Flow State & Meditation: Enhancing Consciousness With Deep Cognitive Processing

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Meditation is not only stress-reducing, it also improves our metacognition or the ability to observe thought processes as they occur.

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

With our hectic schedule and demands on this modern life, we always feel stressed and over-worked. Our stress and tiredness makes us unhappy, impatient, frustrated and affects our health.

When we are frustrated, our brain waves are in a high beta frequency, which actually hinders our cognitive abilities, we are pumping our system with a detrimental amount of cortisol, the area of the brain linked to fear is agitated, our immune system is dangerously low. In other words, we are very vulnerable and unproductive in this state. And ignoring these stress signs will only produce more poor results.

However, I want to point out a few simple amendments that can produce major changes in stress and how to handle it.

In a study that has been published in the latest issue of Consciousness and Cognition, Fadel Zeiden along with his colleagues have shown that meditation for only 4 days improves not only mood and stress level but also improves deep cognitive processing efficiency. Deep cognitive processing efficiency includes the core aspects of fluid intelligence such as working memory and sustained attention, as well as long-term memory efficiency.

Meditation is not only stress-reducing, it also improves our metacognition or the ability to observe thought processes as they occur. It teaches a person to release sensory events that would normally distract you in a way that is emotion-regulating. The thoughts that are associated with stressful emotions will be regulated – leading to a better performance.

flow state meditation
The Flow State goes hand in hand with meditation. Meditation goes hand in hand with the Flow State.

There was a 10-year study carried out by McKinsey and Co on top level executives. These executives are the guys and girls who make million dollar decision on a daily basis.

Mckinsey promoted a flow state environment for these executives. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi the pioneer of flow state research explains flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follow inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

These executives reported a 500% improvement in productivity. That’s like working Monday and taking the rest of the week off!

“I’ve not got the time” is the most common phase of an illusionary obstacle hold 99% of people back. With the research done by Zeiden and McKinsey we see that this is far from true. You have the ability in a short period of time, actually only 4 days to benefit from meditation and take a large step forward to health and wellbeing. And if you learn to produce and live in the flow state you can improve your productivity by 500%!

The Flow State goes hand in hand with meditation.

Meditation goes hand in hand with the Flow State.

In flow and in meditation our brains produce very similar patterns. Work done by Dr. Andrew Newberg on Franciscan nuns found that the nuns during meditation produced distinct brain deactivation during their specific meditation.

They induced the feeling of unity. What Dr. Newberg found was that the temporoparietal junction deactivated. This is the area of the brain is associated with the sense of self and other, so when this is described we get the feeling of “being at one”. This is the same reported experiences from athletes, executives, artist, poets, musicians and you also when in a state of flow. “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake.

The ego falls away.

Time flies.

Every action, movement, and thought follow inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Now you might be wondering how can we enter the flow state at will? How to find the right meditation to produce these results? You can now purposely trigger the flow state by tuning into the sense or the feeling of the flow with the help of this FREE Flow State Course package you can take away today that will help you hack the flow state conveniently.

By: C. Wilson Meloncelli

3 thoughts on “Flow State & Meditation: Enhancing Consciousness With Deep Cognitive Processing

  1. For anybody interested in the topic there are two books I can highly recommend about Flow and its triggers:

    – The Net and the Butterfly by Olivia Fox Cabane & Judah Pollack
    – The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler
    – Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler & Jamie Wheal

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