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to achieve these states and many are external, environmental, or social. One of these, ‘deep embodiment’, a kind of total physical awareness, requires a combination of ‘difficult, challenging and strenuous’ with risk and fear thrown in, like surfing an 80 foot wave. He did propose that tai-chi, yoga, or martial arts (if they were difficult, challenging, and strenuous enough) could take ordinary people towards a flow state. But he doesn’t understand the system behind tai-chi practices so couldn’t expand on that, and it goes without saying that you can’t do Bikram yoga in the office to enhance your creative problem solving.
THE SHIFT TOWARDS EMBODIMENT Stealing Fire outlined Google’s Mind Gym, which tries to train for ‘ecstasis’, the state in which the subconscious mind takes over. The book also introduced ‘embodied cognition’, the idea of using particular postures to enhance mood. This is connected to a development in cognitive science – the once marginal idea that the mind is connected to the body and that the body influences the mind (yes this is a new breakthrough for them). In a recent article in Scientific American ‘embodiment’ is described as the new paradigm that cognitive science is shifting towards. This ‘new’ science-based
understanding of the body/mind connection is old news for most LivingNow readers, but significant because it will impact on mainstream modalities such as counselling in which the focus on the mind means that clients can get trapped in ‘storytelling’. They can go over and over what they did and why, how they feel and make other people feel, and it can take years, if ever, to resolve anything. It’s only a matter of time before the mainstream looks to ‘cognitive embodiment’ – to using specific exercises designed to improve well-being and then takes that territory.
THE WELLNESS INDUSTRY HOLDS THE EDGE This is where the wellness industry holds the edge. We already have the practices, techniques, tools, and skills
20 MAY 2017
that override the stories and could train people for altered states. Although every chi practitioner, energy-medicine therapist, or yoga or tai-chi teacher out there is entitled to an ‘I told you so’ moment here, the way forward is to cater to new accelerated demands by combining modalities specifically to deliver peak performance and flow states. To create what I’d call a ‘zone therapy’ and to own that territory. Mainstream research might reunite the medicine of the mind and the medicine of the body but the missing link will always be the medicine of the spirit. Reverse engineering to identify
the common factors underlying the flow state that extreme sports or magic mushrooms create is the way to zone therapy. Using traditional Chinese medicine I would see ‘flow’ as a combination of a rush of chi, the optimisation and enhancement of organ functions, and the enabling of a conscious access to the subconscious. This can be recreated on demand by working with chi, as it is energy, information, and consciousness, and aligning lifestyle with the chi cycle, the
ultimate ‘flow chart’. Enhance your organ function and you are permanently and automatically happier, more productive, more creative, and more soul-satisfied.
COMBINING MODALITIES IS THE KEY Initially sequentially and then simultaneously. Start with orthomolecular psychiatry, using nutrients to heighten emotional states. If you feel good, options open up. Nutrient saturation creates flow. Add acupuncture and remedial massage to create flow and reduce blockages in your energy field. Then, add a chi- practice (yoga or tai-chi) and meditation (the medicine of the spirit) to access flow states and download information (via cosmic consciousness links). In flow states, organ function is
enhanced and information comes forward, so your story naturally comes up too. This is how it is. We all experience this. To test yours, just ask yourself what is stopping you from pursuing your dreams. This is where therapy, via embodied cognition, comes into play, and the
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