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When overwhelmed by events there are ways and means to reduce the demand and give support toward reaching back to the flow zone.
There are three ways that follow:
- Practice and train the relevant expertise to raise skill levels to meet higher levels of demand.
- Enhance your concentration abilities so that you can pay more attention, because attention itself is a pathway into the flow zone.
- Take notice, be aware, when we and others have left the zone of positive good stress and peak performance, so we can apply the apt remedy.
Indicators, like, “threat displays and pre-attack indicators”, can “Tell” us when one is leaving the zone into the frazzle high bad stress zone.
- Look for performance decline.
- Look for wondering attention.
- Look for loss of focus.
- Look for when the other person appears or feels like they are off their game compared to normal.
- Look for when they appear rigid in how they respond to issues in situations.
All indicate that the person is losing their cognitive efficiency.
Eliciting Flow includes a balance between the demands of the situation and a persons skills - often flow occurs when we are challenged to use our abilities to their utmost. This should be a goal of training and practice as if one were enduring “shugyo or austere training.” Shugyo should also, as part of the process, induce levels of adrenal stress releases into the body and mind. The important consideration is that each trigger that release the chemicals from the HPA axis of the brain, cortisol and adrenaline, change the way the mind and body release and handle the effects so that one might result in the zone while another could take us to the frazzle high stress zone.
General Strategy for the Flow Zone:
- Practice (daily) methods that enhance concentration and relax you psychologically.
- Give your brain and body the chance to recover and relax.
- Meditate and breathe accordingly.
- Anything that truly relaxes you.
- Practice mindfulness.
The more you can break the cycle of the right prefrontal capture by the amygdala, the freer you will be to activate the beneficial circuitry of the left prefrontal cortex.
Enhance Concentration Skills:
- Meditation, a training exercise for keener attentional focus.
- Any concentration enhancement technique that allows you to focus on A and whenever your mind wanters off to topic B or C, D, E, etc., and you realize that you wondered, bring it back to A again.
As can be readily perceived in this article many of the methods to achieve the flow zone are also practiced in karate and martial arts regardless of their objective and goals. To really achieve results, as with any practice and training, it must be done frequently, diligently, mindfully, emotionally and maintained by continuous practice in every facet of life especially under the duress of stress and stress released hormones so that you can perform methods to brain back peace, harmony and an entry into the flow zone for optimal performance be that personal entertainment and relaxation, home needs and requirements, family needs and requirements and finally work needs and requirements then when a need for self-defense arises you have the tools, the training, the practice and a limited amount of experience to get-r-done - in the flow zone. What could be better?
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