Martin Reynoso
09/16/2021 6:01 AM
Clarín.com
Good Life
Updated 09/16/2021 6:01 AM
Ayrton Sena, the famous Formula 1 racer who died tragically in an accident, used to say that at one point in the competition he entered a
deep and magnetic tunnel
that invited him to sink satisfactorily and made him feel free and powerful.
In this state, which we can call "flow", the temporal coordinate disappeared and only the full experience remained.
Also called "being in the zone", Flow seems to be that
ideal state
in which an athlete or even a person at work or an artist in their creative place, displays in an inspired way a series of highly effective behaviors that seem to be very associated with a passionate and very intuitive state of mind (body memory?).
Does this have to do with mindfulness?
It seems that a little bit, not so much.
Some say there is a certain association, others like Sheldon and team that they are totally incompatible.
Let's see.
Mindfulness and flow can be trained.
Photo Shutterstock.
Two fashion concepts
Without a doubt, what they clearly agree on is that both are in fashion.
Mindfulness, a little older and clearly more scientific backing.
Flow arises in the context of positive psychology and its creator was
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(1990), who first described it as "a pleasant experience in itself that occurs in activities that people carry out despite the costs or the tiredness that they could suppose and they are fully involved in them, to the point of losing track of time ".
This author marked some conditions that facilitate it:
1. Have clear and realistic goals.
2. An immediate feedback on the execution of the task.
3. Balance between personal skills and the challenges or difficulties that the task presents.
Mindfulness, with deep roots in Buddhist psychology, reaches the West mainly through Jon Kabat-Zinn as an experience of
greater presence
in the moment that we find ourselves.
Its components are:
1.Intention or purpose to open ourselves to the experience of presence
2. Attention to the present moment
3. Without judging
Both can be trained
.
The flow seems to be more than spontaneous and sometimes even fortuitous.
Mindfulness can become a trait and is clearly related to the training time and the purpose of activating it daily in our lives.
Mindfulness and flow can be complementary experiences.
Photo Shutterstock.
Similarities and differences
They have some similar and many different things.
In both experiences,
attention plays an important role
, but while in flow it is a deep and passionate absorption in mindfulness it is rather totalizing, open and calm.
A second aspect is the
feeling of connection with the present
, but while in flow that connection is related to dopaminergic levels of the brain (reward) that seeks to achieve certain goals through action, in mindfulness it seems to correlate more with serotonin and endorphin and with a relaxation response that varies according to the activity carried out, but where the mode of being or contemplative is more activated.
Flow is
explosive and transitory
, with a moment of cognitive and behavioral effervescence that leads to an efficiency in the task to be executed, and also produces a satisfaction closely associated with passion, while mindfulness is more durable and can (as we said) become a trait, that is, a lasting condition of the human experience (mindful brain).
Sheldon and colleagues say that flow involves a
loss of self-awareness
while in activity, while mindfulness maintains that self-
awareness
.
They carry out 3 studies where they examine this relationship and only find negative associations between the two, that is, incompatibility.
Complementary, not enemies
However, we can also think of them as complementary experiences.
In some processes, such as creativity, we can assume that in a moment the strong, intense innovative impulse arises, shaking the foundations of the mind and body (like that restlessness that makes us look for an answer) and perhaps later in time , a more contemplative and calm moment where all the learnings of the first stage are channeled.
Perhaps the athlete can experience it like this too: moments of serene contemplation and mindfulness, and
disruptive moments
full of passion and creative action.
For some authors, being more "mindful" would
better
predispose
to moments of flow
.
But for now we do not have clarity on that or research to support it.
Conclusion?
Both are exquisite experiences of the human being that we can cultivate and that we
need to live with more happiness
.
One (flow) has the flavor of the hot sauce that ignites our passion, and the other (mindfulness) the balm of contemplative peace that balances us in the face of life challenges.
* Martín Reynoso is a psychologist, director of Train Your Brain Argentina and author of "Mindfulness, scientific meditation".