Put aside your potty brain, in case that’s where your mind has gone (mine did; I blame Trump, and I think that’s fair).
This post is about a different kind of flow.
As I continue to work on the curriculum for my creativity course, I’m reflecting on what this course is attempting to do. A creativity course is not a creative writing course or a drawing course, but something rather different that would use both of these forms as tools. I first conceived of the idea of designing a creativity course when I was asked to speak to a local writers’ group about time management. I’d prepared a tidy little 10-point lecture on subjects like organization, scheduling, efficiencies, with practical tips on each. But one point, a very important point, seemed to stump everyone, including me.
“Don’t procrastinate,” I said. “Get into the flow and just go.”
“But how can I do that?” one woman asked, genuine agony in her tone. “I can’t seem to get myself to sit down and just get to work.” The others agreed. Invisible barriers seemed to be invisibly stealing their time, distracting them from what they firmly believed they wanted to be doing—which, in this context, was to write.
How to get into the flow? I was unable to answer their question adequately, even though I seem able to get into the flow myself, sometimes with ease, though other times not easily at all—why is that? What does it mean to get into the flow? What, exactly, is flowing? Where is this flow located? Can I train myself to go there—wherever there is—at will?
As I continued to think about this question (or series of questions), I became increasingly intrigued by the nature of the flow mindset, by its qualities, which seem almost to be physical as much as mental, and by the similarities in experiences described across creative disciplines.
colouring page by student, Week One
Let’s consider some of these similarities in the flow experience: There is a feeling of immersion inside another world. Time slows, or one’s sense of time vanishes altogether. The smallest details pop—of action, of sensual awareness. Whatever you’ve given your attention to becomes immensely interesting, absorbing. You feel as though you are following an idea, a pattern, an image, a set of chords or musical notes, a line; you are not dragging something behind you, you are alert to what is before you. It commands your attention. You seem able both to anticipate and to be surprised by what you are making. And the feeling that accompanies you after such an experience is a wonderful high, a buoyancy, a delight in the world around you and its possibilities. You cannot explain what you have done, exactly. It is as if what you have done has been something you experienced as happening rather than made to happen. You reliquinshed control. You are yourself amazed and charmed by what you have done.
Athletes experience this during games; musicians experience this in performances (and in practice); writers experience this as they write; and artists as they create.
The experience is a gift. But it must be said that it’s also the result of discipline. You can’t improvise on a theme without knowing how to play your instrument, without practicing to create a foundation to ground you.
All of this I know.
But is it possible to teach this?
colouring page by student, Week One
This course is my attempt to answer the question: how do I get into the flow?
How do I do what I want to do, which is to create? What if the barriers to creativity are built into our brain structure? How can we convince the left side of our brain to cede control to the right side? How do we see with eyes that recognize the uniqueness of every grain of sand, every line, every shadow, every eyelash? It can feel overwhelming to the left brain. It can feel scary, because we are letting go, we are letting ourselves be flooded with sensory material, because we are leaving ourselves behind, in a way, in order to be immersed in a different experience, and because we are seeing differently, in ways that defy assumptions our left brain relies on to keep our world organized and our brain operating efficiently.
my own colouring page, Week One
You may be changed by opening yourself to the flow. Your left brain knows this, and it’s afraid. What does it feel like to let go and be led? When is the last time you did this? How to create trust in this process, to bring us all to a different place, or way of being, so that at the end of a 12-week course, we will be able to answer the question: how do I get into the flow?
Most of the time, I am not afraid to step into the flow. I make time for it, and when I do, when I’m there in the flow, I am perhaps the most content and at peace with my life that I could ever hope to be. I know the delight it brings me. I know I can’t get stuck there, and in fact that I am lucky to be there, in those moments. I know, too, it’s always there, waiting for me to return.
So. This is my starting place. I’m excited to see whether this is something I can share with others.
xo, Carrie