Extraordinary work was done by Mihali Csikszentmihalyi (1990) about this unique experience called Flow. Flow is a profound, highly motivating threshold experience that can be quite elusive. On the one hand, you can be overwhelmed with anxiety. It would not be pleasant to hang by your fingers on the side of a mountain cliff, as one of my colleagues declares regarding his experiences of mountain climbing in the Cascades of Northwest America. On the other hand, it can be boring because you’ve done it many times before. The fiftieth hike up to the peak of Mt. Hood might not be quite as pleasant as it was the first and second time. So, when climbing to peaks in the Cascades Mountains, my colleague confronts a challenge but there is a strong sense that he can achieve the goal. A threshold experience took place. It was a peak experience filled with Flow for my colleague. He had been hopeful about succeeding and his hope was justified.
This Flow experience is also what occurs for football players and ballet dancers. Performance for both these actors is compelling not only because of the pay or fame, but also because of the opportunity for Flow. What’s interesting about the Flow experience is its integrative aspects. While we can hope for and visualize a peak experience, the Flow experience typically involves physical as well as mental and emotional. Somehow, they are linked together in the experience of Flow. We can imagine being emersed in a Flow experience, but the experience itself requires immediate, intimate engagement.
There’s also something called micro flows. There is micro flow, for instance, during a boring meeting when you’re twirling the pencil around in your fingers. That’s called a micro flow because you’re determining if you can do the twirling. Can I flip that pencil around? It’s a physical and mental activity combined. Do we have micro-flows in a meeting when collectively pondering a major reform in a challenging system? Or is this too anxiety-filled to be experienced as a microflow? Maybe we should stick to twirling our pencil or paper clip.
As we have already noted, Csikszentmihalyi, along with Martin Seligman, led a revolution in psychology that began before the start of the 21st century. These prominent psychologists proposed that we focus not just on the negative emotions (such as anxiety and regret), but also the positive emotions (such as hope). What makes us happy? What is meaningful? When do we begin to look at what it is that makes people happy or what constitutes a Flow experience? How do we create something out of nothingness? What are the neural dynamics involved in happiness and in Flow? What happens in the brain when my colleague arrives at a peak in the Cascades? We know a great deal about damage done to the brain. Do we know much about how the brain operates when it’s working well?
In a health care forum that I helped to initiate, a noted neurosurgeon, Joe Maroon, adds his own reflections about Flow (Bergquist, Fish and Teurman, 2026):
“They have done studies on the Flow experience, in terms of looking at the neurotransmitters and the CSF. Time becomes suspended and you become unaware of your bodily functions. Something special occurs in surgery when you’re operating on somebody. It is clearly a Flow experience. Everything gets shut out, and you’re focusing entirely on what you’re doing. Flow can occur when you are writing a book or a paper, creating a piece of art or playing a musical instrument. Various neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine, the endocannabinoid system, and serotonin, have all been related to that experience.”
