on's body or mind being "stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Athletes refer to being in the "zone" - an optimal psychological and physiological climate for peak performance.

The legendary Ted Williams has said that sometimes he could see the seams on a pitched baseball. Gymnast Carol Johnson found that on so

The experience of optimal functioning called flow enhances creativity, and can be nurtured in our own lives, says the psychologist who developed the concept.

Author of "Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience" and a number of related books, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced me-high chick-sent-me-high) says we can facilitate the conditions for this experience, and that it may be found in a wide range of careers and activities.

For his doctoral thesis on "how visual artists create art" he studied photos taken every three minutes as artists created a painting. He said in a newspaper interview that he was "struck by how deeply they were involved in work, forgetting everything else."

He went on to study chess players, rock climbers, dancers, musicians and others. "I expected to find substantial differences in all their activities," he notes, "but people reported very similar accounts of how they felt. Then, I started looking at professions like surgery and found the same elements there – a challenge which provides clear, high goals and immediate feedback. They forget themselves, the time, their problems."

He cautions that many people misunderstand flow as a kind of passive "spacing out" and seek it in ordinary leisure activities. "Most people look so much forward to being home, relaxing. Then they get home and don't know what to do. They aren't challenged, so they sit in front of the TV, depressed."

Instead of "spacing out," flow is rather the experience resulting from a person's body or mind being "stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Athletes refer to being in the "zone" - an optimal psychological and physiological climate for peak performance.

The legendary Ted Williams has said that sometimes he could see the seams on a pitched baseball. Gymnast Carol Johnson found that on som

it may be found in a wide range of careers and activities.

For his doctoral thesis on "how visual artists create art" he studied photos taken every three minutes as artists created a painting. He said in a newspaper interview that he was "struck by how deeply they were involved in work, forgetting everything else."

He went on to study chess players, rock climbers, dancers, musicians and others. "I expected to find substantial differences in all their activities," he notes, "but people reported very similar accounts of how they felt. Then, I started looking at professions like surgery and found the same elements there – a challenge which provides clear, high goals and immediate feedback. They forget themselves, the time, their problems."

He cautions that many people misunderstand flow as a kind of passive "spacing out" and seek it in ordinary leisure activities. "Most people look so much forward to being home, relaxing. Then they get home and don't know what to do. They aren't challenged, so they sit in front of the TV, depressed."

Instead of "spacing out," flow is rather the experience resulting from a person's body or mind being "stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Athletes refer to being in the "zone" - an optimal psychological and physiological climate for peak performance.

The legendary Ted Williams has said that sometimes he could see the seams on a pitched baseball. Gymnast Carol Johnson found that on so

ers, musicians and others. "I expected to find substantial differences in all their activities," he notes, "but people reported very similar accounts of how they felt. Then, I started looking at professions like surgery and found the same elements there – a challenge which provides clear, high goals and immediate feedback. They forget themselves, the time, their problems."

He cautions that many people misunderstand flow as a kind of passive "spacing out" and seek it in ordinary leisure activities. "Most people look so much forward to being home, relaxing. Then they get home and don't know what to do. They aren't challenged, so they sit in front of the TV, depressed."

Instead of "spacing out," flow is rather the experience resulting from a person's body or mind being "stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Athletes refer to being in the "zone" - an optimal psychological and physiological climate for peak performance.

The legendary Ted Williams has said that sometimes he could see the seams on a pitched baseball. Gymnast Carol Johnson found that on so

He cautions that many people misunderstand flow as a kind of passive "spacing out" and seek it in ordinary leisure activities. "Most people look so much forward to being home, relaxing. Then they get home and don't know what to do. They aren't challenged, so they sit in front of the TV, depressed."

Instead of "spacing out," flow is rather the experience resulting from a person's body or mind being "stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Athletes refer to being in the "zone" - an optimal psychological and physiological climate for peak performance.

The legendary Ted Williams has said that sometimes he could see the seams on a pitched baseball. Gymnast Carol Johnson found that on so

on's body or mind being "stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."

Athletes refer to being in the "zone" - an optimal psychological and physiological climate for peak performance.

The legendary Ted Williams has said that sometimes he could see the seams on a pitched baseball. Gymnast Carol Johnson found that on some days she experienced the balance beam as wider, so "any worry of falling off disappeared."

Sports psychologists and trainers use a range of techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, concentration exercises and meditation to help people access this "zone." One of the consistent themes of these approaches is the need to "get around" the conscious mind.

But Csikszentmihalyi has warned "You can't make flow happen. All you can do is learn to remove obstacles in its way." He says the effort to recapture the high of a perfect run down a ski slope, for example, will rarely succeed because "you're splitting your attention from what's happening now."

Using PET scan technology (Positron Emission Tomography), researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have found that people learning to master a video game show a reduction in the overall metabolism of the brain - less brain activity along with greater skill. This indicates that increasing ability results in better efficiency, and the brain can "relax into" the task. This may be the physiological result, or perhaps a central cause, of decreasing the "static" of non-flow consciousness.

Csikszentmihalyi points out that "Some flow experiences involve low danger, like reading a good book. But certain people are disposed to respond to risk, and their flow will depend on it more than somebody else's. Danger is the hook. But their descriptions are not that different from, say, a Thai woman's description of weaving a rug. The quality