A GUIDE TO FLOW
22 February 2022Learn more about flow with Pi Studios’ founder and director Holly Murray.
Holly Murray is the owner/director of Pi Studios - a full service, modern Pilates Studio, Training Academy and Mind Gym. Holly trained in the Pilates Method in Mr Pilates’ only studio in NYC in 2002, going on to develop the first classical Teacher Training Programme in the UK. To further serve the community and develop Pi life, Holly has gone on to study Flow with Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal; what that means and how to access more of it. Currently she is studying Dr. Gabor Maté’s ‘The Wisdom of Trauma’. In combination, the lifelong practice of Pilates integrated with Flow and the Wisdom of Trauma give rise to a remembering of who we truly are, a return to wholeness and the possibility of life lived in a freedom channel.
Coined by Harvard Law professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the term “Flow” describes a state in which you feel at your best and perform at your best – a focussed mental state conducive to productivity and high performance. Not something that you can seek to achieve or practice, Flow cannot be turned on or off – it is a specific process, an inherent state of being. Flow is part of a sub collection of NOSC (Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness), such as dreaming, mediation and breath work.
Allowing for access to insights, connection and information, flow outpaces anything we can typically achieve in our everyday working consciousness or our ordinary consciousness. As a result of this, a flow State is typically associated with high and optimal performance.
When in a Flow state, specific neurochemicals are activated and the brain’s working pattern shifts, so as we move into a Flow state, our neuropsychology and neurobiology change. Flow is a ‘state of extreme situational awareness, meaning I am paying attention to much much more, and hyper-ergonomics, in the sense of friction or lack of friction between my thoughts/intentions and actions’, as Jamie Wheal defines it. Flow is typically described by those who have experienced it as ‘flowy” with “each action moving seamlessly to the next”.
When entering a flow state, the following qualities are uniformly recognised:
- SELFLESSNESS: Our sense of self disappears.
- TIMELESSNESS: Our sense of time is affected – we are plunged into the present.
- EFFORTLESSNESS: A sense of effortlessness occurs - we move seamlessly from one thing to the next, from one moment to the next without effort.
- RICHNESS: What happens in flow is we seem to get/receive enhanced insight, connection and information.
