047 - Dancing in the Flow

Portals of Perception

It’s familiar to hear athletes and artists talking about “being in the zone” during moments of peak performance — that feeling of total focus and attention that allows access to one’s best and often a sense of greater awareness and capability. It’s sometimes described as a feeling of somehow reaching beyond what we thought were our limits.

What’s remarkable in being “in the flow,” as it is also known, is a natural state of enhanced awareness, connection, and capacity that is always nearby, available to anyone as a source of new intelligence, creativity, and energy for all aspects of our lives and journey. We can also learn to better recognize the mental and energetic barriers that may be preventing a more frequent experience of true flow.

In this conversation, Aviv Shahar is joined by three Portals friends — Dan Leahy, Catherine Johnson, and Leticia Nieto — who practice, facilitate, and increase awareness of the flow state in their personal and professional lives as educators, counselors, and therapists.

Although difficult to explain or define in words, our flow friends explore ways to move closer to flow by warming up to the readiness of our bodies, minds, and ecology; by playing, role play or psychodrama; by stimulating our natural spontaneity. Their experience and perception of flow includes:

- We can facilitate the release and liberation of whatever got arrested in historic or entrenched or limiting patterns through different approaches to creative work.

- There were moments where the student’s eyes lit up; it was like something showed up that wasn't in the model or the curriculum content. They were just present in some learning kind of way.

- Play is what facilitates access; being stilted just makes it take longer. But flow is available all the time; it's not something we have to seek.

- There is a novelty factor that emerges in the moment; we are experiencing an innovation, a new synaptic connection in the brain, part of the conductive release that occurs in the process.

- The work is not to get rid of the problem or unnecessarily fully dismantle supremacy, but to lean into the rounder patterns of reclamation and resistance that have always been there.

- In role playing we invite people to play a different script than the one they have in the moment in which they feel stilted, and flow is becoming more available.

This conversation is part of the continuing Portals discovery into what is emerging on the frontiers of human experience in this time of profound change. Information about upcoming special events can be found on the Events page. Also visit and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

TWEETABLE QUOTES

“I think probably the most dramatic experience of that is that I know if I am paddling whitewater, you must find the path of least resistance and you must relax, even in the most frightening of moments. If you can relax, you can get through it, and that stays with me today.” (Catherine)

“So I'm thinking about, for example, working with playback theater, which is one of the things that I do, when it’s time to get ready for performance, different actors need different things. Some people need to go for a quiet walk, and some people need to meditate. Some people need to do vocal exercises. Different people may need different things, but they know what they need to be able to get up on a stage.” (Leticia)

“Like for me, the words are a parallel process. I find myself really curious about how what's going on externally is also going on in my body, in my heart and soul. Is there some way we can see the complementarity or the intertwine, the weave in the moment? And then what's that like for us? I sort of ponder that. What shows up? What am I curious about? What might that open doors to, other reflections or other things we might play with? So that's what I have in terms of a response to the question.” (Dan)

“We're throwing words like noodles on the wall and making meaning of something that's hard to language, but it can certainly be put the way you put it. I tend to think about flow as the ultimate fundamental truth. Flow, the pulse, the movement, the unified field of oneness is always there whether we are aware of it or not, and so when we surrender into it or tap into it or rest in it, then it allows us, or we have the possibility for being filled with that, or having that move through us in a way that is more tasty.” (Leticia)

“I think of flow as being sacred, and who am I to try and speak for flow? So I'm wrestling with that. What does come to mind is the metaphor that's most working for me these last few years, which is the transition from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly, particularly when the caterpillar is in the cocoon and is melting down, literally, and that in that process imaginal cells begin to emerge, which have the information of what's called for next. And at the process is one of the imaginal cells clumping. So I’m imaging that flow is saying, ‘clump, dammit.’” (Dan)

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Portals of Perception Website

Aviv’s LinkedIn

Aviv’s Twitter

Aviv’s Website

Dancing in the Flow

Portals YouTube