1: Author Steven Kotler was on a quest.
As a self-described “science guy,” he wanted to understand the “semi-mystical” experiences he was having while surfing.
Experiences that were literally bringing him back to life. At age 30, he contracted Lyme disease and was barely able to function for one hour a day.
Yesterday, we looked at the incredible recovery he experienced after he started surfing.
Steven wanted to decode the science of mystical experiences.
Which are “actually fairly common in action sports,” Steven writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer. “The historical literature is packed with the stories. Surfing, for sure, but also hiking, skydiving, skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, ice climbing, and mountaineering.”
Steven’s research led him to read Bone Games by Rob Schultheis. Rob saw a connection between mystical experiences that mountaineers were reporting and the then-new idea of “flow“, the term coined by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, defined as being “in the zone,” when we are fully engaged, fully focused on a specific activity.
“It was the first time I can remember hearing that term,” Steven writes.
Rob spoke Steven’s language: “He talked about neurobiology. He linked flow to endorphins, the popular explanation for ‘runner’s high,’ and to our fight-or-flight hormones and a number of mood-boosting reward chemicals.”
2: An idea began to form in Steven’s mind: “If this shift in neurobiology called “flow” helped me go from seriously subpar back to normal, could flow help normal people?”
Then, Steven caught another break when he learned about the research of University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, who was studying “cosmic unity,” the term for what Steven experienced while surfing, “that feeling of becoming one with everything.”
Andrew was using advanced technology to take pictures of the brains of Franciscan nuns and Tibetan Buddhists while they were practicing “ecstatic meditation.” Ecstatic meaning the meditation which generates feelings of cosmic unity.
Andrew discovered the biology underneath these experiences.
“Ecstatic meditation creates a profound shift in brain function,” Steven writes. “It comes down to extreme focus, which ecstatic meditation requires, which, in turn, requires a ton of energy.
“But the brain has a fixed energy budget, which means it’s always trying to conserve. During ecstatic meditation, to provide the extra energy required by that extreme focus, the brain performs an efficiency exchange. It shuts down noncritical structures and repurposes that energy for attention.”
One part of the brain that gets shut down is the right posterior superior parietal lobe.
“Under normal conditions, this is a part of the brain that helps us navigate through space,” he notes. “It creates a boundary line around the body, separating self from other, a feeling that tells us this is where we end and the rest of the world begins.”
We rely on this part of the brain when we are crossing a crowded room so we don’t bump into other people. On the other end of the spectrum, those with brain damage to this area have trouble sitting down in a chair because they aren’t sure where they end and the chair begins.
“In meditation, once this structure deactivates, the boundary line we draw around ourselves dissolves,” Steven writes. “We lose the ability to separate self from other.”
Andrew explains: “At that moment, the brain concludes, it has to conclude, that we are one with everything.”
3: Andrew’s findings about the brain led Steven to ask another question: “Surfers need extreme focus to ride waves. Could this be the same kind of attention required by ecstatic meditation? Could this same extreme focus be what was triggering flow in surfers and producing that feeling of being one with the waves that I experienced?”
Steven and Andrew began to collaborate. The upshot? Andrew suspected Steven might be right.
“Focus is focus,” he’d said. “There’s probably not that much difference between the pinpoint attention required by surfers and the pinpoint attention required by meditators.”
Did what one was focusing on matter? “The nuns were focused on God’s love, so they became one with love. The Buddhists, focused on cosmic unity, became one with everything. And the surfers had their attention on the waves, so they merged with the ocean. Could it be that you become one with the thing you’re focused on?”
“These are good questions,” Andrew said. “You should keep asking them.”
Which is what Steven has done for the last two decades.
Next up: We will unpack what Steven has discovered and seek to understand how flow works in the brain so that we can use this information in our lives.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: How often do I experience flow, that feeling of being “in the zone,” fully engaged, fully focused on a specific activity? What activities tend to trigger this experience? How much more energized and productive am I in the flow state?
Action: Journal about my answers to the questions above.