Neuroscientist and Dancer Dr. Julia F. Christensen on Dancing Into the Flow State

From The Pathway to Flow, by Dr. Julia F. Christensen. Copyright © 2024 by Dr. Julia F. Christensen. Published by Square Peg on July 25, 2024. Excerpted by permission.

Learning to express through an art is a little like learning a new language. As we learn the steps of a dance, we first learn the words—the steps and positions—then we learn the grammar—the rules of when to do what move, and how to combine arms and legs—and finally, using imagery, we create sentences and poetry—we express complicated feelings through our movements.

This passing of the boundary, between “doing steps” and really dancing, using a dance language to express, is truly exhilarating. I’ve experienced it many times when dance took me away from the here and now, transported me into a different reality, soothed my thoughts and calmed my mind into one single inviting trail of thought, simultaneously relaxing and making me productive, as time zipped by.

This is what the Hungarian scientist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi refers to as “flow.” Flow is the much-cherished state of recovery and relaxation for our body, both physical and mental, that activates the brain in a very special way.

There is evidence to suggest that regularly experiencing flow may be related to good health outcomes, and may protect against burnout and depressive symptoms in the work context. Regular flow with a creative practice can be linked to increases in our creativity, productivity, even our likability. And learning this showed me that the feeling I got from dance was something that could be accessed in different ways.

Our mind is never empty. In fact, our mind wants to be full all the time. We can’t get rid of thoughts by just deciding to stop thinking them. This is not a symptom of a lack of willpower, it’s a fundamental feature of how the brain works. As long as a brain is alive, it keeps itself busy with impressions from our environment, sensations from our body and thoughts that are already in our head. This is an unstoppable process, and an absolutely necessary one on an evolutionary level. But what to do when our thoughts turn into grinding torture instruments that stress us out and threaten to steal our sleep and peace of mind?

When we embrace an artistic practice, it activates systems in the brain that produce a sense of all-encompassing calm. A regular creative practice conditions the mind to find that flow state more easily, because of the powerful opportunities for imagery, meaning-making, self-expression and communication that it affords. If we choose the right art form for us, it transforms a ruminating mind and makes flow possible. We can be lost in thought—with helpful, healthy direction.

Building competence, that is, in our case, the skill of our art, is an important element on our pathway to flow. Our skill and the challenge of the activity we’re doing should be in perfect balance. Our ability to submerge ourselves into the waters of contented flow hinges on our ability to let go of our conscious mind, those prefrontal brain systems of rules and reason, and dive into the implicit memory systems, where our art is a language that we can use to express and to understand. And we can only do that when our skill level is high enough so we don’t need to think about how to do the step, when we can let our inner visualizations guide us. Because trained dancers already have the “vocabulary” of their art firmly stored away in their memory systems, using dance movements as a resource for creative expression can make tapping into flow particularly easy, especially when they’re dancing without a competitive or performative mindset—just dancing it out.

A number of researchers have in past years measured people’s experience after sessions of creating art. We feel like better people afterwards; we feel better about ourselves, about the world and what we do in it. If we’re lucky, such art experiences can even make us rethink our lives, help us induce positive changes in our everyday, long after the arts experience is over. At other times, the art-effect, this elation and intoxicating feeling of connectedness with the universe only lasts for some minutes. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes having flow experiences with the arts is exactly that: just a break during which time all the biological systems of our body and brain can get busy with relaxing.

Those altered states of consciousness we get from art act on the exact same neural circuitries that would give us a hit if we were to take drugs. The difference is that they don’t limit their action to survival circuits in our brain. They’re not just candy—if we happen to choose an art that works for us—they reach us within, reconnecting us with our memories, life experience and sense of self.