You've had that feeling, likely in a yoga class, but perhaps also in other places in your life. Where your singular focus and presence to an action, or an experience, or even nothingness became something 'other-wordly'.
Whether that was an exaggerated or lost sense of time, timelessness, a feeling of not having or reacting to distractions; pure creativity, the zone, on a roll... However it presents, that's the flow.
Flow state is something that's been studied and taught about, but it's best known by those who have experienced it. I think of it as timelessness, meaning for me that time ceases to operate on it's commonly understood pace and there seem to be eternal moments and more presence.
I joke, and say it's my siddhis --- my yogi powers (I go with 'unusual skill or faculty) --- but a few times I have taught classes that have felt, for everyone, as if they were an hour longer than they were. So, who knows, we just sit at the edge of infinity, trying to count the stars.
I'm into flow today and thinking about it, because I was thinking of how to get into the flow, you sometimes have to really let go. Let go of what you're holding onto, whether that be resentment, negative feelings, shame, blame, pain. To soften the grip, to open the hand, to let it go.
There are times we are holding onto the past too tightly, not for information or inspiration, but rather to repeat the too familiar negative mantras, to stay as victim, and not move into victor. To continue to self-identify with limitations not asked for, but still held.
I think asana practice is a great place to seek that space. That space that with equal parts passion and compassion requires us to examine ourselves, to identify our patterns and our games and our reactions, and begin to work to refine and grow. It's tough, but in that practice, in the direness of sensation and feeling really pushed, there is the safe and proper space to experience who it is that is having that experience and what can be discerned from how that happens.
I know folks can find the zone or be in the flow throwing a pot on the wheel - just creating and shaping and forming and processing. I don't suggest everyone can find it in asana, but rather it is one of the places where I hope people can come and do the work, but know that it's a little bit messy. Learning to let go, to really let go. And, to see, if we can stop holding onto that so tightly, what can our open hand receive?
What do you need to let go of? What could you accept if you held your open hand out?
Give thanks and praise!
