PLYMOUTH UNIVERSITY

                         GLOSSARY OF PRACTICE

IMPROVISATION : Go With The Flow.

This first part of this paper will highlight the background of this phenomenon. The notion of a Flow of thought as a recognised psychological process can be traced to Albert Van Heim in 1871 in Switzerland. He was a geologist and his own near-death experience started his case studies into similar encounters by mountain climbers (Roszell, 1992) and found they achieved altered states of consciousness.  In 1904 William James of Harvard, who was studying ‘fight or flight’ reaction, expanded the research. Part of this altered state became known as Peak Experience, within his psychology circle, and noted philosophically for its mystical qualities (Nagler, 2010). It was physiology with Will Cannon in 1916 that provided a breakthrough though, determining that these varying changes in consciousness, was rooted in biology (Cannon, 1915). In the mid-20^th Century, Abraham Maslow found there was this common attribute of flowing thought as Peak Experiences, shared by all successful people (Grof, 2000).

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is known for coining the term Flow in the 1970’s. During years of study, he outlined the concept of being fully immersed in an activity is the key to being in a Flow state. This involved being totally unaware of outside interests and time passed by unnoticed. This optimal experience is achieved by what he termed an autotelic personality type. Which he established to be intrinsically motivated rather than a need for external objectives (Csikszentmihaly, 1992).

Keith Sawyer, who was an early collaborator through his PhD with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, developed the area of Group Flow. He found that among the key elements for this extreme group concentration, was a sense of shared vision for the task at hand. He studied with jazz musicians, this included close listening and when improvising, 'deep listening'. This Flow state within the group was enhanced by complete concentration, being in control and moving the project continually forward. Finding the balance between innovation and failure, with an abandonment of ego, was imperative during communication, familiarity and equal participation between members (Sawyer, 2008). 

Researchers began to measure this phenomenon throughout the subsequent years. They encompassed Flow questionnaires asking to identify and evaluate when and how being ‘in the zone’ originated (Engeser, 2012). An Experience Sampling Method was devised which required the participants to complete forms at randomly chosen times to record their experiences of being in a Flow state. The researchers, to avoid any unnecessary bias, coded the information. Eventually the wording for Flow changed to that of Runner’s High describing a state of euphoria induced with intensive running. In 1996 in Australia, Doctor Susan Jackson crafted a self-reporting Flow State Scale connected to sports research. This enabled the Flow experience to be both qualitatively and quantitatively monitored. Over the next few years this was refined and she produced a Flow State Scale-2 and a Dispositional Flow Scale-2 (Jackson and Ekland, 2004). These were used to empirically study and measure Dispositional and State Flow Frequency as a phenomenological concept.

There was an adverse effect to pro-active Flow research in 2002. This was due to the president of the Neuroscience Society Huda Akil. She declared in the New York Times that endorphins released into the brain from running were nonsense. “This endorphin-in-runners is a total fantasy in the pop culture” (Kotler, 2008 p209). This caused traditional research into Flow to diminish quite significantly over the next few years.

This paper now leads into how flow has become more recently defined and brings us gradually into present day understanding.

The academic ‘comeback’ for Flow for contemporary acceptance, is Arne Dietrich’s (2003) paper discussing functional neuroanatomy of altered consciousness. He brings it right back in the psychological mainstream by focusing on pre-frontal cortex and showing it becomes deregulated or shut down, when Flow is reached. Dietrich argues that there is a common neural action during altered states of consciousness. Which is now known as transient hypo-frontality.

It is connected to diminished use of the pre-frontal cortex area while engaged in dreaming; runner’s high; drugs; daydreaming; and meditation. He shows how there is a lowering of inhibition and self-awareness when the pre-frontal cortex is not fully engaged and this has a direct impact on inducing a feeling of Flow. His findings have been a benchmark in this field of research that is generally recognized today. There is now an agreement that concentration grows as an ‘efficiency exchange’ from a conscious slower extrinsic mechanism, to a rapidly working subconscious intrinsic system (Kotler, 2004).