Flow
Without Thought is a short (under 12 minute) film about peak experience and being in the flow. Narrated by Richard Moss, it is a collaboration with Ollie Banks, Daniel Crockett & John Eldridge. I highly recommend it; it’s phenomenal, in my opinion. A lovely piece of work in itself, and, a fabulous way of bringing one’s mind back to experiences they’ve naturally had–even if only long ago and in their youth–and can quite reasonably expect to know once again.
Over the years, whenever someone has asked me what it’s like to do the work I do, I say I can only liken it to what I’ve heard dedicated surfers describe about their experience of being in the water. There is a sense of flow; of natural beauty, of absolute being-in-the-moment-ness. What Winnicott referred to as “going on being.” And when people ask me what the aim is of my work, I have a similar response. At its foundation, my aim is to facilitate access to a state of natural happiness.
There is an experience of being alive with immediacy and spontaneity which many of us are more familiar with as children than we are adults. We often gradually become inured to the ways we are drifting away from our sense of childlike freedom and play as life goes on. It’s amazing how often depression and anxiety result largely from something along these lines. It’s complicated, of course. As we advance in life, we develop complex, entangled psychological/emotional tributaries which, without our notice, divert us away from what we were born naturally able to do: to play, be spontaneous, imagine freely, trust our naturalness, be in the moment with a sense of timelessness. These tangled webs can indeed be untangled, and it is well worth it to untangle them while we are here. We’re not designed to do it ourselves, and there’s good explanation for that, but others can help us, and we can work collaboratively to hasten the process.
It always helps to remember what is possible, and I thought this little film was a great way of pointing our minds to something very important to value and equally realistic to strive for.
Eve Livingston, Ph.D. 