Human Development

Flow experience through the senses

Description:
Since the body is the means through which one obtains information about the outside world it is like a probe full of sensitive devices, an instrument for getting in touch with the universe. The sensing devices produce a positive sensation and have thus a potential for flow experience as one develops skills and finds delight in what the body can do.
Intense flow experiences may arise, not just with seeing great works of art, for example, but through mundane things such as the view from a train if one is prepared to invest psychic energy in the experience of seeing. Hearing is also a source of flow experience, in particular listening to music. Music helps to order the mind, reduces the disorder deriving from random input, and wards off boredom and anxiety. Again, it is not so much the hearing of music but of really listening and paying attention which enables awareness of flow. There needs to be a strategy and a formulation of goals, having a challenge of greater complexity as one goes from the sensory experience through the analogic to the analytic mode of listening. Making music is even more rewarding, as the harmony of sound is seen to underlie universal harmony. Plato believed that by learning at an early age to pay attention to rhythm and harmony the whole consciousness would become ordered. Taste is also a source of flow experience if one takes control of the activity, approaching eating and cooking in a spirit of adventure and curiousity, but as in all cases of flow experience it must be for the experience itself and not for motives such as showing off one's expertise.
Broader:
Flow experience