State of Flow

In the last 3 weeks I have been doing a brief 15 to 20 minutes of yoga asana practice each morning before work. I have never done this before. Since I first began to practice yoga in 2001 till now, I have never been able to really cultivate a home practice. Classes, yes. DVDs, it was brief, but yes. But I've never done a practice on my own where I decided how long to stay in a posture and what posture is next. So I've been giving it a try recently, and doing okay with it if I do say so myself.

But something that has surprised me since I started this home based yoga practice, is how I have gotten brief glimpses into the joy of flow. I think of these flow experiences as times when my mind is not dominating my experience. Times when my insides and outsides are lining up. Times when I am not self conscious and trying to look a certain way that is pleasing  and acceptable to myself and others. Because it is a relief, I have to say, to not, for once, plan my next move, sometimes, next series of moves, in advance of the moment as I would in a game of chess. Quite frankly, that can be exhausting because the mind is never allowing itself to go into a state of rest. And the mind and body are very rarely in the same place at the same time. So to combat this habitual state of doing two things at once, I am instead allowing my yoga practice to unfold one asana at a time as best I can.

But it's hard. It's hard to flow by letting your whole being guide you effortlessly rather than your all-powerful mind constantly steering the ship. It's hard for me anyway, but it wasn't always.

When I was a little girl I loved to dance. For hours. I would just turn on music (loudly) and jump and spin and swing my arms like I was flying. Sometimes I would dance in my bedroom in the house I grew up in. Or in the living room, if I was downstairs and no one was home. But my favorite thing to do was to open the old crank-style-Anderson windows in the family room that led to the deck, turn on the radio or a cassette (or an album from my parents' stellar 1960-1980 record collection), and go out on the deck in the rain on a hot summer day to dance.

I can't tell you exactly what I liked so much about dancing in those moments.  I don't think I even knew exactly myself. But when I reflect on those moments now, I would say I felt free.  In those moments I wasn't thinking at all. I wasn't planning. I wasn't worrying. I wasn't analyzing. I wasn't trying to perform or perfect.  You might ask, then what is left?  Pure being I guess.  When I am feeling in symbiotic union with myself, and there is absolutely no effort to that process, it is absolute heaven.

Stephen Cope, author of "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self" and resident academic at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Berkshires Mountains, calls this process "the state of flow."  He equates this experience to athletes who get "in the zone" and musicians who "get in the groove." He writes: "all self-consciousness is dissolved for short periods of time, as awareness of the activity itself is heightened. The 'actor' then has a sense that he [or she] is not acting at all. He is not the doer. He abides as the still point around which the movement takes place."  The still point. I love imagining the possibility of me actually embodying a still point. That would make me a believer in miracles.

But honestly, I think that actually is what I experienced all those years ago when I was a girl dancing to Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" in the summer rain on my deck in my backyard. I also think what Mr. Cope describes is what I get just little tiny glimpses of now when I'm on my yoga mat at home.

What's interesting is that I very rarely, like almost never, dance now. I may dance with my children in my arms once in a while. Or do some silly turns and movements while cooking dinner in the kitchen and listening to music- which tends to still be in the vain of entertaining my family to make them smile and laugh. But its not at all like when I was a girl. That feeling of freedom I used to experience is just not there. I wish it was...I miss it.  Which I guess is another way if saying, I miss that part of me. Maybe I will meet her again some day.