Experiencing the "Flow" - Create Your Happiness

Have you ever just listened to a piece of music and the dance just appeared in your mind? Maybe it was just a combination that struck you to a particular part of the refrain? I love it when that happens! It's called being in the "flow."



Over the years I've learned to wait for it. I'll listen to music that I need to choreograph for my student recital over and over again until the movement appears to me. Now, please don't stop reading because you think I'm crazy. It really does work for me. When people ask "how do you choreograph all those dances" I tell them that after awhile the dance sort of just "appears" to me. I can start to see it happen on stage, feel it as I move around and then I write it down quick. Does this happen for you?

If it does, psychologists would tell you that you are IN THE FLOW. You are linked with the moment, the motivation and the talent to make it happen and you are totally in sync with yourself. I think we all need to find more "In the flow moments."


You've heard the term "go with the flow" well this is a new look at that idea. It's probably where that catch phrase came from, now that I think of it.


Here's an excerpt from the research...There is a state that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about called flow. The Experience of Flow:

"My own addition to this list is the concept of the autotelic experience, or flow, and of the autotelic personality. The concept describes a particular kind of experience that is so engrossing and enjoyable that it becomes autotelic, that is, worth doing for its own sake even though it may have no consequence outside itself. Creative activities, music, sports, games, and religious rituals are typical sources for this kind of experience. Autotelic persons are those who have such flow experiences relatively often, regardless of what they are doing.

Of course, we never do anything purely for its own sake. Our motives are always a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic considerations. For instance, composers may write music because they hope to sell it and pay the bills, because they want to become famous, because their self-images depends on writing songs—all of these being extrinsic motives. But if the composers are motivated only by these extrinsic rewards, they are missing an essential ingredient. In addition to these rewards, they could also enjoy writing music for its own sake—in which case, the activity would become autotelic. My studies (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1996, 1997) have suggested that happiness depends on whether a person is able to derive flow from whatever he or she does.

A brief selection from one of the more than 10,000 interviews collected from around the world might provide a sense of what the flow experience is like. Asked how it felt when writing music was going well, a composer responded,

You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don't exist. I have experienced this time and time again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment. And the music just flows out by itself. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. 44)

This response is quite typical of most descriptions of how people feel when they are thoroughly involved in something that is enjoyable and meaningful to the person. First of all, the experience is described as “ecstatic”: in other words, as being somehow separate from the routines of everyday life. This sense of having stepped into a different reality can be induced by environmental cues, such as walking into a sport event, a religious ceremony, or a musical performance, or the feeling can be produced internally, by focusing attention on a set of stimuli with their own rules, such as the composition of music.

If you are still reading, Congratulations! You made it through a college course on flow. It's a bit of a tough read, but its interesting and note how old the research is...this is not new stuff. I bet I was in pre-ballet class when this research was written.

So, go find your flow! I bet it's some place with music and an empty stage nearby...