Finding Flow with Voice, Attention & Movement

We are constantly adapting to our environment to create a sense of physical, physiological and psychological balance for ourselves. If it’s too warm, we switch on the fan or air conditioning, adjust the speed till it feels just right. What happens there is an assessment of the current conditions, followed by directing our attention to the choices available to change it, eventually leading to setting the right temperature or fan speed.

What is true for a simple adjustment of external conditions is also true for a complex resetting of one’s identity and choosing a new way of being that is more aligned with what is asked of us.

This process is enabled by three fundamental embodied dimensions which govern our sense of being balanced. They are our voice, our attention and, our movement. Together, they represent the essence of being consciously alive. Through their various configurations, we experience and express ourselves through different identities.

The three dimensions are constantly interact and influence one another shifting us between different states. Let’s examine each of them a little closely.

The Voice

The voice is the representative of our collective experience and our core concerns. It is a friend from the past that shows up in the moment to support us in finding our next steps.

With language as its medium of expression, it plays an active role in helping us understand and relate to our world. As we interact with our world, we assign meaning to what we observe, which helps us decide how we choose to proceed.

The voice is the vehicle of all the stories we have about ourselves and the world. Stories tell us how things are and by extrapolation, how they could turn out. They create the grooves for our habit nature to flow through.

From our experiences, we create these stories by combining facts, the meaning we assign to them and assessments of what we expect to happen. We learn that writing an email in a certain way gets a favourable response from our customer. That can become a trigger for a story to be formed about how we write emails; how one should write emails. So, in addition to synthesizing our experience to make sense of what’s in front of us, the voice also serves as a gateway of intuition. It helps us recognise and name the unexpected moments of insight we might experience as felt sense or, in the external world, a metaphor of some kind.

Through studies in neuroscience, we now know how our brain has threat and reward as the two basic orientations which shape our behaviour. We move away from threats and move towards rewards (or pain and pleasure). We also know that the threat response can be four times stronger than the towards response. This is why anything new that is unfamiliar can initially make us feel unsafe, always coaxing us to return to the familiarity and comfort of status quo.

Stories serve up the heuristic evidence to conduct and complete the spontaneous assessment of whether something is a threat or a reward.

So, the primary function stories play is to act as a signalling mechanism. They signal what we ought to pay attention to, with a strong bias towards protecting ourself first. With a keen attention, we can also discern intuition from experience.

Attention

Imagine you’re in a train and standing in front of a stranger. The stranger starts staring at you, making you feel uncomfortable. You notice his gaze and feel frozen in the moment. What do you do next?

Attention is always in the present. Through our multiple sensory mechanisms, it picks up all kinds of signals from the environment in the form of various stimuli.

Attention keeps our instincts sharp. As we are wondering how to respond to the stranger’s gaze, the train may suddenly come to a stop, making us grab the overhead handlebar instinctively. If we a split second slow to react, we might be risking an injury.

As we recover, on the inside, it is constantly in touch with our voice to interpret the stimuli and determine what happens next. Standing in the train in front of the staring stranger, we can receive numerous options of how we might respond from our voice, as it starts signalling to our attention. The voice does this because ultimately, it is attention that shapes our choices.

Attention is the currency of choice. How we spend it has a significant impact on the patterns of behaviour and habits we can find ourselves unconsciously trapped in. Therefore, what we choose to pay attention to has a direct influence on the short term and long-term trajectory of our life. Responsibility is the product of a refined attention. Once we are responsible, we shift into a different identity and people perceive us differently. We have moved on from who we were.

That takes us to the next dimension – movement.

Movement

We are always moving, even when we may say we are still.

The first step in understanding movement is to know it is not restricted to physical movement alone. There is movement of thought, movement within us at a physiological level (with our organs and their secretions); even our breath is an expression of rhythmic unabated movement.

The loss of movement can effectively mean the loss of choice and perhaps, the loss of conscious living as we know it. Movement is the most basic agency of all change and acceptance. Movement starts in the present and takes us to into the future. In other words, we create our future through movement.

It is no coincidence that we often describe our actions, particularly those we regard as skilful as ‘moves.’ A handful of such ‘moves’ may be all that we need to create a fulfilling path for ourselves.

However, being able to mindfully choreograph our movement requires a closer look at its function and nature. Our brain is constantly looking to find ways to hard-wire its responses. Creating automaticity is one of the critical functions of the brain, which helps in conserving attention and energy by creating patterns of behaviour that can be repeated without much effort. That’s how we function on auto-pilot most of the time and, as unpopular as it may sound, a state of inertia is often our preferred state of balance.

From brushing our teeth to speaking to a child, we express ourselves through patterns that switch on the moment we need them. In other words, all movement expresses itself in patterns.

Starting with our breath, anything that can be identified in a pattern can be understood as movement. All our behaviour, cycles, habits and rituals are examples of movement. Similarly, culture and norms can be windows to understand movement at a collective level. Without patterns, we would be exhausted by the number of trivial decisions we’d have to make in a day, with each demanding a share of our attention and thought.

The limitation of patterns

When we say we were ‘moved’ by a person or a situation to act in a certain way, we imply that we found ourselves making a choice that left us surprised. In other words, we went beyond what we recognise as our established patterns.

While patterns are efficient, they are not always effective, especially when we are transitioning through new, unexplored territory or when we are trying to perform at a higher level. We may not yet have developed the skills required to cope with our challenges and trying harder with our existing patterns doesn’t improve the results we get. Our experience cannot fully explain what is going on and, our stories can become inadequate and even inaccurate, leaving us feeling out of balance.

This is when we need a new pattern; a new of responding that builds on what we know and transcends it.

The intention to find a new pattern takes us back into our voice to look for answers, to pay attention to possibilities we may have ignored and, to name capabilities or resources we may need to adapt to our environment. This is usually the beginning of all self-improvement. However, unless it creates a different quality of attention and a new pattern of movement, nothing changes. We revert to status quo and inertia.

Finding Flow

Flow is the ease of creating value. We are constantly looking for it as it helps us be at our best without feeling depleted.

Flow is a consequence of aligning voice, attention and movement with a specific purpose. We may choose any purpose from playing a musical instrument to leading an organisation. However, finding flow requires an intentional shift in these three embodied dimensions.

Without that, we can have insights and ideas, but not sustainable change, especially when faced with challenging external conditions. The experience of enabling that shift is the essence of all Somajna interventions.