day. Recently I’ve been trying to focus on researching more, to focus on the untouchable, magical feeling of music again. I’ve been working on other people's music and thinking of the parts to creation that isn't actually making something new. And I want to get back to that. Being a music nerd and really chasing that feeling. That's the reason why we do it. These new projects are doing that for me, really bookmarking parts of my life is a diaristic way.

In your eyes, what's the single most overwhelming feeling in your life right now?

Being broke.

Do you find art helps gets you past that and not caring for money in some part of your life?

I think that’s what I have to do at the moment because even though streams would be fantastic with this project, it’s really more of a scene-setter than a huge piece. It’s a very slow, melancholic and hesitant period of my music and you can hear those feelings within the songs.

You said it’s a bookmark to this chapter in your life, so, if you gave it a title to this chapter, what would you call it?

The subtitle I guess I’ve already given it: Melancholic Introspection into Coexistence. Pretty pretentious but it’s really just me having a first relationship and navigating making music in that space. It’s a very focused bookmarking about a few months that were very intense where I learned a lot and it ended up feeling very dramatic. Most of this new project was made in a week because I was just feeling so much. I spent more time in Auckland and couldn't record there, so when I came back to Wellington, music just flew really quickly.

Would you say then that you've had an arctic epiphany and seen the light a bit? Or is it something else within you?

With that, it was more natural. It even feels like some of it existed at that moment and is now gone. I’m now trying to figure out the next step. I’m trying to figure out what I’m actually writing about and what the theme of the next project is. But you can't force that too much, it’s something I think a lot of people do, even my peers, where they imagine the whole project way too early and box themselves in. What I tend to do is fall in love with a title and then get excited about the early songs, but then close off the tracklist early. I now think I need to be open as possible and to not allow myself to have time pressure. I should allow myself to grow and make a strong project that can make a dent.

During this process, what was the spark really to create this EP and the moment you realize it had to come out? The time you realized you needed to give yourself this therapy through the work and to know you needed to embark on this journey.

I knew I wanted to make this project right before I finished Daydreamer. Something more thematic instead of being an all-encompassing diary. I fell into a relationship that allowed me to feel new feelings. When I was feeling dramatic and listening to new songs they became lullabies for me, that's when I knew they needed to be released. When they truly captured a moment rather than just being a cool sound or an interesting melody.

It seems like it’s more about journalizing what's been going on and giving a window to your soul more than anything?

Pretty much, and in a way that’s kind of selfish. That was a huge issue I was thinking about because I thought the project was too obtuse and the lyrics were too specific with their references and at times it was too poetic. Someone said that the more specific you get, the narrower the window of an audience you draw, but those you draw will be much more connected to it.

If you could use this project to soundtrack a film, which would you pick and why do you feel as though they connect?

I thought about this a lot recently and I’m pretty sure Lost in Translation is quite fitting. I know that's a cult classic at the moment and everything, but that aimlessness and intense melancholic feeling is this. There's something which Sofia Coppola does in all her movies, they have this feeling that you know so well but you can't put a finger on.

Kind of like a word such as sonder sort of thing?

Yeah, I think sonder is a good word to describe it.

Is that then what you've been going through? The overwhelmingness of life's beauty and taking it all in?

Yeah, the beauty and the negatives too. I think sonder-pop is a really great way to capture so much of what is being made by independent artists today.

Do you feel like you are someone who rejects the industry itself through your independent ideas or are you trying it embrace in your own, more fair way?

It’s not something I’m trying to totally reject but more and more I’m thinking of what a label really means to me in 2019. I have ideas and I can think conceptually and I’ve been inspired by people like Radiohead to focus on sticking with a specific small circle for the supplementary elements to the music which resulted in having my best friend make all of the cover art. I have some help with management but I don't know what funding would really add to that. It would make me seem more accomplished in a way. I’ve been frustrated at times seeing people who I’ve come up with over the years be more successful than I, but you can't compare, at all, ever. It’s never helpful. I think I have a really good project in me somewhere, I don’t know how to get there or how much money I need for it, or where I need to be, but it’s there and perhaps the present untouchability is the most endearing part of music for me currently.

Would you say that with this new work, you're finding yourself to be more honest than your past output or do you feel it's a different shift other than honesty?

I wouldn’t say it’s honesty because that has been pretty constantly prevalent in my work. I think it’s more just growing up and more being frustrated at life and feeling the beauty in life. I can’t be so negative.

What do you feel is the biggest sonic shift within this new work compared to the past. To some, it may sound more instrumental and with a personal, poppier flare, but do you think there’s more?

It’s definitely much more production based. I think about it as experimental pop and I’ve been worried at times that it won't fit on many playlists or anything. My favorite song on it has no structure at all and more feels like an interlude. It’s got autotune a lot. I feel like I’ve found my production sound and I didn’t know what that meant, but it now means to me that you’re being more colorful with the emotion you're trying to express throughout the production rather than lyrics alone. A lot of the songwriting is very freeform and freestyled.

Would you say that as a person you fear growing up and adulthood? Or is it more so exciting time for you?

I don’t know, it’s both currently. As a person, I’m very future thinking all the time and that's something my parents and friends have noticed since I was very young. I’m trying to get better at living in the present and focusing on little things because I always think ahead and it can get me frustrated.

To ignore the future then, what's one thing you miss from yesterday and one thing you're grateful for today?

At the moment the stability that was present during school. I had so much hatred for education and argued with a lot of teachers and knew I could be a lot more productive with research on my own, and I have been this year. But the fact is that I’m independent and have to be productive in whatever way possible. Whether it’s admin or creative or research. And even though I’m doing the best in those areas, the lack of satisfaction is weird. It’s disheartening. Once Zack Villere said to me that when you have a job, which I don't currently, it forces you to use your time wisely. When I've made the songs I'm proud of, It’s always a happy accident, so trying to create music daily isn’t as easy as it used to be. Maybe I'm learning new production things daily but it doesn't mean a new song is coming every day, and that's fine.

To you, who’s your individual hero and why do they hold significance to you?

I mean, Matty has been huge for me with this new era of his. I really connect with his values, morally and aesthetically and I’m so grateful he connected with me, but it also makes the world feel smaller. Which is good and bad and it’s just growth. I really look up to my friends as well.

Knowing you personally, I know you really value friendship and heavily bring it into your life. And then that asks, for you as an artist, what that means and what value there is in having such a collective group that's following the scene you helped cultivate?

It’s huge. I didn't have friends for a while until the end of high school. I met my art director and we became best friends soon after. I don't have tons of friends but I've realized more and more that everyone I have is extremely talented and this group of musicians is really special. I hope in the next year it shows that this collective is one worth taking note of because I think there's so much talent in this group and some of the songs are going to be huge and influential.

Does it matter to you and do you take pride in being part of a scene, or as someone who's rejected past scenes labeled on you, does there hold any weight in the idea?

It’s really special to be a part of it. I never think that I need it, but without, it would be much much much harder. It’s not from a place of validation but more knowing people are on the same boat. Getting coffee with Luke puts me in the right track of mind and James Ivy has really been so inspiring as a songwriter.

Do you personally think that artistic immortality and really leaving a legacy is overrated or does it matter to you as an artist?

Yeah, I think it does matter, that's why a lot of us do this. You don't have to think too much about it if you are staying true to yourself and capturing the moments properly, which takes a long time to figure out. A lot of time. My favorite artists all did that like Prince or D‘Angelo.

Then what do you hope your immortality is?

That's huge. I would love for someone to be caring by the time I’m dead. I’m thinking of Nick Drake a lot. No one knew him at all, died a poor man, and now he’s regarded as one of the greatest songwriters. No one can do Nick Drake music. My immortality comes within honesty I think, also, being focused and passionate and being someone who cared about their work. And of course, to push things and be counter-culture.

What do you really feel true happiness is and how do you hope to achieve it?

When Luke did a little interview with me, he asked what I most want in life, and I said to be at peace. I also don't think that’s going to happen really. But, to be truly at peace. Inspiring work as well, to be someone others can learn from. Goddard does that for me currently. Collaborating with friends as well, the song Seungjin, Luke and I made still I love so much and it makes me feel true happiness. True happiness, god damn. What gives you true happiness?

Me? I guess I think a lot of Plato’s idea of the cave and that whole allegory. I’m butchering it but he basically gives this story of people chained in a cave and all they can see are shadows on a wall and that's all they know. But one day they escape and see the outside world and really ‘see the light’ and have that epiphany. And to me that's what matters, to constantly have an epiphany and to see the light. I had one of those moments meeting Harry, Drake, and James in New York because I felt I escaped an anti-social cave. It's the feeling when you read a challenging book and at the end, you're so proud and feel so much stronger mentally. I guess for you it’s writing a song and realizing you pushed yourself further than you ever have.

I totally resonate with that. That search for epiphanies. If you forget about that then the music isn't going to come. That's kind of been my focus this week, feeling that style of energy. I listened to a bunch of records with my friends just lying to the carpet and those moments are just complete awe at not thinking of anything but simply experiencing music and feeling sound. It's a less manic style of excitement.

And personally, maybe you find the same thing, but through difficult episodes no longer is there wallowing in self-pity, but instead, I question when the epiphany will come and it becomes exciting. Sadness is exciting now.

Even being uninspired. The question of what will pull you out of that and what will be the next wave of happiness.

Yeah, I found myself listening to the same music constantly for months but then I hit a dry spot and then boom, I found Loveless. And now everything is a complete different soundwave. It’s realizing that un-inspiration and odd lonely moments are just the dark before the dawn.

Absolutely. I've been having that feeling so much and it is so far and above the single best.

There’s a great Kevin Shields quote where he says the music should be like an endless horizon you're always chasing and that you're always running towards this endless horizon.

That's very true, and it's also applicable to life in that sense that it's what we’re always doing.

To kind of come back to the earlier idea as a close, if you could title your entire autobiography, what would you title the whole book and what do you want it to say?

There's this poem that would sum it up it's called ‘Here Lies..’ by Stevie Smith. It goes like this:

Here lies a poet who would not write

His soul runs screaming through the night,

‘Oh give me paper, give me pen,

And I will very soon begin.’

Poor soul, keep silent. In death’s clime

There’s no pen, paper, notion -- and no Time.

It's an all composing resonation to who I think I am as an artist and person.

Do you have one to shoutout or a thought you want to know you've said?

James Ivy is the best songwriter around today. Shoutout Max who did the cover art for Only Romantics, you are an extremely talented artist. The collective, which they know who they are. I don't know what I’d be doing without them. It’s so special to have that.

Follow Maxwell Young on Twitter and Instagram

Listen on Spotify and Apple Music

Words and Interview by Guy Mizrahi

[wallythayer]

Go With the Flow

While composing a song, Charla McCutcheon sometimes loses track of time.

“I’ll start playing music at 7 or 8 at night, and the next thing I know, it’s 4 a.m.,” says the New York City–based musician.

She also loses a sense of her physical self. “I’m so into the music that I forget I’m even present; it just feels like I’m part of the creation.” Sometimes she’ll even be surprised when she hears the songs, as if someone else wrote them.

Most of us experience this feeling at some point — losing track of time and space while involved in an activity we love. Athletes often describe this state as “being in the zone.” Psychologists sometimes refer to it as “flow.” That term, coined in the mid-1970s by the Hungarian social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD, is gaining new relevance today as we struggle to focus amid a media landscape filled with near-constant distractions.

Musicians, artists, and athletes cultivate flow states deliberately, whether they’re aware of the concept or not. But the experience is not reserved for creative types: You can get into flow while cleaning your garage, weeding your garden, or cooking a meal. It’s less about the activity than the relationship between the doer and the thing being done. If an activity requires some skill, and you love it and are good at it, you can easily lose yourself in it.

The connection between flow states and happiness has been well documented, most notably in Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. But what’s just coming to light is the link between flow and our overall health and well-being — which can suffer without it.

This fact is more pertinent today than ever. Deep attention is under siege. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — not to mention plain old Web browsing, emailing, and texting — we’ve never been so inundated with distractions. Staying focused on one task can feel nearly impossible as our phones light up with incoming texts or notifications that a photo on Instagram has garnered another like.

Our efforts to multitask our way through all this are not only doomed to fail, they’re also a threat to our health. “Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation,” notes neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. 

Writing in the Guardian, Levitin explains why the brain is so vulnerable to distraction: “The prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new — the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens.”

We can, in other words, become biologically addicted to checking our phones. The irony here, Levitin adds, is that “the very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted.”

The best antidote to constant distraction is to create the time and space necessary to becoming fully immersed in a task — to get into flow — and to continually challenge ourselves so we satisfy the brain’s desire for novelty. First, though, we need to learn how to create the right conditions, which involves putting away digital distractions, and understand why it’s worth the effort.

Your Body on Flow

Persistent distraction is hard on the body. The dopamine-addiction loop floods our systems with cortisol and adrenaline, two stress-related hormones that can wreak havoc when they run high for extended periods of time.

“When we’re stressed out or frustrated, we go into fight-or-flight mode,” explains Elizabeth Frates, MD, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard who specializes in lifestyle medicine. “There’s no actual lion in front of us, but it feels like there is one. Our sympathetic nervous system is activated, increasing our respiratory rate, increasing our heart rate, and shunting blood from our digestive system to our muscles so we are not able to digest our food properly. Instead, we are ready to ‘fight or flee’ using our muscles.”

Prolonged periods of stress can suppress the immune system, so we’re more likely to catch colds and take longer to recover from them. It can also lead to insomnia, which has been linked to a host of health issues.

Flow, by contrast, triggers the opposite of the fight-or-flight response, Frates says. When we’re in a flow state, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing a cascade of calming hormones associated with the rest-and-digest response. Breathing becomes more relaxed, muscles loosen, and heart rate slows. The specific biochemistry associated with flow will vary depending on the activity (writing a poem versus going out for a run, for example), but the overall benefits to health and well-being are the same.

Addiction specialist Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, studies the brain activity of subjects who are in flow. Using MRI scans, Brewer and his colleagues have observed how the brain reacts during a stressful state (for example, while craving something), as well as when the subject was deeply focused on a task.

They found the posterior cingulate cortex area of the brain (a key node in the default-mode network, responsible for automatic behaviors) was active when craving, and calm while the subject was concentrating.

This observation allows researchers to bridge the gap between subjective experiences and measurable brain activity, Brewer says. It makes clear that concentration calms the brain.

Flow is “critical for the survival of our species,” he continues, because we need deep concentration to evolve or create new and necessary skills.

Still, he notes an important paradox: “If you try to get into flow, you’re going to end up moving in the opposite direction. It’s like that line in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda says, ‘Do or do not — there is no try,’ because when there’s no trying there’s just doing.”

The Distracted Brain

Nonetheless, there are occasions when we are more likely to find our flow. Csikszentmihalyi suggests starting with a task challenging enough to keep you engaged but not so hard that it leaves you frustrated. We find flow wherever we’re able to lose ourselves in deep concentration, whether that’s in a lab analyzing tissues or on the mat in yoga class.

This type of focus, explains Brewer, is the opposite of losing track of time while you wander from post to post on Facebook. “One is zoning in,” he says, “and one is zoning out.”

Zoning out can lead to misery. Brewer cites a Harvard University study in which researchers contacted participants throughout the day to see if they were paying attention: Were they present and focused on a task, their surroundings, or the person with them, or were they ruminating distractedly about the past or the future? Researchers also asked how happy the subjects felt. The findings were disheartening.

“Forty-seven percent of the time, people were lost in mind wandering. Past, future, but not here,” Brewer notes. Subjects in this state also reported that they were decidedly less happy.

So when it comes to addictive distractions like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, things get sticky. “These technologies provide an intermittent reinforcement process that hijacks our reward brain pathways — the same neural pathways that get activated when we use drugs,” says Brewer. “We get so caught up in them that we’re not consciously aware of what we’re doing.”

Before long, we become addicted to the short-term pleasures of distrac-tions that make us measurably less happy overall.

Social media makes the need for flow even more imperative, Brewer argues. Cultivating concentration isn’t merely a safeguard against the harmful effects of distraction; it actually offers mental benefits on its own.

Flow states, for example, can protect our brains as we age. A study published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences examined the effects of cognitive training, including knitting, quilting, reading, and playing games, in subjects aged 70 to 89. Researchers found that those activities — unlike traveling or socializing — were associated with sustained cognitive acuity.

Flow and Emotional Health

The main reason flow feels so good, according to researchers, is because our thoughts, intentions, and actions are working in harmony. We’re not in conflict with ourselves.

“Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration, consciousness is unusually well ordered,” writes Csikszentmihalyi in Flow. “Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. . . . And when the flow episode is over, one feels more ‘together’ than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general.”

McCutcheon says she felt that sense of togetherness while practicing with her band. She’d arrive at rehearsal with just the slightest idea for a song, she says, “and we would transform it together. It felt like we were of one universal mind.”

“I recognized this alternative state, without knowing the name for it, when I was very young,” says Austin, Texas–based visual artist Holly Sabiston, who began drawing at age 6. She says this concentration helped her thrive in her otherwise chaotic childhood home. “It feels open and unhindered. No constraints,” she says.

The sense of purpose and satisfaction we get from accomplishing a task — especially a challenging one — also contributes to the positive effects of the flow state.

These days, Sabiston finds herself in flow while painting — and during kettlebell workouts. “In the beginning, you have to concentrate really hard. You focus on improving, you count, and you breathe and do as many repetitions in 10 minutes as you can,” she explains.

“There’s something about having a purpose — and having a struc-ture within that purpose — that’s immense-ly satisfying.”

Finding Your Flow

We are all capable of getting into flow, says Christine Carter, PhD, a senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work. She defines it as the “overlay between where we have our greatest strength and greatest ease.”

While flow may seem to be the provenance of artists, musicians, and athletes, Carter believes that these groups simply experience it more often because the “conditions are already there” in what they do.

You may already know where you feel a sense of competence and peace — playing basketball or doing math equations or arranging a bouquet of flowers. If you don’t, and you want to spend more time in a flow state, start with activities that interest you. If you love to cook but always make the same meals, add a new challenge, like bread baking. If you find your bliss in Zumba class, but you already know all the moves, try another style of dance.

Pay attention to your body’s cues. It’s another way to identify activities that put you in flow — and to know when you’re in it. Flow exists on a spectrum of attention, with obsessive addiction at one end and getting completely out of your own way at the other, Brewer explains. At the stressful end, your body feels contracted — shoulders hunched, chest tight. When you’re in complete flow, your body feels expansive and calm, with a focused mind and open heart.

When you find yourself feeling that expanded open quality, what are you doing? Conversely, when you feel contracted, what are you doing? To build more space for flow in your life, start by doing more of what makes you feel open and expanded and less of what makes you feel contracted and tense.

Turning Flow Into a Habit

Once you’ve identified an activity that puts you into flow, you can make it a regular part of your routine. Carter suggests beginning with brief increments.

“Start with 20 minutes,” she says. “Maybe you won’t get much done then, but you’re practicing — you’re doing drills, essentially — and you’re building a practice.” She says the optimal amount of time to be in flow is 90 minutes, so build toward that.

There are ways to train your body to drop into flow quickly, Carter says. “If you do the activity at the same time each day, that can be a cue to your brain.” Maybe you go for a run or sit down to write at your laptop at 7 a.m. every morning.

Having a preflow routine is another cue. Carter says she cleans off her desk as she boils water for tea. Then she turns on her computer, goes to the bathroom, and fetches her tea.

“It’s a list of things that signals to my brain, OK, it’s time. Doing them in the same order each time is also very helpful. That way, one trigger cues another.”

And turn off all your devices so you won’t be interrupted by flashing messages and noisy dings.

After a while, many people who have a flow habit start to recognize emotional shifts cuing them to attend to their project or interest. McCutcheon can feel when she has a streak of creative focus coming on. “It often starts with me getting antsy — whatever I’m doing, I want to be home making music. Whatever else I should be doing, I can’t wait to get home and make music.”

Sabiston experiences a similar emotional crescendo before she begins a major painting. “I didn’t recognize this until further into my career, but I almost always spend a day crying before I begin work on a big project. Now I give myself permission to have a cry fest. That’s how I get into the zone.”

Defending Your Flow

For many of us, the work involved in our chosen careers puts us into flow. A study Csikszentmihalyi led at the University of Chicago found that flow states occurred three times more often when the participants were at work than during their free time. So if you tend to find your flow while journaling or jogging or hunting for wild mushrooms, you may need to defend that blissful space.

Carter recommends building a “fortress against interruption” when trying to set the right conditions for flow: Silence your phone (even better, turn it off and move it out of sight) and put on comfortable clothes. “If you can’t concentrate,” she says, “you can’t be in your sweet spot. Period.”

The same technique can be applied to friends and family who may try to interrupt you while you’re in flow. They may not understand how important this activity is to you, even if you explain. That’s OK. Listen to your feelings and be clear about your need for time. And don’t be surprised if they notice your calm concentration and suddenly start to find more time for their own flow activities. Healthy habits are contagious, too.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/go-with-the-flow-2/

[wallythayer]

Go With the Flow

While composing a song, Charla McCutcheon sometimes loses track of time.

“I’ll start playing music at 7 or 8 at night, and the next thing I know, it’s 4 a.m.,” says the New York City–based musician.

She also loses a sense of her physical self. “I’m so into the music that I forget I’m even present; it just feels like I’m part of the creation.” Sometimes she’ll even be surprised when she hears the songs, as if someone else wrote them.

Most of us experience this feeling at some point — losing track of time and space while involved in an activity we love. Athletes often describe this state as “being in the zone.” Psychologists sometimes refer to it as “flow.” That term, coined in the mid-1970s by the Hungarian social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD, is gaining new relevance today as we struggle to focus amid a media landscape filled with near-constant distractions.

Musicians, artists, and athletes cultivate flow states deliberately, whether they’re aware of the concept or not. But the experience is not reserved for creative types: You can get into flow while cleaning your garage, weeding your garden, or cooking a meal. It’s less about the activity than the relationship between the doer and the thing being done. If an activity requires some skill, and you love it and are good at it, you can easily lose yourself in it.

The connection between flow states and happiness has been well documented, most notably in Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. But what’s just coming to light is the link between flow and our overall health and well-being — which can suffer without it.

This fact is more pertinent today than ever. Deep attention is under siege. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — not to mention plain old Web browsing, emailing, and texting — we’ve never been so inundated with distractions. Staying focused on one task can feel nearly impossible as our phones light up with incoming texts or notifications that a photo on Instagram has garnered another like.

Our efforts to multitask our way through all this are not only doomed to fail, they’re also a threat to our health. “Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation,” notes neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. 

Writing in the Guardian, Levitin explains why the brain is so vulnerable to distraction: “The prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new — the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens.”

We can, in other words, become biologically addicted to checking our phones. The irony here, Levitin adds, is that “the very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted.”

The best antidote to constant distraction is to create the time and space necessary to becoming fully immersed in a task — to get into flow — and to continually challenge ourselves so we satisfy the brain’s desire for novelty. First, though, we need to learn how to create the right conditions, which involves putting away digital distractions, and understand why it’s worth the effort.

Your Body on Flow

Persistent distraction is hard on the body. The dopamine-addiction loop floods our systems with cortisol and adrenaline, two stress-related hormones that can wreak havoc when they run high for extended periods of time.

“When we’re stressed out or frustrated, we go into fight-or-flight mode,” explains Elizabeth Frates, MD, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard who specializes in lifestyle medicine. “There’s no actual lion in front of us, but it feels like there is one. Our sympathetic nervous system is activated, increasing our respiratory rate, increasing our heart rate, and shunting blood from our digestive system to our muscles so we are not able to digest our food properly. Instead, we are ready to ‘fight or flee’ using our muscles.”

Prolonged periods of stress can suppress the immune system, so we’re more likely to catch colds and take longer to recover from them. It can also lead to insomnia, which has been linked to a host of health issues.

Flow, by contrast, triggers the opposite of the fight-or-flight response, Frates says. When we’re in a flow state, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing a cascade of calming hormones associated with the rest-and-digest response. Breathing becomes more relaxed, muscles loosen, and heart rate slows. The specific biochemistry associated with flow will vary depending on the activity (writing a poem versus going out for a run, for example), but the overall benefits to health and well-being are the same.

Addiction specialist Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, studies the brain activity of subjects who are in flow. Using MRI scans, Brewer and his colleagues have observed how the brain reacts during a stressful state (for example, while craving something), as well as when the subject was deeply focused on a task.

They found the posterior cingulate cortex area of the brain (a key node in the default-mode network, responsible for automatic behaviors) was active when craving, and calm while the subject was concentrating.

This observation allows researchers to bridge the gap between subjective experiences and measurable brain activity, Brewer says. It makes clear that concentration calms the brain.

Flow is “critical for the survival of our species,” he continues, because we need deep concentration to evolve or create new and necessary skills.

Still, he notes an important paradox: “If you try to get into flow, you’re going to end up moving in the opposite direction. It’s like that line in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda says, ‘Do or do not — there is no try,’ because when there’s no trying there’s just doing.”

The Distracted Brain

Nonetheless, there are occasions when we are more likely to find our flow. Csikszentmihalyi suggests starting with a task challenging enough to keep you engaged but not so hard that it leaves you frustrated. We find flow wherever we’re able to lose ourselves in deep concentration, whether that’s in a lab analyzing tissues or on the mat in yoga class.

This type of focus, explains Brewer, is the opposite of losing track of time while you wander from post to post on Facebook. “One is zoning in,” he says, “and one is zoning out.”

Zoning out can lead to misery. Brewer cites a Harvard University study in which researchers contacted participants throughout the day to see if they were paying attention: Were they present and focused on a task, their surroundings, or the person with them, or were they ruminating distractedly about the past or the future? Researchers also asked how happy the subjects felt. The findings were disheartening.

“Forty-seven percent of the time, people were lost in mind wandering. Past, future, but not here,” Brewer notes. Subjects in this state also reported that they were decidedly less happy.

So when it comes to addictive distractions like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, things get sticky. “These technologies provide an intermittent reinforcement process that hijacks our reward brain pathways — the same neural pathways that get activated when we use drugs,” says Brewer. “We get so caught up in them that we’re not consciously aware of what we’re doing.”

Before long, we become addicted to the short-term pleasures of distrac-tions that make us measurably less happy overall.

Social media makes the need for flow even more imperative, Brewer argues. Cultivating concentration isn’t merely a safeguard against the harmful effects of distraction; it actually offers mental benefits on its own.

Flow states, for example, can protect our brains as we age. A study published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences examined the effects of cognitive training, including knitting, quilting, reading, and playing games, in subjects aged 70 to 89. Researchers found that those activities — unlike traveling or socializing — were associated with sustained cognitive acuity.

Flow and Emotional Health

The main reason flow feels so good, according to researchers, is because our thoughts, intentions, and actions are working in harmony. We’re not in conflict with ourselves.

“Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration, consciousness is unusually well ordered,” writes Csikszentmihalyi in Flow. “Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. . . . And when the flow episode is over, one feels more ‘together’ than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general.”

McCutcheon says she felt that sense of togetherness while practicing with her band. She’d arrive at rehearsal with just the slightest idea for a song, she says, “and we would transform it together. It felt like we were of one universal mind.”

“I recognized this alternative state, without knowing the name for it, when I was very young,” says Austin, Texas–based visual artist Holly Sabiston, who began drawing at age 6. She says this concentration helped her thrive in her otherwise chaotic childhood home. “It feels open and unhindered. No constraints,” she says.

The sense of purpose and satisfaction we get from accomplishing a task — especially a challenging one — also contributes to the positive effects of the flow state.

These days, Sabiston finds herself in flow while painting — and during kettlebell workouts. “In the beginning, you have to concentrate really hard. You focus on improving, you count, and you breathe and do as many repetitions in 10 minutes as you can,” she explains.

“There’s something about having a purpose — and having a struc-ture within that purpose — that’s immense-ly satisfying.”

Finding Your Flow

We are all capable of getting into flow, says Christine Carter, PhD, a senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work. She defines it as the “overlay between where we have our greatest strength and greatest ease.”

While flow may seem to be the provenance of artists, musicians, and athletes, Carter believes that these groups simply experience it more often because the “conditions are already there” in what they do.

You may already know where you feel a sense of competence and peace — playing basketball or doing math equations or arranging a bouquet of flowers. If you don’t, and you want to spend more time in a flow state, start with activities that interest you. If you love to cook but always make the same meals, add a new challenge, like bread baking. If you find your bliss in Zumba class, but you already know all the moves, try another style of dance.

Pay attention to your body’s cues. It’s another way to identify activities that put you in flow — and to know when you’re in it. Flow exists on a spectrum of attention, with obsessive addiction at one end and getting completely out of your own way at the other, Brewer explains. At the stressful end, your body feels contracted — shoulders hunched, chest tight. When you’re in complete flow, your body feels expansive and calm, with a focused mind and open heart.

When you find yourself feeling that expanded open quality, what are you doing? Conversely, when you feel contracted, what are you doing? To build more space for flow in your life, start by doing more of what makes you feel open and expanded and less of what makes you feel contracted and tense.

Turning Flow Into a Habit

Once you’ve identified an activity that puts you into flow, you can make it a regular part of your routine. Carter suggests beginning with brief increments.

“Start with 20 minutes,” she says. “Maybe you won’t get much done then, but you’re practicing — you’re doing drills, essentially — and you’re building a practice.” She says the optimal amount of time to be in flow is 90 minutes, so build toward that.

There are ways to train your body to drop into flow quickly, Carter says. “If you do the activity at the same time each day, that can be a cue to your brain.” Maybe you go for a run or sit down to write at your laptop at 7 a.m. every morning.

Having a preflow routine is another cue. Carter says she cleans off her desk as she boils water for tea. Then she turns on her computer, goes to the bathroom, and fetches her tea.

“It’s a list of things that signals to my brain, OK, it’s time. Doing them in the same order each time is also very helpful. That way, one trigger cues another.”

And turn off all your devices so you won’t be interrupted by flashing messages and noisy dings.

After a while, many people who have a flow habit start to recognize emotional shifts cuing them to attend to their project or interest. McCutcheon can feel when she has a streak of creative focus coming on. “It often starts with me getting antsy — whatever I’m doing, I want to be home making music. Whatever else I should be doing, I can’t wait to get home and make music.”

Sabiston experiences a similar emotional crescendo before she begins a major painting. “I didn’t recognize this until further into my career, but I almost always spend a day crying before I begin work on a big project. Now I give myself permission to have a cry fest. That’s how I get into the zone.”

Defending Your Flow

For many of us, the work involved in our chosen careers puts us into flow. A study Csikszentmihalyi led at the University of Chicago found that flow states occurred three times more often when the participants were at work than during their free time. So if you tend to find your flow while journaling or jogging or hunting for wild mushrooms, you may need to defend that blissful space.

Carter recommends building a “fortress against interruption” when trying to set the right conditions for flow: Silence your phone (even better, turn it off and move it out of sight) and put on comfortable clothes. “If you can’t concentrate,” she says, “you can’t be in your sweet spot. Period.”

The same technique can be applied to friends and family who may try to interrupt you while you’re in flow. They may not understand how important this activity is to you, even if you explain. That’s OK. Listen to your feelings and be clear about your need for time. And don’t be surprised if they notice your calm concentration and suddenly start to find more time for their own flow activities. Healthy habits are contagious, too.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/go-with-the-flow-2/

[wallythayer]

Go With the Flow

While composing a song, Charla McCutcheon sometimes loses track of time.

“I’ll start playing music at 7 or 8 at night, and the next thing I know, it’s 4 a.m.,” says the New York City–based musician.

She also loses a sense of her physical self. “I’m so into the music that I forget I’m even present; it just feels like I’m part of the creation.” Sometimes she’ll even be surprised when she hears the songs, as if someone else wrote them.

Most of us experience this feeling at some point — losing track of time and space while involved in an activity we love. Athletes often describe this state as “being in the zone.” Psychologists sometimes refer to it as “flow.” That term, coined in the mid-1970s by the Hungarian social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD, is gaining new relevance today as we struggle to focus amid a media landscape filled with near-constant distractions.

Musicians, artists, and athletes cultivate flow states deliberately, whether they’re aware of the concept or not. But the experience is not reserved for creative types: You can get into flow while cleaning your garage, weeding your garden, or cooking a meal. It’s less about the activity than the relationship between the doer and the thing being done. If an activity requires some skill, and you love it and are good at it, you can easily lose yourself in it.

The connection between flow states and happiness has been well documented, most notably in Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. But what’s just coming to light is the link between flow and our overall health and well-being — which can suffer without it.

This fact is more pertinent today than ever. Deep attention is under siege. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — not to mention plain old Web browsing, emailing, and texting — we’ve never been so inundated with distractions. Staying focused on one task can feel nearly impossible as our phones light up with incoming texts or notifications that a photo on Instagram has garnered another like.

Our efforts to multitask our way through all this are not only doomed to fail, they’re also a threat to our health. “Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation,” notes neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. 

Writing in the Guardian, Levitin explains why the brain is so vulnerable to distraction: “The prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new — the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens.”

We can, in other words, become biologically addicted to checking our phones. The irony here, Levitin adds, is that “the very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted.”

The best antidote to constant distraction is to create the time and space necessary to becoming fully immersed in a task — to get into flow — and to continually challenge ourselves so we satisfy the brain’s desire for novelty. First, though, we need to learn how to create the right conditions, which involves putting away digital distractions, and understand why it’s worth the effort.

Your Body on Flow

Persistent distraction is hard on the body. The dopamine-addiction loop floods our systems with cortisol and adrenaline, two stress-related hormones that can wreak havoc when they run high for extended periods of time.

“When we’re stressed out or frustrated, we go into fight-or-flight mode,” explains Elizabeth Frates, MD, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard who specializes in lifestyle medicine. “There’s no actual lion in front of us, but it feels like there is one. Our sympathetic nervous system is activated, increasing our respiratory rate, increasing our heart rate, and shunting blood from our digestive system to our muscles so we are not able to digest our food properly. Instead, we are ready to ‘fight or flee’ using our muscles.”

Prolonged periods of stress can suppress the immune system, so we’re more likely to catch colds and take longer to recover from them. It can also lead to insomnia, which has been linked to a host of health issues.

Flow, by contrast, triggers the opposite of the fight-or-flight response, Frates says. When we’re in a flow state, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing a cascade of calming hormones associated with the rest-and-digest response. Breathing becomes more relaxed, muscles loosen, and heart rate slows. The specific biochemistry associated with flow will vary depending on the activity (writing a poem versus going out for a run, for example), but the overall benefits to health and well-being are the same.

Addiction specialist Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, studies the brain activity of subjects who are in flow. Using MRI scans, Brewer and his colleagues have observed how the brain reacts during a stressful state (for example, while craving something), as well as when the subject was deeply focused on a task.

They found the posterior cingulate cortex area of the brain (a key node in the default-mode network, responsible for automatic behaviors) was active when craving, and calm while the subject was concentrating.

This observation allows researchers to bridge the gap between subjective experiences and measurable brain activity, Brewer says. It makes clear that concentration calms the brain.

Flow is “critical for the survival of our species,” he continues, because we need deep concentration to evolve or create new and necessary skills.

Still, he notes an important paradox: “If you try to get into flow, you’re going to end up moving in the opposite direction. It’s like that line in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda says, ‘Do or do not — there is no try,’ because when there’s no trying there’s just doing.”

The Distracted Brain

Nonetheless, there are occasions when we are more likely to find our flow. Csikszentmihalyi suggests starting with a task challenging enough to keep you engaged but not so hard that it leaves you frustrated. We find flow wherever we’re able to lose ourselves in deep concentration, whether that’s in a lab analyzing tissues or on the mat in yoga class.

This type of focus, explains Brewer, is the opposite of losing track of time while you wander from post to post on Facebook. “One is zoning in,” he says, “and one is zoning out.”

Zoning out can lead to misery. Brewer cites a Harvard University study in which researchers contacted participants throughout the day to see if they were paying attention: Were they present and focused on a task, their surroundings, or the person with them, or were they ruminating distractedly about the past or the future? Researchers also asked how happy the subjects felt. The findings were disheartening.

“Forty-seven percent of the time, people were lost in mind wandering. Past, future, but not here,” Brewer notes. Subjects in this state also reported that they were decidedly less happy.

So when it comes to addictive distractions like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, things get sticky. “These technologies provide an intermittent reinforcement process that hijacks our reward brain pathways — the same neural pathways that get activated when we use drugs,” says Brewer. “We get so caught up in them that we’re not consciously aware of what we’re doing.”

Before long, we become addicted to the short-term pleasures of distrac-tions that make us measurably less happy overall.

Social media makes the need for flow even more imperative, Brewer argues. Cultivating concentration isn’t merely a safeguard against the harmful effects of distraction; it actually offers mental benefits on its own.

Flow states, for example, can protect our brains as we age. A study published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences examined the effects of cognitive training, including knitting, quilting, reading, and playing games, in subjects aged 70 to 89. Researchers found that those activities — unlike traveling or socializing — were associated with sustained cognitive acuity.

Flow and Emotional Health

The main reason flow feels so good, according to researchers, is because our thoughts, intentions, and actions are working in harmony. We’re not in conflict with ourselves.

“Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration, consciousness is unusually well ordered,” writes Csikszentmihalyi in Flow. “Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. . . . And when the flow episode is over, one feels more ‘together’ than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general.”

McCutcheon says she felt that sense of togetherness while practicing with her band. She’d arrive at rehearsal with just the slightest idea for a song, she says, “and we would transform it together. It felt like we were of one universal mind.”

“I recognized this alternative state, without knowing the name for it, when I was very young,” says Austin, Texas–based visual artist Holly Sabiston, who began drawing at age 6. She says this concentration helped her thrive in her otherwise chaotic childhood home. “It feels open and unhindered. No constraints,” she says.

The sense of purpose and satisfaction we get from accomplishing a task — especially a challenging one — also contributes to the positive effects of the flow state.

These days, Sabiston finds herself in flow while painting — and during kettlebell workouts. “In the beginning, you have to concentrate really hard. You focus on improving, you count, and you breathe and do as many repetitions in 10 minutes as you can,” she explains.

“There’s something about having a purpose — and having a struc-ture within that purpose — that’s immense-ly satisfying.”

Finding Your Flow

We are all capable of getting into flow, says Christine Carter, PhD, a senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work. She defines it as the “overlay between where we have our greatest strength and greatest ease.”

While flow may seem to be the provenance of artists, musicians, and athletes, Carter believes that these groups simply experience it more often because the “conditions are already there” in what they do.

You may already know where you feel a sense of competence and peace — playing basketball or doing math equations or arranging a bouquet of flowers. If you don’t, and you want to spend more time in a flow state, start with activities that interest you. If you love to cook but always make the same meals, add a new challenge, like bread baking. If you find your bliss in Zumba class, but you already know all the moves, try another style of dance.

Pay attention to your body’s cues. It’s another way to identify activities that put you in flow — and to know when you’re in it. Flow exists on a spectrum of attention, with obsessive addiction at one end and getting completely out of your own way at the other, Brewer explains. At the stressful end, your body feels contracted — shoulders hunched, chest tight. When you’re in complete flow, your body feels expansive and calm, with a focused mind and open heart.

When you find yourself feeling that expanded open quality, what are you doing? Conversely, when you feel contracted, what are you doing? To build more space for flow in your life, start by doing more of what makes you feel open and expanded and less of what makes you feel contracted and tense.

Turning Flow Into a Habit

Once you’ve identified an activity that puts you into flow, you can make it a regular part of your routine. Carter suggests beginning with brief increments.

“Start with 20 minutes,” she says. “Maybe you won’t get much done then, but you’re practicing — you’re doing drills, essentially — and you’re building a practice.” She says the optimal amount of time to be in flow is 90 minutes, so build toward that.

There are ways to train your body to drop into flow quickly, Carter says. “If you do the activity at the same time each day, that can be a cue to your brain.” Maybe you go for a run or sit down to write at your laptop at 7 a.m. every morning.

Having a preflow routine is another cue. Carter says she cleans off her desk as she boils water for tea. Then she turns on her computer, goes to the bathroom, and fetches her tea.

“It’s a list of things that signals to my brain, OK, it’s time. Doing them in the same order each time is also very helpful. That way, one trigger cues another.”

And turn off all your devices so you won’t be interrupted by flashing messages and noisy dings.

After a while, many people who have a flow habit start to recognize emotional shifts cuing them to attend to their project or interest. McCutcheon can feel when she has a streak of creative focus coming on. “It often starts with me getting antsy — whatever I’m doing, I want to be home making music. Whatever else I should be doing, I can’t wait to get home and make music.”

Sabiston experiences a similar emotional crescendo before she begins a major painting. “I didn’t recognize this until further into my career, but I almost always spend a day crying before I begin work on a big project. Now I give myself permission to have a cry fest. That’s how I get into the zone.”

Defending Your Flow

For many of us, the work involved in our chosen careers puts us into flow. A study Csikszentmihalyi led at the University of Chicago found that flow states occurred three times more often when the participants were at work than during their free time. So if you tend to find your flow while journaling or jogging or hunting for wild mushrooms, you may need to defend that blissful space.

Carter recommends building a “fortress against interruption” when trying to set the right conditions for flow: Silence your phone (even better, turn it off and move it out of sight) and put on comfortable clothes. “If you can’t concentrate,” she says, “you can’t be in your sweet spot. Period.”

The same technique can be applied to friends and family who may try to interrupt you while you’re in flow. They may not understand how important this activity is to you, even if you explain. That’s OK. Listen to your feelings and be clear about your need for time. And don’t be surprised if they notice your calm concentration and suddenly start to find more time for their own flow activities. Healthy habits are contagious, too.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/go-with-the-flow-2/

[wallythayer]

Go With the Flow

While composing a song, Charla McCutcheon sometimes loses track of time.

“I’ll start playing music at 7 or 8 at night, and the next thing I know, it’s 4 a.m.,” says the New York City–based musician.

She also loses a sense of her physical self. “I’m so into the music that I forget I’m even present; it just feels like I’m part of the creation.” Sometimes she’ll even be surprised when she hears the songs, as if someone else wrote them.

Most of us experience this feeling at some point — losing track of time and space while involved in an activity we love. Athletes often describe this state as “being in the zone.” Psychologists sometimes refer to it as “flow.” That term, coined in the mid-1970s by the Hungarian social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD, is gaining new relevance today as we struggle to focus amid a media landscape filled with near-constant distractions.

Musicians, artists, and athletes cultivate flow states deliberately, whether they’re aware of the concept or not. But the experience is not reserved for creative types: You can get into flow while cleaning your garage, weeding your garden, or cooking a meal. It’s less about the activity than the relationship between the doer and the thing being done. If an activity requires some skill, and you love it and are good at it, you can easily lose yourself in it.

The connection between flow states and happiness has been well documented, most notably in Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. But what’s just coming to light is the link between flow and our overall health and well-being — which can suffer without it.

This fact is more pertinent today than ever. Deep attention is under siege. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — not to mention plain old Web browsing, emailing, and texting — we’ve never been so inundated with distractions. Staying focused on one task can feel nearly impossible as our phones light up with incoming texts or notifications that a photo on Instagram has garnered another like.

Our efforts to multitask our way through all this are not only doomed to fail, they’re also a threat to our health. “Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation,” notes neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. 

Writing in the Guardian, Levitin explains why the brain is so vulnerable to distraction: “The prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new — the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens.”

We can, in other words, become biologically addicted to checking our phones. The irony here, Levitin adds, is that “the very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted.”

The best antidote to constant distraction is to create the time and space necessary to becoming fully immersed in a task — to get into flow — and to continually challenge ourselves so we satisfy the brain’s desire for novelty. First, though, we need to learn how to create the right conditions, which involves putting away digital distractions, and understand why it’s worth the effort.

Your Body on Flow

Persistent distraction is hard on the body. The dopamine-addiction loop floods our systems with cortisol and adrenaline, two stress-related hormones that can wreak havoc when they run high for extended periods of time.

“When we’re stressed out or frustrated, we go into fight-or-flight mode,” explains Elizabeth Frates, MD, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard who specializes in lifestyle medicine. “There’s no actual lion in front of us, but it feels like there is one. Our sympathetic nervous system is activated, increasing our respiratory rate, increasing our heart rate, and shunting blood from our digestive system to our muscles so we are not able to digest our food properly. Instead, we are ready to ‘fight or flee’ using our muscles.”

Prolonged periods of stress can suppress the immune system, so we’re more likely to catch colds and take longer to recover from them. It can also lead to insomnia, which has been linked to a host of health issues.

Flow, by contrast, triggers the opposite of the fight-or-flight response, Frates says. When we’re in a flow state, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing a cascade of calming hormones associated with the rest-and-digest response. Breathing becomes more relaxed, muscles loosen, and heart rate slows. The specific biochemistry associated with flow will vary depending on the activity (writing a poem versus going out for a run, for example), but the overall benefits to health and well-being are the same.

Addiction specialist Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, studies the brain activity of subjects who are in flow. Using MRI scans, Brewer and his colleagues have observed how the brain reacts during a stressful state (for example, while craving something), as well as when the subject was deeply focused on a task.

They found the posterior cingulate cortex area of the brain (a key node in the default-mode network, responsible for automatic behaviors) was active when craving, and calm while the subject was concentrating.

This observation allows researchers to bridge the gap between subjective experiences and measurable brain activity, Brewer says. It makes clear that concentration calms the brain.

Flow is “critical for the survival of our species,” he continues, because we need deep concentration to evolve or create new and necessary skills.

Still, he notes an important paradox: “If you try to get into flow, you’re going to end up moving in the opposite direction. It’s like that line in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda says, ‘Do or do not — there is no try,’ because when there’s no trying there’s just doing.”

The Distracted Brain

Nonetheless, there are occasions when we are more likely to find our flow. Csikszentmihalyi suggests starting with a task challenging enough to keep you engaged but not so hard that it leaves you frustrated. We find flow wherever we’re able to lose ourselves in deep concentration, whether that’s in a lab analyzing tissues or on the mat in yoga class.

This type of focus, explains Brewer, is the opposite of losing track of time while you wander from post to post on Facebook. “One is zoning in,” he says, “and one is zoning out.”

Zoning out can lead to misery. Brewer cites a Harvard University study in which researchers contacted participants throughout the day to see if they were paying attention: Were they present and focused on a task, their surroundings, or the person with them, or were they ruminating distractedly about the past or the future? Researchers also asked how happy the subjects felt. The findings were disheartening.

“Forty-seven percent of the time, people were lost in mind wandering. Past, future, but not here,” Brewer notes. Subjects in this state also reported that they were decidedly less happy.

So when it comes to addictive distractions like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, things get sticky. “These technologies provide an intermittent reinforcement process that hijacks our reward brain pathways — the same neural pathways that get activated when we use drugs,” says Brewer. “We get so caught up in them that we’re not consciously aware of what we’re doing.”

Before long, we become addicted to the short-term pleasures of distrac-tions that make us measurably less happy overall.

Social media makes the need for flow even more imperative, Brewer argues. Cultivating concentration isn’t merely a safeguard against the harmful effects of distraction; it actually offers mental benefits on its own.

Flow states, for example, can protect our brains as we age. A study published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences examined the effects of cognitive training, including knitting, quilting, reading, and playing games, in subjects aged 70 to 89. Researchers found that those activities — unlike traveling or socializing — were associated with sustained cognitive acuity.

Flow and Emotional Health

The main reason flow feels so good, according to researchers, is because our thoughts, intentions, and actions are working in harmony. We’re not in conflict with ourselves.

“Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration, consciousness is unusually well ordered,” writes Csikszentmihalyi in Flow. “Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. . . . And when the flow episode is over, one feels more ‘together’ than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general.”

McCutcheon says she felt that sense of togetherness while practicing with her band. She’d arrive at rehearsal with just the slightest idea for a song, she says, “and we would transform it together. It felt like we were of one universal mind.”

“I recognized this alternative state, without knowing the name for it, when I was very young,” says Austin, Texas–based visual artist Holly Sabiston, who began drawing at age 6. She says this concentration helped her thrive in her otherwise chaotic childhood home. “It feels open and unhindered. No constraints,” she says.

The sense of purpose and satisfaction we get from accomplishing a task — especially a challenging one — also contributes to the positive effects of the flow state.

These days, Sabiston finds herself in flow while painting — and during kettlebell workouts. “In the beginning, you have to concentrate really hard. You focus on improving, you count, and you breathe and do as many repetitions in 10 minutes as you can,” she explains.

“There’s something about having a purpose — and having a struc-ture within that purpose — that’s immense-ly satisfying.”

Finding Your Flow

We are all capable of getting into flow, says Christine Carter, PhD, a senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work. She defines it as the “overlay between where we have our greatest strength and greatest ease.”

While flow may seem to be the provenance of artists, musicians, and athletes, Carter believes that these groups simply experience it more often because the “conditions are already there” in what they do.

You may already know where you feel a sense of competence and peace — playing basketball or doing math equations or arranging a bouquet of flowers. If you don’t, and you want to spend more time in a flow state, start with activities that interest you. If you love to cook but always make the same meals, add a new challenge, like bread baking. If you find your bliss in Zumba class, but you already know all the moves, try another style of dance.

Pay attention to your body’s cues. It’s another way to identify activities that put you in flow — and to know when you’re in it. Flow exists on a spectrum of attention, with obsessive addiction at one end and getting completely out of your own way at the other, Brewer explains. At the stressful end, your body feels contracted — shoulders hunched, chest tight. When you’re in complete flow, your body feels expansive and calm, with a focused mind and open heart.

When you find yourself feeling that expanded open quality, what are you doing? Conversely, when you feel contracted, what are you doing? To build more space for flow in your life, start by doing more of what makes you feel open and expanded and less of what makes you feel contracted and tense.

Turning Flow Into a Habit

Once you’ve identified an activity that puts you into flow, you can make it a regular part of your routine. Carter suggests beginning with brief increments.

“Start with 20 minutes,” she says. “Maybe you won’t get much done then, but you’re practicing — you’re doing drills, essentially — and you’re building a practice.” She says the optimal amount of time to be in flow is 90 minutes, so build toward that.

There are ways to train your body to drop into flow quickly, Carter says. “If you do the activity at the same time each day, that can be a cue to your brain.” Maybe you go for a run or sit down to write at your laptop at 7 a.m. every morning.

Having a preflow routine is another cue. Carter says she cleans off her desk as she boils water for tea. Then she turns on her computer, goes to the bathroom, and fetches her tea.

“It’s a list of things that signals to my brain, OK, it’s time. Doing them in the same order each time is also very helpful. That way, one trigger cues another.”

And turn off all your devices so you won’t be interrupted by flashing messages and noisy dings.

After a while, many people who have a flow habit start to recognize emotional shifts cuing them to attend to their project or interest. McCutcheon can feel when she has a streak of creative focus coming on. “It often starts with me getting antsy — whatever I’m doing, I want to be home making music. Whatever else I should be doing, I can’t wait to get home and make music.”

Sabiston experiences a similar emotional crescendo before she begins a major painting. “I didn’t recognize this until further into my career, but I almost always spend a day crying before I begin work on a big project. Now I give myself permission to have a cry fest. That’s how I get into the zone.”

Defending Your Flow

For many of us, the work involved in our chosen careers puts us into flow. A study Csikszentmihalyi led at the University of Chicago found that flow states occurred three times more often when the participants were at work than during their free time. So if you tend to find your flow while journaling or jogging or hunting for wild mushrooms, you may need to defend that blissful space.

Carter recommends building a “fortress against interruption” when trying to set the right conditions for flow: Silence your phone (even better, turn it off and move it out of sight) and put on comfortable clothes. “If you can’t concentrate,” she says, “you can’t be in your sweet spot. Period.”

The same technique can be applied to friends and family who may try to interrupt you while you’re in flow. They may not understand how important this activity is to you, even if you explain. That’s OK. Listen to your feelings and be clear about your need for time. And don’t be surprised if they notice your calm concentration and suddenly start to find more time for their own flow activities. Healthy habits are contagious, too.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/go-with-the-flow-2/

[wallythayer]

Go With the Flow

While composing a song, Charla McCutcheon sometimes loses track of time.

“I’ll start playing music at 7 or 8 at night, and the next thing I know, it’s 4 a.m.,” says the New York City–based musician.

She also loses a sense of her physical self. “I’m so into the music that I forget I’m even present; it just feels like I’m part of the creation.” Sometimes she’ll even be surprised when she hears the songs, as if someone else wrote them.

Most of us experience this feeling at some point — losing track of time and space while involved in an activity we love. Athletes often describe this state as “being in the zone.” Psychologists sometimes refer to it as “flow.” That term, coined in the mid-1970s by the Hungarian social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD, is gaining new relevance today as we struggle to focus amid a media landscape filled with near-constant distractions.

Musicians, artists, and athletes cultivate flow states deliberately, whether they’re aware of the concept or not. But the experience is not reserved for creative types: You can get into flow while cleaning your garage, weeding your garden, or cooking a meal. It’s less about the activity than the relationship between the doer and the thing being done. If an activity requires some skill, and you love it and are good at it, you can easily lose yourself in it.

The connection between flow states and happiness has been well documented, most notably in Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal 1990 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. But what’s just coming to light is the link between flow and our overall health and well-being — which can suffer without it.

This fact is more pertinent today than ever. Deep attention is under siege. With Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — not to mention plain old Web browsing, emailing, and texting — we’ve never been so inundated with distractions. Staying focused on one task can feel nearly impossible as our phones light up with incoming texts or notifications that a photo on Instagram has garnered another like.

Our efforts to multitask our way through all this are not only doomed to fail, they’re also a threat to our health. “Multitasking creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation,” notes neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. 

Writing in the Guardian, Levitin explains why the brain is so vulnerable to distraction: “The prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new — the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens.”

We can, in other words, become biologically addicted to checking our phones. The irony here, Levitin adds, is that “the very brain region we need to rely on for staying on task is easily distracted.”

The best antidote to constant distraction is to create the time and space necessary to becoming fully immersed in a task — to get into flow — and to continually challenge ourselves so we satisfy the brain’s desire for novelty. First, though, we need to learn how to create the right conditions, which involves putting away digital distractions, and understand why it’s worth the effort.

Your Body on Flow

Persistent distraction is hard on the body. The dopamine-addiction loop floods our systems with cortisol and adrenaline, two stress-related hormones that can wreak havoc when they run high for extended periods of time.

“When we’re stressed out or frustrated, we go into fight-or-flight mode,” explains Elizabeth Frates, MD, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard who specializes in lifestyle medicine. “There’s no actual lion in front of us, but it feels like there is one. Our sympathetic nervous system is activated, increasing our respiratory rate, increasing our heart rate, and shunting blood from our digestive system to our muscles so we are not able to digest our food properly. Instead, we are ready to ‘fight or flee’ using our muscles.”

Prolonged periods of stress can suppress the immune system, so we’re more likely to catch colds and take longer to recover from them. It can also lead to insomnia, which has been linked to a host of health issues.

Flow, by contrast, triggers the opposite of the fight-or-flight response, Frates says. When we’re in a flow state, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing a cascade of calming hormones associated with the rest-and-digest response. Breathing becomes more relaxed, muscles loosen, and heart rate slows. The specific biochemistry associated with flow will vary depending on the activity (writing a poem versus going out for a run, for example), but the overall benefits to health and well-being are the same.

Addiction specialist Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, studies the brain activity of subjects who are in flow. Using MRI scans, Brewer and his colleagues have observed how the brain reacts during a stressful state (for example, while craving something), as well as when the subject was deeply focused on a task.

They found the posterior cingulate cortex area of the brain (a key node in the default-mode network, responsible for automatic behaviors) was active when craving, and calm while the subject was concentrating.

This observation allows researchers to bridge the gap between subjective experiences and measurable brain activity, Brewer says. It makes clear that concentration calms the brain.

Flow is “critical for the survival of our species,” he continues, because we need deep concentration to evolve or create new and necessary skills.

Still, he notes an important paradox: “If you try to get into flow, you’re going to end up moving in the opposite direction. It’s like that line in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda says, ‘Do or do not — there is no try,’ because when there’s no trying there’s just doing.”

The Distracted Brain

Nonetheless, there are occasions when we are more likely to find our flow. Csikszentmihalyi suggests starting with a task challenging enough to keep you engaged but not so hard that it leaves you frustrated. We find flow wherever we’re able to lose ourselves in deep concentration, whether that’s in a lab analyzing tissues or on the mat in yoga class.

This type of focus, explains Brewer, is the opposite of losing track of time while you wander from post to post on Facebook. “One is zoning in,” he says, “and one is zoning out.”

Zoning out can lead to misery. Brewer cites a Harvard University study in which researchers contacted participants throughout the day to see if they were paying attention: Were they present and focused on a task, their surroundings, or the person with them, or were they ruminating distractedly about the past or the future? Researchers also asked how happy the subjects felt. The findings were disheartening.

“Forty-seven percent of the time, people were lost in mind wandering. Past, future, but not here,” Brewer notes. Subjects in this state also reported that they were decidedly less happy.

So when it comes to addictive distractions like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, things get sticky. “These technologies provide an intermittent reinforcement process that hijacks our reward brain pathways — the same neural pathways that get activated when we use drugs,” says Brewer. “We get so caught up in them that we’re not consciously aware of what we’re doing.”

Before long, we become addicted to the short-term pleasures of distrac-tions that make us measurably less happy overall.

Social media makes the need for flow even more imperative, Brewer argues. Cultivating concentration isn’t merely a safeguard against the harmful effects of distraction; it actually offers mental benefits on its own.

Flow states, for example, can protect our brains as we age. A study published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences examined the effects of cognitive training, including knitting, quilting, reading, and playing games, in subjects aged 70 to 89. Researchers found that those activities — unlike traveling or socializing — were associated with sustained cognitive acuity.

Flow and Emotional Health

The main reason flow feels so good, according to researchers, is because our thoughts, intentions, and actions are working in harmony. We’re not in conflict with ourselves.

“Flow helps to integrate the self because in that state of deep concentration, consciousness is unusually well ordered,” writes Csikszentmihalyi in Flow. “Thoughts, intentions, feelings, and all the senses are focused on the same goal. . . . And when the flow episode is over, one feels more ‘together’ than before, not only internally but also with respect to other people and to the world in general.”

McCutcheon says she felt that sense of togetherness while practicing with her band. She’d arrive at rehearsal with just the slightest idea for a song, she says, “and we would transform it together. It felt like we were of one universal mind.”

“I recognized this alternative state, without knowing the name for it, when I was very young,” says Austin, Texas–based visual artist Holly Sabiston, who began drawing at age 6. She says this concentration helped her thrive in her otherwise chaotic childhood home. “It feels open and unhindered. No constraints,” she says.

The sense of purpose and satisfaction we get from accomplishing a task — especially a challenging one — also contributes to the positive effects of the flow state.

These days, Sabiston finds herself in flow while painting — and during kettlebell workouts. “In the beginning, you have to concentrate really hard. You focus on improving, you count, and you breathe and do as many repetitions in 10 minutes as you can,” she explains.

“There’s something about having a purpose — and having a struc-ture within that purpose — that’s immense-ly satisfying.”

Finding Your Flow

We are all capable of getting into flow, says Christine Carter, PhD, a senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work. She defines it as the “overlay between where we have our greatest strength and greatest ease.”

While flow may seem to be the provenance of artists, musicians, and athletes, Carter believes that these groups simply experience it more often because the “conditions are already there” in what they do.

You may already know where you feel a sense of competence and peace — playing basketball or doing math equations or arranging a bouquet of flowers. If you don’t, and you want to spend more time in a flow state, start with activities that interest you. If you love to cook but always make the same meals, add a new challenge, like bread baking. If you find your bliss in Zumba class, but you already know all the moves, try another style of dance.

Pay attention to your body’s cues. It’s another way to identify activities that put you in flow — and to know when you’re in it. Flow exists on a spectrum of attention, with obsessive addiction at one end and getting completely out of your own way at the other, Brewer explains. At the stressful end, your body feels contracted — shoulders hunched, chest tight. When you’re in complete flow, your body feels expansive and calm, with a focused mind and open heart.

When you find yourself feeling that expanded open quality, what are you doing? Conversely, when you feel contracted, what are you doing? To build more space for flow in your life, start by doing more of what makes you feel open and expanded and less of what makes you feel contracted and tense.

Turning Flow Into a Habit

Once you’ve identified an activity that puts you into flow, you can make it a regular part of your routine. Carter suggests beginning with brief increments.

“Start with 20 minutes,” she says. “Maybe you won’t get much done then, but you’re practicing — you’re doing drills, essentially — and you’re building a practice.” She says the optimal amount of time to be in flow is 90 minutes, so build toward that.

There are ways to train your body to drop into flow quickly, Carter says. “If you do the activity at the same time each day, that can be a cue to your brain.” Maybe you go for a run or sit down to write at your laptop at 7 a.m. every morning.

Having a preflow routine is another cue. Carter says she cleans off her desk as she boils water for tea. Then she turns on her computer, goes to the bathroom, and fetches her tea.

“It’s a list of things that signals to my brain, OK, it’s time. Doing them in the same order each time is also very helpful. That way, one trigger cues another.”

And turn off all your devices so you won’t be interrupted by flashing messages and noisy dings.

After a while, many people who have a flow habit start to recognize emotional shifts cuing them to attend to their project or interest. McCutcheon can feel when she has a streak of creative focus coming on. “It often starts with me getting antsy — whatever I’m doing, I want to be home making music. Whatever else I should be doing, I can’t wait to get home and make music.”

Sabiston experiences a similar emotional crescendo before she begins a major painting. “I didn’t recognize this until further into my career, but I almost always spend a day crying before I begin work on a big project. Now I give myself permission to have a cry fest. That’s how I get into the zone.”

Defending Your Flow

For many of us, the work involved in our chosen careers puts us into flow. A study Csikszentmihalyi led at the University of Chicago found that flow states occurred three times more often when the participants were at work than during their free time. So if you tend to find your flow while journaling or jogging or hunting for wild mushrooms, you may need to defend that blissful space.

Carter recommends building a “fortress against interruption” when trying to set the right conditions for flow: Silence your phone (even better, turn it off and move it out of sight) and put on comfortable clothes. “If you can’t concentrate,” she says, “you can’t be in your sweet spot. Period.”

The same technique can be applied to friends and family who may try to interrupt you while you’re in flow. They may not understand how important this activity is to you, even if you explain. That’s OK. Listen to your feelings and be clear about your need for time. And don’t be surprised if they notice your calm concentration and suddenly start to find more time for their own flow activities. Healthy habits are contagious, too.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/go-with-the-flow-2/