Learning Improvisation, Inducing Flow

At the risk of sounding like a "porthole"- a nickname I lovingly apply to the followers of the movement guru, Ido Portal- one way to think about line/skill development is to go through these three stages:

Isolation-> Integration->Improvisation


With isolation we drill a specific movement pattern over and over again until it's smooth. That's our vault practice, for example, but any single movement counts. With integration, we chain together our repertoire of pre-practiced movements into a continuous line. Since we have cleaned up our single movements so well, the task is to put together smooth transitions between one movement to the next. No excess energy is wasted. Finally we have the improvisation part where we move continuously through our environment, mixing up the routes we've drilled in a spontaneous manner such that new sets of movements and lines are discovered rather than just pre-planned from the get go.

At any stage along the path, we can randomly drop into the coveted "flow state" of mind. Time may slow down or speed up. We become highly concentrated, forgetting everything else in our lives except what is happening right here, right now. The act of putting ourselves in situations where we must be so highly concentrated (to make a rail pre, to avoid falling on our head when tumbling) induces this flow state. This state feels so good and so meaningful, I think it's secretly the reason a lot of us are doing parkour at all, regardless of what our stated reasons may be.

I've learned that this state of mind comes up in most disciplines requiring us to pay close attention. In meditation, it can be induced simply by sitting down and following the breath! When I learned that little tidbit, I had a little crisis. Why bother risking my body throwing it around on metal,trees, and concrete when I can just sit and breathe? Well I chose both, and it seems that both practices are mutually beneficial. If we train inducing the flow state on the cushion, we can use it in daily life for the mundane things too. Additionally, we can apply the flow state to the entire skill development process from isolation up to improvisation instead of just waiting for it to happen randomly. Flow state and improvisation go hand in hand. Done right, the mover will drop in and out of the known movement patterns and the unknown just on the edge of their abilities. Some people live for that feeling, some people dive out of planes in wing suits for that feeling.

Wait a second, does anybody ever get to the improvisation part? Probably lots of people do, but it might be hard to find a video of it.  Usually someone builds a line, drills it a ton until it is smooth enough to put up on instagram, then wipes their hands clean of it and moves on to the next clip. The improvisation aspect is one of the most important parts to me and most often happens when the camera is off. Once you become familiar with a location from training there so often, you can spend most of your time in improvisation mode, spontaneously discovering new routes. Your ability to improvise determines your adaptability to new environments as well. Flow and improv are the keys to making every session valuable regardless of whether or not you got the clip for the next video.

Finally once you've been training for awhile, the 3 stage distinction tends to blend together. Just drilling one movement can become an exercise in flow because every aspect of the way you move between the reps of drilling a new movement become part of the continuous "line" that you're doing. In a sense, every movement you do is part of one continuous line and you're always "training" so to speak. Of course, when you get distracted and stub your toe on a curb, you might not feel so flowy anymore. But seriously, even bails can become part of the process. Apply the the skill development process, orient your practice around inducing flow, and you'll never have a bad session.

Counting Apples and Refined Emotions

I heard a talk from a peculiar monk named Ajahn Sona about lovingkindness that has opened a door in my mind for something very interesting. In order to explain how a person can cultivate positive emotional states in meditation, he gave an analogy: We teach children how to count by using familiar objects like apples. We say, "1 apple plus 2 apples makes 3 apples". Eventually we take away the apples and they can just understand "1 + 2 = 3". Similarly we have emotional reactions to situations, people, our own behaviors, and our conditions. We feel love, anger, joy, sadness, etc. in response to all of this stimulus. But just like when we take away the apples and just work with the numbers, we can drop the conditions that cause emotions to arise and just work with the emotional states. We can combine, increase, or decrease our emotional experience without the outside stimulus that was required to initially experience these things.

This is an emotional shortcut. Instead of waiting for the right situation to arise or the right outcome, we can just evoke the emotional experiences we want to have. It's as if, for our entire lives, we have been playing a strict game with rules like "you are only allowed to laugh in situation x, y, z, or only feel appreciative about this thing if this, this, and this happens". And most of our behavior is actually driven by trying to achieve these emotional states. There's nothing wrong with seeking out pleasurable experiences but the unfortunate part is that things don't always go so well. In fact, there are times when some things just can't go well, and can never be better. Life can be terribly tragic in that way. If our emotional dispositions are entirely based on things "going our way" we will be fraught with dissapointment. 

So what if we deliberately detach our emotional structures from the world around us and reconnect them in a completely different way? It's possible to eliminate deep seated behavioral structures that cause us and other people harm in our lives. This skill of emotional flexibility could help us to adapt to any situation. It's clear that the default emotional structures we have (the factory settings) have helped us to survive and flourish in a completely different environment than the ones we currently inhabit. Why be a slave to this evolutionary hangover? Furthermore, why be a slave to our particular cultural/social upbringing which puts limits on our ability to feel? Why not experience our emotional life in a refined way just as we do with our intellectual life?

Anyways I know this all sounds a little bit out there, but I have personally experienced some of this "emotional decoupling" with the world. There is a pretty straightforward procedure for acquiring this kind of emotional flexibility. Here are a few basic ideas:

1. Ping your emotional structures. Use imagery or mental talk to evoke an emotional response. A cherished memory or recent experience can trigger a positive emotional response. I will even use the feeling of hugging someone as a way to induce lovingkindness. As a meditation, you could "ring your emotional bell" hundreds of times in a session. That is, you can repeat and essentially practice an emotion more in meditation than the arena of daily life will ever allow you.

2. Once you get a feeling, drop the stimulus and just hold onto the emotional feelings that come up. Let the feeling spread and move, morph and increase.

3. Spend time actively making positive associations. For any given postive thing that happens in life, we can contrast it with something negative, or we can use it as a reminder of other postive things to appreciate and dwell on. Often our default habit is to dwell on what's going wrong but it's possible to see what's going right more and more of the time, with practice. People tend to think that seeing what is wrong with something makes them smart or informed. The reality is they're only seeing half of the story.

4. If you suffer from excessive negativity, practice deconstructing your thoughts and emotions by noting them mindfully as they come up. Divide and conquer until you can have enough calm and equanimity with your inner experience.

Finally, another piece of wisdom from an old monk: once you lay the emotional ground for positive emotional states, good speech and action can follow. A mind coming from a place of love motivates completely different behaviors than one coming from distress.