Floaters are often amused by people who ask them, “But isn’t it boring? I mean, just floating around in a dark box, with nothing happening?” Far from being boring, for just about everyone who gets into the tank, floating is great fun. The question arises: Why? Which leads to another, deeper question: Just what exactly constitutes fun? What are the elements of enjoyment?
These are important questions, especially for floaters, since so much of what they value about floating revolves around having fun doing something many people look on with some trepidation, or at least with ambiguous feelings. The second question intrigued Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a professor in the Department of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago. What, he wondered, is intrinsically rewarding? That is, behavior that is engaged in not for external rewards, “not as compensation for past desires, not as preparation for future needs, but as an ongoing process which provides rewarding experiences in the present.”
To study this autotelic behavior (from the Greek auto: self, and telos: goal), Csikszentmihalyi interviewed and studied chess players, composers, dancers, basketball players, rock climbers, surgeons, and others who did things they deeply enjoyed. His first conclusion, as he explains it in his book Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, was that “The underlying similarity that cuts across these autotelic activities … is that they all give participants a sense of discovery, exploration, problem solution—in other words, a feeling of novelty and challenge.” The outcome of an autotelic activity is uncertain (“Like exploring a strange place”) but the actor is potentially capable of controlling it.
After noticing that his informants frequently described their experiences of enjoyment by using the same word, “flow,” Dr. Csikszentmihalyi abandoned the term autotelic experience:
From here on, we shall refer to this peculiar dynamic state—the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement—as flow. In the flow state, action follows upon action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention by the actor. He experiences it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which he is in control of his actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus and response, between past, present, and future.52
As Csikszentmibalyi’s study progressed, he saw that while flow activities were often related to games and play, they were also the key elements in other activities, such as creativity, love, and what are usually called religious, or transcendental, or “peak experiences”: “In a variety of human contexts, then, one finds a remarkably similar inner state, which is so enjoyable that people are sometimes willing to forsake a comfortable life for its sake.” With this remarkable insight, Csikszentmihalvi unites games, play, creativity, love, and religion as things that are “enjoyable” by means of giving us “flow.”
He then proceeds to enumerate what he has discovered to be the essential elements of all flow experiences: The first is the “merging of action and awareness.” “For flow to be maintained,” the professor says, “one cannot reflect on the act of awareness itself. When awareness becomes split, so that one perceives the activity from ‘outside,’ flow is interrupted…. These interruptions occur when questions flash through the actor’s mind: ‘Am I doing well?’ ‘What am I doing here?’ … When one is in a flow episode … these questions simply do not come to mind.”
People who have experienced flow would like to be able to control it—to be able to make it happen when they want it to. Unfortunately, flow is quite elusive. That’s why, when people find some activity that allows them frequently to enter a flow state, they become “addicts” of that state. They have found something that works for them, and they are loath to change it. One reason flow is so elusive, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is that the difficulty of the activity must be perfectly matched to the abilities of the practitioner. He illustrates this by describing all activities as lying on a spectrum: At one end the activities present no challenges or difficulties at all, and at the other end they pose such extraordinary challenges that they’re far beyond the capabilities of the practitioner. At one end of the spectrum is boredom; at the other end, anxiety.
This necessity of an even match between the difficulty of a challenge and a person’s ability to meet it shows why the most common experiences of flow occur in games, rituals, participatory art and athletic forms like dance and sports, and in activities with clear rules governing the action. In such activities the participants can control the level of difficulty or adjust the level of challenge to meet their skills—unlike “real life,” where the rules and the level of difficulty are beyond the control of most of us. A group of eight-year-olds can experience as much pure pleasure and flow from their game of pickup baseball on the corner lot as can the much more highly skilled major league superstars; a golfer can adjust his handicap; a marathoner an hour behind the winners is challenging his personal best.
This brings us to the float tank. In the preceding summary, floaters will quickly have recognized an exact description of the float experience. The essential qualities of flow—a sense of discovery, exploration, problem solution, novelty, challenge, merging of action and awareness, timelessness, a sense of control emerging from a perfect matching of difficulty with ability, and above all the feeling of great pleasure that results from the combination of these elements—are also the essential qualities of floating. Even the word flow is evocative of the tank experience.
A key fact that Dr. Csikszentmihalyi emphasizes again and again is that in everyday life, flow experiences are elusive. Even in game or play situations expressly designed to elicit them, they are often lacking, or are experienced only for fleeting moments that emerge unexpectedly and unpredictably between longer periods of more mundane concerns. It is here that we see the unique value of floating: The floatation tank is a specific and reliable flow-creation tool. On the whole, floaters seem to experience flow every time they enter the tank. Even better, they experience that most elusive and pleasurable thing, long periods of pure, uninterrupted flow.
One reason the tank has this unique effect is that it is both experience and environment. The rock climber must go to the mountain; the chess player must find the perfectly matched opponent; the athlete waits for the ideal moment in the contest to draw him beyond his own limits. But for the floater both the experience and the environment are right there, any time, in the tank. As for the matching of challenge with ability, there is no need to find the consummate opponent or teammates or situation: the floater can adjust the inherent difficulty or challenge of both the experience and the environment so that they perfectly match and make full use of his or her skills, whether it’s the first time in the tank or the fifty-first. When you float, there is nothing happening in the tank that is not you. That is, everything that goes on in the tank is either what you “do” or what you “don’t do.” In Dr. Lilly’s words, “Nothing can happen that you will not allow to happen, i.e.: what is forbidden is not allowed.” 139
Another explanation for the tank’s unique effect is that it seems to operate specifically by eliminating both boredom and anxiety. There is much physiological and psychological evidence that in the tank the floater’s mind remains extraordinarily alert, and alertness seems to counteract all boredom by involving us deeply in our awareness. When the alert mind is lodged in the relaxed body fostered by floating, you have a combination particularly conducive to the experience of flow.
Narrowing the Field of Consciousness. Another absolute necessity for attaining the flow experience is what Dr. Csikszentmihalyi describes as “a centering of attention on a limited stimulus field. To ensure that people will concentrate on their actions, potentially intruding stimuli must be kept out of attention.” Many people find that this is a natural consequence of the merging of awareness and activity: “I got so wrapped up in playing that game that I didn’t even hear you talking to me.” Games, rituals, and the like also help narrow the field of consciousness by controlling the environment.
Floatation tanks are particularly effective in this narrowing of consciousness, since they not only focus the floater’s attention on the moment, but actually restrict, through physical means, the external stimuli that can often distract someone from the flow experience. Noises, light, other people, unexpected events, and much more are eliminated by the tank itself.
Increased Awareness. Csikszentmihalyi insists, however, that the narrowing of consciousness of the flow experience does not mean one loses touch with one’s own physical reality. Rather, “one becomes more intensely aware of internal processes.” He notes the increased muscular awareness of rock climbers, and chess players’ exquisite awareness of the workings of their own minds, and concludes: “What is usually lost in flow is not the awareness of one’s body or of one’s functions, but only the self construct, the intermediary which one learns to interpose between stimulus and response.”
This observation rings true to floaters, since one of the most obvious effects of floating is increased physical awareness (see Feldenkrais’s discussion of the Weber-Fechner Law on page 48). In fact, many floaters use the tank for exactly this reason: as a powerful tool for changing behavior, breaking habits, and improving their state of health.
The Experience of Control. An important characteristic of the person in flow is his control of himself and his environment. As Csikszentmihalyi observes, “He has no active awareness of control but is simply not worried by the possibility of lack of control. Later, in thinking back on the experience, he will usually conclude that, for the duration of the experience, his skills were adequate for meeting environmental demands; and this reflection might become an important component of a positive self-concept.”52
We’ve already observed that the floatation tank is a completely controllable environment, but the idea that the feeling of control and competence one gets from floating can lead to a positive self-concept is very important. Therapists have long recognized the feeling of control as an important component of self-confidence and self-esteem. It is partly because of this feeling of control, and the resulting increase in self confidence and self-esteem, that floatation has had such powerfully beneficial effects on people suffering from depression, anxiety, self destructive tendencies, and lack of confidence. Interestingly, there is a biochemical component to increased control. Recent studies show that while elevated levels of cortisol are linked to feelings of submission, reduced levels of cortisol are linked to feelings of confidence and dominance. As we have seen, floating has been shown to decrease cortisol levels significantly.
One example of heightened self-esteem through floating is Chris, the model haunted by a rape attempt. When she went into the tank she discovered to her pleasure that she felt she could control what happened to her. She felt like an explorer who was continually making successful voyages of discovery. As she said to me: “Every time I float I feel like an adventurer, and I’m proud of myself.” Nothing succeeds like success; or, success comes easier to those who are used to conquering. And those who have experienced the sense of competence and control that comes from floating are able to transfer it and continue to experience it in their everyday lives.
Dr. Csikszentmihalyi observes that the feeling of control we have in flow is difficult to sustain for any length of time in the real world, where things are always somewhat beyond control. However, it has become clear that it’s possible to train yourself to carry the feeling of control—that is, flow—with you into your everyday life.
Flowing on the Subway. I can personally attest to how the float, and flow, experience can be carried into the real world. I had been working one afternoon in midtown Manhattan and by the time I descended into the subway to go home it was exactly 5:00 P.M. The Times Square train was packed so full with rush-hour riders that it was impossible to raise a hand or even to move. The train was midway to the 34th Street station when it suddenly stopped, the motors shut down with a cough and were silent, and all the lights went out, inspiring screams from many of the passengers. As the situation became clear, a wave of moans swept through the train. If the temperature in the streets had been 95 degrees, it was more than 110 in the subway; the air conditioner was shut off, the windows were sealed, and we were all crammed together, sweating and blind in the dark. I heard gasps and felt shudders of panic from the stranger pressed against me, and the motorman’s voice came over the loudspeaker telling us that some insane person had jumped on the tracks at Penn Station and the police were trying to get him off. Since the man was holding his foot next to the third rail, the electricity had been shut off, and we had no choice but to sit there sweltering in the dark until the juice was turned back on. It was apparent to all of us that this could take some time. Several people yelled that they were having trouble breathing. Someone shouted a suggestion to break the windows while others shouted not to break the windows. People nearby began screaming that an old man was having a heart attack.
While I’m not claustrophobic, I felt myself growing very tense. I had an instinctive desire to move, to get out of there, but not only was there no room to run, there was no room to move at all. I had a powerful sense that this was a situation over which I had no control. I felt my chest constrict and my muscles tighten. The woman behind me began to sob loudly. Then I remembered the experience of the floatation tank: I had been floating a few days earlier, and as I thought of the deeply peaceful relaxation of the tank, it was as if my body actually remembered how it felt to be there. I made a conscious effort to imagine I was in the tank, and felt all my muscles relax, my breathing grow, deep and easy. Calm and peace took hold, and I even experienced my external situation of being trapped in the dark train as blackly funny. I envisioned my explanation to the person I was supposed to meet at five, and how she would scoff at my lame excuse. The train was stuck for almost an hour, and I felt a sense of flow the whole time. A small thing, but for me it was a clear sign of how the floating experience can be carried over into the less controllable real world, and how the experience of floating can be effective training for experiencing flow in the daily routine.
Dr. Csikszentmihalyi seems to be referring to something like this when he says, “Ideally, anyone could learn to carry inside himself the tools of enjoyment. But whether the structure is internal or external, the steps for experiencing flow are presumably the same; they involve the same process of delimiting reality, controlling some aspects of it, and responding to the feedback with a concentration that excludes anything else as irrelevant.” Once again, it seems that floating and flow are identical.
Intrinsic Rewards. Like all flow experiences, the rewards of floating can be found in the experience itself. Some perceive the floatation tank, with its intrinsic rewards, as being inherently selfish or escapist, a product of the “Me Generation.” We must make the world a better place, they argue, rather than retreating into ourselves.
Csikszentmihalyi addresses this common misperception movingly:
In this society, where the opportunity to satisfy pleasure and to obtain material comforts is unprecedented, the statistics on crime, mental disease, alcoholism, venereal disease, gambling, dissatisfaction with work, drug abuse, and general discontent keep steadily worsening. The rates of these indices of alienation are increasing more sharply in the affluent suburbs. It is not the bottling up of instinctual needs that is responsible for this trend, nor the lack of external rewards. Its cause appears to be the dearth of experiences which prove that one is competent, in a system that is geared for the efficient transformation of physical energy. The lack of intrinsic rewards is like an undiscovered virus we carry in our bodies; it maims slowly but surely.52
Someone who has been able to develop his ability to flow at will, or to “resonate his abilities with the environment,” is in harmony with his world. Csikszentmihalyi stresses that one could be in solitary confinement or in a boring job, but if he knows how to respond to this environment with flow, he will still experience enjoyment, and such a person “becomes both truly autonomous and truly connected with the world. Extrinsic rewards will be less needed to motivate him to put up with the hardships of existence. A constant ability to ‘design or discover something new,’ ‘to explore a strange place’—the rewards that people experience in deep flow—will be enough to motivate action. Only with such a shift in perspective will we avoid ‘devouring the world.’ We must ‘deliberately choose a life of action over a life of consumption,’ or the human and physical resources of our environment will be depleted.”
The flow experience, then, is not self-indulgent, selfish, antisocial. On the contrary, it is the person who has learned to experience flow, through the training of numerous flow experiences such as those acquired in the floatation tank, who is in the forefront of social evolution. Flow is not an escape from life but life lived at a higher level.