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They discuss flow-state and they state that it amplifies learning. Flow state is always described as being in a state of intense focus and where you might not e

They discuss flow-state and they state that it amplifies learning. Flow state is always described as being in a state of intense focus and where you might not even notice the passage of time. I have experienced this state many times in life, it usually triggers when I'm deeply focused on a task. In this state things become easy and time seems to fly by. There is another state though and that one has only triggered in "life and death" situations for me. One was during an actual life and death situation involving a rock slide and the other when playing Counter-Strike and my whole team got wiped out and the opposing team converged on my position. In both of those occasions you have your usual emotional detachment but instead feel as if you are watching yourself do the actions instead of feeling like you are doing them. Time slows down though, and even though you are relaxed and calm you feel the performance difference from what you are normally able to do and your fear is the knowledge that if you come out of this state before the danger is over you are done for. That second state feels different and I'm sure its the 'flow' people that do extreme sports talk about. Is there a different name for that state? or is that too just called 'flow' aswell?.

jvanderbot 3y ago
When I went skydiving, my body did it, and I was somewhere else at the time. I saw, and tried to talk myself through it, but body did what body did (it was a solo dive and I landed fine). I had no experience, no fear or joy or anything about it. I just watched myself do it. The instructor jumped with me, and was nearby giving hand signals like "check altitude", and I would indeed turn my head towards the altimeter, but to save my life I couldn't tell you what it said. I talked to a paratrooper years later, and he said some people just do that. They disassociate completely from the experience. It's probably not a good thing, since you're basically in shock, doing the work to stay alive and not really a "team player". but it is what it is.
seer 3y ago
Thank you for articulating it, I’ve felt the exact same thing, in both run of the mill flow when coding / gaming / sparring, and the “other flow” you describe in real life threatening situations. For me too, normal flow time speeds up, and in the other - slows down. You feel detached from your actions - like if I do this it will maximize my chances of survival as I see them now, with no connection or fear that being on the wrong side of the odds might mean your death. You just calculate and do what needs to be done. I’ve noticed that I also tremble a little bit afterwards, which I attribute to the flood of adrenaline … maybe this is just flow but with adrenaline? (Adrenaline flow?) I was once driving through a bend of a sharp narrow cliff road, and some idiot truck driver was overtaking another truck, right as I entered the bend … with some quick reaction and placement of the car managed to pass both somehow, but I noticed that the other 3 people in the car all had very different reaction to this situation, - indifference, panic, crying, hyperventilation… I remember how hard it was to sympathize with them right after it happened, as while I was in this hyped analytical state I just felt it was weird the rest were not calm about it as well. Maybe it was because I was behind the wheel, but in similar situation as a passenger I would do the adrenaline flow as well, where I would coldly calculate if alerting / helping the driver would increase or decrease our chances of survival… so I don’t know, maybe we all have different intrinsic survival strategies? I’m just glad I’m not participating in a shooting war where I have to make those decisions all the time, I probably wouldn’t like what kind of person that would turn me into …
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  "so I don’t know, maybe we all have different intrinsic survival strategies" Definitely. But it also varies for each person and time and day. I had life and death situations, with me calmly and quickly doing the right thing (including the bullet time) while everyone else were literally running in circles. And I was also joining the panic circle at other times. But I know that I usually perform well under extra odinary pressure situations - but slack off and get distracted in routine situations. For other people it's the other way around. And I think that makes sense evolutionary wise, so when there is an emergency, some people are adequate to handle it and save the tribe. And other people acomplish the boring, but still critical day to day jobs with care (which I can also do, but it is an effort for me).
  - codr7 3y ago
    Yeah, metoo; I thrive in intense situations when most are panicking and have serious issues staying motivated day to day. I'm also grateful I never got into the military, because I would either be dead or loving it.
at_a_remove 3y ago
I have experienced both states in similar (programming, then my life or death) situations. I have found a third state, which I believe is related, that has happened a few times, and always with the same criteria. The first is that someone else is about to come to harm, typically through falling onto something or something heavy is about to fall on them. Never me. The second criterion is that I am unaware of the first, until later. The third commonality is that I black out, or something. Anywhere from a few to as many as fifteen or twenty seconds are just ... skipped. I am in one place in one position, and then *blip* I am somewhere else, in a different position. The fourth thing is that I have apparently done something acrobatic, or contorted my body, moved a few yards with alacrity, or whatnot. Muscles are strained or even torn, I come to in an odd position. Parts that do not normally hurt are hurting. It's more than a little disturbing, because while I have stopped someone from falling face-first into a lot of cutlery, or a Sony Trinitron monitor from crushing the foot of an intern I have warned to be careful, there's absolutely no volition involved, no conscious thought, no precursor, it was like the governors were disabled and the limiters ignored as some kind of hindbrain function decided to run a big interrupt over a threat I might not have even been looking at was perceived. I have to reconstruct from my new position and whatever is now throbbing what kind of motion I had undertaken. It makes me think that the Peter Watts' Blindsight idea, where our "self" being a waste of brainpower narrating and explaining (perhaps erroneously) what the true decision maker was doing as if the self was the entity responsible ... is more or less correct. I'd like to know if there's a name for that.
- wudangmonk 3y ago
  The time skip with location displacement reminds me of a game I once played as a kid. Where someone would crouch down and take very deep breaths, then take a final deep breath, stand up and hold it and someone else would try to make them pass out by stretching the skin on their neck against the wall. It was a very dumb game in hindsight but quite popular at the time. The amusing part was moving them to a different location and everyone would try and pretend to be doing something else. From the point of view of the person passing out you felt as if you were teleported in place and time, and depending on how well everyone else could hold their laughter you would even wonder if everything before was just a dream.
FredPret 3y ago
I felt the second one once, and explained it to a therapist, who called it shock hypnosis. Apparently this shuts down advanced functions and just focuses your brain on immediate survival.
Benjamin_Dobell 3y ago
I don't know that I would describe it the same way, but I definitely experienced some sort of survival mode last month, when I (a software engineer) delivered my daughter at home, in a very much unplanned fashion. I can remember the exact moment where I realised it was impossible to get my wife to hospital (we'd actually just been there and they sent us home). Something flicked, and it was just "Well, this is happening." I wouldn't describe myself as calm — but I definitely knew I had a responsibility and I was just going to do it. Of course, I was on the phone to the ambulance and following instructions. Only a month later, I remember the experience in general, but aside from the moment described above, the rest of the details are pretty hazy. Fortunately, my daughter was/is fine.
- carlmr 3y ago
  Why did they send you home if you were so close to childbirth?
  - Robin_Message 3y ago
    Medical professionals ability to ignore, belittle, and misdiagnose women is unfortunately legendary. Also, labour can occur surprisingly quickly, as happened to a friend of ours who gave birth on our driveway whilst dropping off their first child on the way to the hospital.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - _petronius 3y ago
        Women aren't more "neurotic", that simply isn't true (and jesus dude, 1950s much?). There is extensive literature out there just a google away on the consistent misdiagnosis and under-treatment of women, both as a general trend and for particular diagnoses like heart attack or ADHD. The dismissal of "It's not a woman specific thing" belies the truth that there are women-specific biases against taking self-reported symptoms into account and receiving proper care, and data-collection biases where there simply isn't as much or as sufficient research in how the same disease presents differently in women. Similar data exists for other groups (for example, pain treatment disparities for black people, because actual doctors with medical degrees think black people have "thicker skin" or "less nerve endings"), but we can acknowledge several kinds of systemic failure of medicine to meet the needs of whole classes of patients without undermining the rightful complains of those individual groups.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cameldrv 3y ago
I’ve also experienced time showing down in a life or death situation. The funny thing is, it’s seemingly impossible to know whether my subjective time slowed down or I just remembered it that way. It makes sense that your brain would remember a very dangerous situation in great detail to aid with survival in a similar situation.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>Flow state is always described as being in a state of intense focus and where you might not even notice the passage of time. Also known as the "What? It's 4am? I was just playing Civilization!" phenomenon. >Time slows down though, and even though you are relaxed and calm you feel the performance difference from what you are normally able to do and your fear is the knowledge that if you come out of this state before the danger is over you are done for. It's always a bit mindblowing to remember that what we perceive are ultimately all just manifestations and creations of our brains. There's no such thing as time or light or sound or smell or taste or whatever else in our plane of existence, they're simply how we perceive it. >That second state feels different and I'm sure its the 'flow' people that do extreme sports talk about. Is there a different name for that state? I've often heard of it referred to as the "Fight-or-Flight Response" triggered by an increase in adrenaline, "sharpening your senses" per se in order to better respond to potential threats and/or the situation at hand. It's very expensive biologically speaking, though.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  > Also known as the "What? It's 4am? I was just playing Civilization!" phenomenon. Bedtime? Just ... one ... more ... turn ...
chakintosh 3y ago
> One was during an actual life and death situation involving a rock slide and the other when playing Counter-Strike and my whole team got wiped out and the opposing team converged on my position. Luckily, never experienced an actual life and death situation. But I do get into a flow state quite frequently while playing FPS games. Best way I can describe it is being in a state of complete automation, incredibly quick reflexes compared to your usual self, and making multiple correct decision in quick succession. It usually lasts a few seconds to a minute until you snap out of it after stepping on that random claymore at the top of the ladder ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The only way I know how long the sequence actually lasted is by rewatching the video recording and realizing it wasn't 5 minutes but a few seconds long.
- post_break 3y ago
  Playing Doom 2016 or Doom Eternal is the quickest way for me to get into flow state. My eyes zoom out, I see tiny pixels moving and associate them, react to them, hand and eyes perfectly in sync. My brain basically turns off anything that isn't related to rip and tear. It's such a weird sensation because I know I'm in it because I'm not focusing my eyes on any one thing, it's like I focus to infinity and just sit still and shred.
  - kraquepype 3y ago
    I sometimes get in the zone a little playing Eternal, it's fun when it clicks but I can't zone in completely. I'm also currently playing GT7 and if I'm medicated and JUST tired enough I can fall into this intense zone where I feel like a pro, connected to the car and laying down clean and fast laps. It's an amazing feeling but it's so short lived. Everything bothering me, even physical things just disappear and I'm focused on the game. This is huge for me, due to skin sensitivities every few seconds I'm normally pulled from focus with a slight itch. It would be great to be able to easily replicate.
  - chakintosh 3y ago
    Doom Eternal was a visceral experience. The music was absolutely top notch.
JBiserkov 3y ago
> Is there a different name for that state? I call it "overdrive" or "NFS-brain" after the racing game series.
Mizoguchi 3y ago
Wouldn't be the perception of things being easier/ performance improvement just another effect of having your brain soaked in chemicals? I have been in life and death situations, once dragged by strong currents deep into the sea while swimming alone. I also moutain bike. For me both states of mind are very different. When doing sports there's definitely adrenaline but there is also a lot of confidence in what you are doing coming from knowledge, experience and having the right gear. When I was trying to swim back to my campsite it was pure adrenaline without any experience or knowledge on how to swim in those conditions. And the possibility of death was so intense and real that I entered a mode where I became my own guide, repeating myself to stay calm, save energy and try to swim sideways to get out of the area with the rip currents (that was totally made up, but maybe worked). I ended up getting out of the water a mile from my campsite. There's no mountain I could hit today that could match that experience.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  It sounds like you made the right decision, "swim sideways" is what I have always heard to do if you find yourself in a rip current. I have luckily never had to use that information, but whenever I'm at the beach I try to repeat it to myself just in case, so at least hopefully it's somewhere readily accessible to my animal brain if it becomes important for survival.
yarg 3y ago
The life and death one is weird when it happens. I had a nice hunk of boar one time - but I undercooked it. I tried to swallow a piece (having failed in my attempt to chew it) and it just rolled up in my throat - no way up, no way down. Home alone and unable to breathe. There was zero conscious consideration of the move sticking my finger down my throat to bring the meat back up. It just happened. My conscious efforts to come up with a solution were irrelevant, the body acted seemingly on its own directed by some subconscious process that saved my life. Huh. Interesting.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  eating undercooked boar and deliberately swallowing without chewing, seems like you enjoy living on the simultaneously boring and dangerous side.
  - yarg 3y ago
    Shit man, I can't even hate you for that. It wasn't that I didn't chew, it just didn't make a difference. Honestly, it was fucking dumb - damned near as thoughtless as the manoeuvre which followed. Part of me believes that the only animal equipped to eat a pig is the pig itself. But I'm a guy who'll cook bacon without a shirt on - what is life without a little danger?
typhonic 3y ago
If I remember correctly, some have called it the "Zone" and it is described in the book "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey. It has been a long while since I read it.
kodah 3y ago
I think flow state is triggered by focus, bodily control, and a deep knowledge of what is required to achieve a task. For instance, "flow toys" in the music scene are exactly for this. They require precision movements and focus to look how they're supposed to. You're constantly tuning minute parameters to achieve the task, sometimes making your body compromise in ways it hasn't before. In shooting I'm almost always able to achieve a flow state by controlling my breathing. The way I was taught to shoot was breathing in rhythm, combined with maintaining sight picture and sight alignment I can almost "feel" it activate. This much more prevalent when I've done moving target drills. The world around me melts away, though I can hear interrupts as distant but interpretable sounds. Physical objects in front of me feel more predictable and slower. My senses are definitely heightened to a degree, and my olfactory senses especially are noticeably different in their operation. Gaming can definitely trigger flow state. I have similar breathing rituals and focus when I play CS. Knowing the corners of a map, how to gode or stalk opponents, and the probability of another teams position has put me in flows where I'm merely balancing prioritization instead of trying to point and click.
lawrenceyan 3y ago
In Street Fighter terminology, I believe you are describing the difference between 無の拳 (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Power_of_Nothingness https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Power_of_Nothingness) and 殺意の波動 (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Satsui_no_Hado https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Satsui_no_Hado). The Power of Nothingness is a state of consciousness transcending ordinary perspective, born through spiritual and mental refinement. It is the power to act without being attached to emotions and thought, free of fear, anger, pride, and ego, to draw upon the contents of one's heart intuitively without obstacle and hesitation, and to be aware of the world and to know one's place and meaning within its vastness, to flow with all of creation without the need of worry, desire, and doubt. The Satsui no Hado is described as power rooted in the darker natural basis of the human instinct, including competition, survival, to trample on, impose, and thrive over opposition, and the manifestation of destruction borne out of conflict and fighting.
yencabulator 3y ago
Japanese martial arts have a concept of mushin (no mind, from mushin no shin = the mind without mind). It's when all your thoughts go away and you just move as needed.

jvanderbot 3y ago

When I went skydiving, my body did it, and I was somewhere else at the time. I saw, and tried to talk myself through it, but body did what body did (it was a solo dive and I landed fine). I had no experience, no fear or joy or anything about it. I just watched myself do it. The instructor jumped with me, and was nearby giving hand signals like "check altitude", and I would indeed turn my head towards the altimeter, but to save my life I couldn't tell you what it said. I talked to a paratrooper years later, and he said some people just do that. They disassociate completely from the experience. It's probably not a good thing, since you're basically in shock, doing the work to stay alive and not really a "team player". but it is what it is.

seer 3y ago

Thank you for articulating it, I’ve felt the exact same thing, in both run of the mill flow when coding / gaming / sparring, and the “other flow” you describe in real life threatening situations. For me too, normal flow time speeds up, and in the other - slows down. You feel detached from your actions - like if I do this it will maximize my chances of survival as I see them now, with no connection or fear that being on the wrong side of the odds might mean your death. You just calculate and do what needs to be done. I’ve noticed that I also tremble a little bit afterwards, which I attribute to the flood of adrenaline … maybe this is just flow but with adrenaline? (Adrenaline flow?) I was once driving through a bend of a sharp narrow cliff road, and some idiot truck driver was overtaking another truck, right as I entered the bend … with some quick reaction and placement of the car managed to pass both somehow, but I noticed that the other 3 people in the car all had very different reaction to this situation, - indifference, panic, crying, hyperventilation… I remember how hard it was to sympathize with them right after it happened, as while I was in this hyped analytical state I just felt it was weird the rest were not calm about it as well. Maybe it was because I was behind the wheel, but in similar situation as a passenger I would do the adrenaline flow as well, where I would coldly calculate if alerting / helping the driver would increase or decrease our chances of survival… so I don’t know, maybe we all have different intrinsic survival strategies? I’m just glad I’m not participating in a shooting war where I have to make those decisions all the time, I probably wouldn’t like what kind of person that would turn me into …

hutzlibu 3y ago
"so I don’t know, maybe we all have different intrinsic survival strategies" Definitely. But it also varies for each person and time and day. I had life and death situations, with me calmly and quickly doing the right thing (including the bullet time) while everyone else were literally running in circles. And I was also joining the panic circle at other times. But I know that I usually perform well under extra odinary pressure situations - but slack off and get distracted in routine situations. For other people it's the other way around. And I think that makes sense evolutionary wise, so when there is an emergency, some people are adequate to handle it and save the tribe. And other people acomplish the boring, but still critical day to day jobs with care (which I can also do, but it is an effort for me).
- codr7 3y ago
  Yeah, metoo; I thrive in intense situations when most are panicking and have serious issues staying motivated day to day. I'm also grateful I never got into the military, because I would either be dead or loving it.

at_a_remove 3y ago

I have experienced both states in similar (programming, then my life or death) situations. I have found a third state, which I believe is related, that has happened a few times, and always with the same criteria. The first is that someone else is about to come to harm, typically through falling onto something or something heavy is about to fall on them. Never me. The second criterion is that I am unaware of the first, until later. The third commonality is that I black out, or something. Anywhere from a few to as many as fifteen or twenty seconds are just ... skipped. I am in one place in one position, and then *blip* I am somewhere else, in a different position. The fourth thing is that I have apparently done something acrobatic, or contorted my body, moved a few yards with alacrity, or whatnot. Muscles are strained or even torn, I come to in an odd position. Parts that do not normally hurt are hurting. It's more than a little disturbing, because while I have stopped someone from falling face-first into a lot of cutlery, or a Sony Trinitron monitor from crushing the foot of an intern I have warned to be careful, there's absolutely no volition involved, no conscious thought, no precursor, it was like the governors were disabled and the limiters ignored as some kind of hindbrain function decided to run a big interrupt over a threat I might not have even been looking at was perceived. I have to reconstruct from my new position and whatever is now throbbing what kind of motion I had undertaken. It makes me think that the Peter Watts' Blindsight idea, where our "self" being a waste of brainpower narrating and explaining (perhaps erroneously) what the true decision maker was doing as if the self was the entity responsible ... is more or less correct. I'd like to know if there's a name for that.

wudangmonk 3y ago
The time skip with location displacement reminds me of a game I once played as a kid. Where someone would crouch down and take very deep breaths, then take a final deep breath, stand up and hold it and someone else would try to make them pass out by stretching the skin on their neck against the wall. It was a very dumb game in hindsight but quite popular at the time. The amusing part was moving them to a different location and everyone would try and pretend to be doing something else. From the point of view of the person passing out you felt as if you were teleported in place and time, and depending on how well everyone else could hold their laughter you would even wonder if everything before was just a dream.

FredPret 3y ago

I felt the second one once, and explained it to a therapist, who called it shock hypnosis. Apparently this shuts down advanced functions and just focuses your brain on immediate survival.

Benjamin_Dobell 3y ago

I don't know that I would describe it the same way, but I definitely experienced some sort of survival mode last month, when I (a software engineer) delivered my daughter at home, in a very much unplanned fashion. I can remember the exact moment where I realised it was impossible to get my wife to hospital (we'd actually just been there and they sent us home). Something flicked, and it was just "Well, this is happening." I wouldn't describe myself as calm — but I definitely knew I had a responsibility and I was just going to do it. Of course, I was on the phone to the ambulance and following instructions. Only a month later, I remember the experience in general, but aside from the moment described above, the rest of the details are pretty hazy. Fortunately, my daughter was/is fine.

carlmr 3y ago
Why did they send you home if you were so close to childbirth?
- Robin_Message 3y ago
  Medical professionals ability to ignore, belittle, and misdiagnose women is unfortunately legendary. Also, labour can occur surprisingly quickly, as happened to a friend of ours who gave birth on our driveway whilst dropping off their first child on the way to the hospital.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - _petronius 3y ago
      Women aren't more "neurotic", that simply isn't true (and jesus dude, 1950s much?). There is extensive literature out there just a google away on the consistent misdiagnosis and under-treatment of women, both as a general trend and for particular diagnoses like heart attack or ADHD. The dismissal of "It's not a woman specific thing" belies the truth that there are women-specific biases against taking self-reported symptoms into account and receiving proper care, and data-collection biases where there simply isn't as much or as sufficient research in how the same disease presents differently in women. Similar data exists for other groups (for example, pain treatment disparities for black people, because actual doctors with medical degrees think black people have "thicker skin" or "less nerve endings"), but we can acknowledge several kinds of systemic failure of medicine to meet the needs of whole classes of patients without undermining the rightful complains of those individual groups.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cameldrv 3y ago

I’ve also experienced time showing down in a life or death situation. The funny thing is, it’s seemingly impossible to know whether my subjective time slowed down or I just remembered it that way. It makes sense that your brain would remember a very dangerous situation in great detail to aid with survival in a similar situation.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>Flow state is always described as being in a state of intense focus and where you might not even notice the passage of time. Also known as the "What? It's 4am? I was just playing Civilization!" phenomenon. >Time slows down though, and even though you are relaxed and calm you feel the performance difference from what you are normally able to do and your fear is the knowledge that if you come out of this state before the danger is over you are done for. It's always a bit mindblowing to remember that what we perceive are ultimately all just manifestations and creations of our brains. There's no such thing as time or light or sound or smell or taste or whatever else in our plane of existence, they're simply how we perceive it. >That second state feels different and I'm sure its the 'flow' people that do extreme sports talk about. Is there a different name for that state? I've often heard of it referred to as the "Fight-or-Flight Response" triggered by an increase in adrenaline, "sharpening your senses" per se in order to better respond to potential threats and/or the situation at hand. It's very expensive biologically speaking, though.

red_admiral 3y ago
> Also known as the "What? It's 4am? I was just playing Civilization!" phenomenon. Bedtime? Just ... one ... more ... turn ...

chakintosh 3y ago

> One was during an actual life and death situation involving a rock slide and the other when playing Counter-Strike and my whole team got wiped out and the opposing team converged on my position. Luckily, never experienced an actual life and death situation. But I do get into a flow state quite frequently while playing FPS games. Best way I can describe it is being in a state of complete automation, incredibly quick reflexes compared to your usual self, and making multiple correct decision in quick succession. It usually lasts a few seconds to a minute until you snap out of it after stepping on that random claymore at the top of the ladder ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The only way I know how long the sequence actually lasted is by rewatching the video recording and realizing it wasn't 5 minutes but a few seconds long.

post_break 3y ago
Playing Doom 2016 or Doom Eternal is the quickest way for me to get into flow state. My eyes zoom out, I see tiny pixels moving and associate them, react to them, hand and eyes perfectly in sync. My brain basically turns off anything that isn't related to rip and tear. It's such a weird sensation because I know I'm in it because I'm not focusing my eyes on any one thing, it's like I focus to infinity and just sit still and shred.
- kraquepype 3y ago
  I sometimes get in the zone a little playing Eternal, it's fun when it clicks but I can't zone in completely. I'm also currently playing GT7 and if I'm medicated and JUST tired enough I can fall into this intense zone where I feel like a pro, connected to the car and laying down clean and fast laps. It's an amazing feeling but it's so short lived. Everything bothering me, even physical things just disappear and I'm focused on the game. This is huge for me, due to skin sensitivities every few seconds I'm normally pulled from focus with a slight itch. It would be great to be able to easily replicate.
- chakintosh 3y ago
  Doom Eternal was a visceral experience. The music was absolutely top notch.

JBiserkov 3y ago

> Is there a different name for that state? I call it "overdrive" or "NFS-brain" after the racing game series.

Mizoguchi 3y ago

Wouldn't be the perception of things being easier/ performance improvement just another effect of having your brain soaked in chemicals? I have been in life and death situations, once dragged by strong currents deep into the sea while swimming alone. I also moutain bike. For me both states of mind are very different. When doing sports there's definitely adrenaline but there is also a lot of confidence in what you are doing coming from knowledge, experience and having the right gear. When I was trying to swim back to my campsite it was pure adrenaline without any experience or knowledge on how to swim in those conditions. And the possibility of death was so intense and real that I entered a mode where I became my own guide, repeating myself to stay calm, save energy and try to swim sideways to get out of the area with the rip currents (that was totally made up, but maybe worked). I ended up getting out of the water a mile from my campsite. There's no mountain I could hit today that could match that experience.

nerdponx 3y ago
It sounds like you made the right decision, "swim sideways" is what I have always heard to do if you find yourself in a rip current. I have luckily never had to use that information, but whenever I'm at the beach I try to repeat it to myself just in case, so at least hopefully it's somewhere readily accessible to my animal brain if it becomes important for survival.

yarg 3y ago

The life and death one is weird when it happens. I had a nice hunk of boar one time - but I undercooked it. I tried to swallow a piece (having failed in my attempt to chew it) and it just rolled up in my throat - no way up, no way down. Home alone and unable to breathe. There was zero conscious consideration of the move sticking my finger down my throat to bring the meat back up. It just happened. My conscious efforts to come up with a solution were irrelevant, the body acted seemingly on its own directed by some subconscious process that saved my life. Huh. Interesting.

idiotsecant 3y ago
eating undercooked boar and deliberately swallowing without chewing, seems like you enjoy living on the simultaneously boring and dangerous side.
- yarg 3y ago
  Shit man, I can't even hate you for that. It wasn't that I didn't chew, it just didn't make a difference. Honestly, it was fucking dumb - damned near as thoughtless as the manoeuvre which followed. Part of me believes that the only animal equipped to eat a pig is the pig itself. But I'm a guy who'll cook bacon without a shirt on - what is life without a little danger?

typhonic 3y ago

If I remember correctly, some have called it the "Zone" and it is described in the book "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey. It has been a long while since I read it.

kodah 3y ago

I think flow state is triggered by focus, bodily control, and a deep knowledge of what is required to achieve a task. For instance, "flow toys" in the music scene are exactly for this. They require precision movements and focus to look how they're supposed to. You're constantly tuning minute parameters to achieve the task, sometimes making your body compromise in ways it hasn't before. In shooting I'm almost always able to achieve a flow state by controlling my breathing. The way I was taught to shoot was breathing in rhythm, combined with maintaining sight picture and sight alignment I can almost "feel" it activate. This much more prevalent when I've done moving target drills. The world around me melts away, though I can hear interrupts as distant but interpretable sounds. Physical objects in front of me feel more predictable and slower. My senses are definitely heightened to a degree, and my olfactory senses especially are noticeably different in their operation. Gaming can definitely trigger flow state. I have similar breathing rituals and focus when I play CS. Knowing the corners of a map, how to gode or stalk opponents, and the probability of another teams position has put me in flows where I'm merely balancing prioritization instead of trying to point and click.

lawrenceyan 3y ago

In Street Fighter terminology, I believe you are describing the difference between 無の拳 (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Power_of_Nothingness https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Power_of_Nothingness) and 殺意の波動 (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Satsui_no_Hado https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Satsui_no_Hado). The Power of Nothingness is a state of consciousness transcending ordinary perspective, born through spiritual and mental refinement. It is the power to act without being attached to emotions and thought, free of fear, anger, pride, and ego, to draw upon the contents of one's heart intuitively without obstacle and hesitation, and to be aware of the world and to know one's place and meaning within its vastness, to flow with all of creation without the need of worry, desire, and doubt. The Satsui no Hado is described as power rooted in the darker natural basis of the human instinct, including competition, survival, to trample on, impose, and thrive over opposition, and the manifestation of destruction borne out of conflict and fighting.

yencabulator 3y ago

Japanese martial arts have a concept of mushin (no mind, from mushin no shin = the mind without mind). It's when all your thoughts go away and you just move as needed.