The in Marin County, California, might be the most scenic ultrarunning race in the country. Dirt jeep roads and winding singletrack take runners along the jagged Pacific coast, up and over grassy hills with views of the Golden Gate Bridge, and through dense redwood forests. But at mile 11, I wasn鈥檛 taking in the scenery. I was floating.
Runner鈥檚 high. Being in the zone. Whatever you want to call it, psychologists call it a flow state. In 颅essence, it鈥檚 concentration so deep that you don鈥檛 realize you鈥檙e concentrating. In the 1970s, a California psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi began studying what he referred to as and found that everyone from artists to athletes to CEOs were fueled by flow to push creative and physical boundaries. More important, he discovered that these flow states were some of the happiest moments in people鈥檚 lives.
While in flow, parts of our prefrontal cortex, the section of the brain that deals with most of our higher cognitive function, all but shut down. Which might be why things feel so effortless.
I鈥檇 long wondered if I could prolong the feeling, so I decided to try Flow Fundamentals, a course designed by Steven Kotler, author of the book , about how adventure athletes like Dean Potter and Laird Hamilton have used flow states to push the boundaries of what鈥檚 possible.
The six-week program revolved around webisodes outlining the principles of flow and ways to hack into it. Sitting in my office and watching the videos, only to have a coworker burst in and say 鈥淪orry, are you flowing?鈥 is very un-flowy. But the webisodes weren鈥檛 designed to induce the state; there was homework for that.
Each week, my classmates and I were given a to-do list that included every颅thing from using smartphone apps to monitor our heart rate and sleeping patterns to going bungee jumping. But my favorite assignment involved caffeine and alcohol.
Kotler and his cohost, Jamie Wheal, encouraged us to down two shots of espresso and two shots of vodka, then watch a video of surf and snowboard porn set to a dubstep soundtrack, with tones that stimulate alpha brain颅颅waves (the ones that bring on relaxation). Put it on full screen and turn it up to 11, they said. To be honest, I didn鈥檛 need a reason to do that, but Kotler and Wheal gave me one anyway. Flow, the thinking goes, is a product of deep embodiment, high consequence, and a rich environment. The delicious cocktail of stimulants was designed to use hedonic engineering (their phrase) to get me deeply embodied.
The science on flow, while ongoing, is kind of murky. While in flow, parts of our prefrontal cortex, the section of the brain that deals with most of our higher cognitive function, all but shut down. Which might be why things feel so effortless. In addition, that state produces dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins, serotonin, and anandamide in your brain. The neurochemicals increase attention, speed up heart rate and respiration, ease pain, and inhibit our ability to feel fear.
But every person has different triggers. Early on in the course, we were tasked with figuring out what those were. According to the questionnaire I filled out, mine are surfing and running in the mountains. Other people were set off by painting or jamming on the sax. The next step was to perform those trigger activities more often. So I did. I was training for the race in Marin the entire time I took the program.
One of the problems with flow states is that staying in them can be as difficult as achieving them in the first place. At the race, I went out faster than I should have. Somewhere around mile 24, I came abruptly back to earth with the biggest physical and mental explosion I鈥檝e ever experienced in five years of racing. I was at flow鈥檚 polar opposite: the pain cave. I hobbled to the finish line.
Does that mean my search is over? Far from it. The pursuit of flow is nearly as gratifying as the feeling itself. Before I was able to walk normally again after the race, I鈥檇 already begun scheming about how to get my next fix鈥斅璽ime for a surf trip.
Continue on聽国产吃瓜黑料‘s quest to boost happiness:
Strategies for a Healthier, Happier Life
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The Science of Happiness, Illustrated