Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning (17 page)

THE ULTIMATE CONTROL: YOGA AND THE MARTIAL ARTS

When it comes to learning to control the body and its experiences, we are as children compared to the great Eastern civilizations. In many respects, what the West has accomplished in terms of harnessing material energy is matched by what India and the Far East have achieved in terms of direct control of consciousness. That neither of these approaches is, by itself, an ideal program for the conduct of life is shown by the fact that the Indian fascination with advanced techniques for self-control, at the expense of learning to cope with the material challenges of the physical environment, has conspired to let impotence and apathy spread over a great proportion of the population, defeated by scarcity of resources and by overcrowding. The Western mastery over material energy, on the other hand, runs the risk of turning everything it touches into a resource to be consumed as rapidly as possible, thus exhausting the environment. The perfect society would be able to strike a healthy balance between the spiritual and material worlds, but short of aiming for perfection, we can look toward Eastern religions for guidance in how to achieve control over consciousness.

Of the great Eastern methods for training the body, one of the oldest and most diffuse is the set of practices known as Hatha Yoga. It is worth reviewing some of its highlights, because it corresponds in several areas to what we know about the psychology of flow, and therefore provides a useful model for anyone who wishes to be in better charge of psychic energy. Nothing quite like Hatha Yoga has ever been created in the West. The early monastic routines instituted by Saint Benedict and Saint Dominick and especially the “spiritual exercises” of Saint Ignatius of Loyola probably come the closest in offering a way to control attention by developing mental and physical routines; but even these fall far short of the rigorous discipline of Yoga.

In Sanskrit
Yoga
means “yoking,” which refers to the method’s goal of joining the individual with God, first by uniting the various parts of the body with one another, then making the body as a whole work together with consciousness as part of an ordered system. To achieve this aim, the basic text of Yoga, compiled by Patanjali about fifteen hundred years ago, prescribes eight stages of increasing skills. The first two stages of “ethical preparation” are intended to change a person’s attitudes. We might say that they involve the “straightening out of consciousness”; they attempt to reduce psychic entropy as much as possible before the actual attempts at mental control begin. In practice, the first step,
yama
, requires that one achieve “restraint” from acts and thoughts that might harm others—falsehood, theft, lust, and avarice. The second step,
niyama
, involves “obedience,” or the following of ordered routines in cleanliness, study, and obedience to God, all of which help to channel attention into predictable patterns, and hence make attention easier to control.

The next two stages involve physical preparation, or development of habits that will enable the practitioner—or yogin—to overcome the demands of the senses, and make it possible for him to concentrate without growing tired or distracted. The third stage consists in practicing various
asana
, ways of “sitting” or holding postures for long periods without succumbing to strain or fatigue. This is the stage of Yoga that we all know in the West, exemplified by a fellow in what looks like diapers standing on his head with his shanks behind his neck. The fourth stage is
pranayama
, or breath control, which aims to relax the body, and stabilizes the rhythm of breathing.

The fifth stage, the hinge between the preparatory exercises and the practice of Yoga proper, is called
pratyahara
(“withdrawal”). It involves learning to withdraw attention from outward objects by directing the input of the senses—thus becoming able to see, hear, and feel only what one wishes to admit into awareness. Already at this stage we see how close the goal of Yoga is to that of the flow activities described in this volume—to achieve control over what happens in the mind.

Although the remaining three stages do not properly belong to the present chapter—they involve the control of consciousness through purely mental operations, rather than physical techniques—we shall discuss them here for the sake of continuity, and also because these mental practices are, after all, solidly based on the earlier physical ones.
Dharana
, or “holding on,” is the ability to concentrate for long periods on a single stimulus, and thus is the mirror image of the earlier stage of
pratyahara
; first one learns to keep things out of the mind, then one learns to keep them in. Intense meditation, or
dhyana
, is the next step. Here one learns to forget the self in uninterrupted concentration that no longer needs the external stimuli of the preceding phase. Finally the yogin may achieve
samadhi
, the last stage of “self-collectedness,” when the meditator and the object of meditation become as one. Those who have achieved it describe
samadhi
as the most joyful experience in their lives.

The similarities between Yoga and flow are extremely strong; in fact it makes sense to think of Yoga as a very thoroughly planned flow activity. Both try to achieve a joyous, self-forgetful involvement through concentration, which in turn is made possible by a discipline of the body. Some critics, however, prefer to stress the differences between flow and Yoga. Their main divergence is that, whereas flow attempts to fortify the self, the goal of Yoga and many other Eastern techniques is to abolish it.
Samadhi
, the last stage of Yoga, is only the threshold for entering Nirvana, where the individual self merges with the universal force like a river blending into the ocean. Therefore, it can be argued, Yoga and flow tend toward diametrically opposite outcomes.

But this opposition may be more superficial than real. After all, seven of the eight stages of Yoga involve building up increasingly higher levels of skill in controlling consciousness.
Samadhi
and the liberation that is supposed to follow it may not, in the end, be that significant—they may in one sense be regarded as the justification of the activity that takes place in the previous seven stages, just as the peak of the mountain is important only because it justifies climbing, which is the real goal of the enterprise. Another argument favoring the similarity of the two processes is that, even till the final stage of liberation, the yogin must maintain control over consciousness. He could not surrender his self unless he was, even at the very moment of surrender, in complete control of it. Giving up the self with its instincts, habits, and desires is so unnatural an act that only someone supremely in control can accomplish it.

Therefore it is not unreasonable to regard Yoga as one of the oldest and most systematic methods of producing the flow experience. The details of
how
the experience is produced are unique to Yoga, as they are unique to every other flow activity, from fly-fishing to racing a Formula One car. As the product of cultural forces that occurred only once in history, the way of Yoga bears the stamp of the time and place in which it was created. Whether Yoga is a “better” way to foster optimal experience than others cannot be decided on its own merits alone—one must consider the opportunity costs involved in the practice, and compare them with alternative options. Is the control that Yoga makes possible worth the investment of psychic energy that learning its discipline requires?

Another set of Eastern disciplines that have become popular recently in the West are the so-called “martial arts.” There are many variations of these, and each year a new one seems to arrive. They include judo, jujitsu, kung fu, karate, tae kwon do, aikido, T’ai Chi ch’uan—all forms of unarmed combat that originated in China—and kendō (fencing), kyūudō (archery), and ninjutsu, which are more closely associated with Japan.

These martial arts were influenced by Taoism and by Zen Buddhism, and thus they also emphasize consciousness-controlling skills. Instead of focusing exclusively on physical performance, as Western martial arts do, the Eastern variety is directed toward improving the mental and spiritual state of the practitioner. The warrior strives to reach the point where he can act with lightning speed against opponents, without having to think or reason about the best defensive or offensive moves to make. Those who can perform it well claim that fighting becomes a joyous artistic performance, during which the everyday experience of duality between mind and body is transformed into a harmonious one-pointedness of mind. Here again, it seems appropriate to think of the martial arts as a specific form of flow.

FLOW THROUGH THE SENSES: THE JOYS OF SEEING

It is easy to accept the fact that sports, sex, and even Yoga can be enjoyable. But few people step beyond these physical activities to explore the almost unlimited capacities of the other organs of the body, even though any information that the nervous system can recognize lends itself to rich and varied flow experiences.

Seeing, for instance, is most often used simply as a distant sensing system, to keep from stepping on the cat, or to find the car keys. Occasionally people stop to “feast their eyes” when a particularly gorgeous sight happens to appear in front of them, but they do not cultivate systematically the potential of their vision. Visual skills, however, can provide constant access to enjoyable experiences. Menander, the classical poet, well expressed the pleasure we can derive from just watching nature: “The sun that lights us all, the stars, the sea, the train of clouds, the spark of fire—if you live a hundred years or only a few, you can never see anything higher than them.” The visual arts are one of the best training grounds for developing these skills. Here are some descriptions by people versed in the arts about the sensation of really being able to
see
. The first recalls an almost Zen-like encounter with a favorite painting, and emphasizes the sudden epiphany of order that seems to arise from seeing a work that embodies visual harmony: “There is that wonderful Cézanne ‘Bathers’ in the Philadelphia Museum…which…gives you in one glance that great sense of a scheme, not necessarily rational, but that things come together…. [That] is the way in which the work of art allows you to have a sudden appreciation of, an understanding of the world. That may mean your place in it, that may mean what bathers on the side of a river on a summer day are all about…that may mean the ability to suddenly let go of ourselves and understand our connection to the world….”

Another viewer describes the unsettling physical dimension of the aesthetic flow experience, which resembles the shock a body feels when diving into a pool of cold water:

When I see works that come close to my heart, that I think are really fine, I have the strangest reaction: which is not always exhilarating, it is sort of like being hit in the stomach. Feeling a little nauseous. It’s just this sort of completely overwhelming feeling, which then I have to grope my way out of, calm myself down, and try to approach it scientifically, not with all my antennae vulnerable, open…. What comes to you after looking at it calmly, after you’ve really digested every nuance and every little thread, is the total impact. When you encounter a very great work of art, you just know it and it thrills you in all your senses, not just visually, but sensually and intellectually.

Not only great works of art produce such intense flow experiences; for the trained eye, even the most mundane sights can be delightful. A man who lives in one of Chicago’s suburbs, and takes the elevated train to work every morning, says:

On a day like this, or days when it’s crystal clear, I just sit in the train and look over the roofs of the city, because it’s so fascinating to see the city, to be above it, to be there but not be a part of it, to see these forms and these shapes, these marvelous old buildings, some of which are totally ruined, and, I mean, just the fascination of the thing, the curiosity of it…. I can come in and say, “Coming to work this morning was like coming through a Sheeler precisionist painting.” Because he painted rooftops and things like that in a very crisp, clear style…. It often happens that someone who’s totally wrapped up in a means of visual expression sees the world in those terms. Like a photographer looks at a sky and says, “This is a Kodachrome sky. Way to go, God. You’re almost as good as Kodak.”

Clearly, it takes training to be able to derive this degree of sensory delight from seeing. One must invest quite a bit of psychic energy in looking at beautiful sights and at good art before one can recognize the Sheeler-like quality of a roofscape. But this is true of all flow activities: without cultivating the necessary skills, one cannot expect to take true enjoyment in a pursuit. Compared to several other activities, however, seeing is immediately accessible (although some artists contend that many people have “tin eyes”), so it is a particular pity to let it rest undeveloped.

It might seem like a contradiction that, in the previous section, we have shown how Yoga can induce flow by training the eyes
not
to see, whereas we are now advocating the use of the eyes to make flow happen. This is a contradiction only for those who believe that what is significant is the behavior, rather than the experience to which it leads. It does not matter whether we see or we not-see, as long as we are in control of what is happening to us. The same person can meditate in the morning and shut out all sensory experience, and then look at a great work of art in the afternoon; either way he may be transformed by the same sense of exhilaration.

THE FLOW OF MUSIC

In every known culture, the ordering of sound in ways that please the ear has been used extensively to improve the quality of life. One of the most ancient and perhaps the most popular functions of music is to focus the listeners’ attention on patterns appropriate to a desired mood. So there is music for dancing, for weddings, for funerals, for religious and for patriotic occasions; music that facilitates romance, and music that helps soldiers march in orderly ranks.

When bad times befell the pygmies of the Ituri forest in Central Africa, they assumed that their misfortune was due to the fact that the benevolent forest, which usually provided for all their needs, had accidentally fallen asleep. At that point the leaders of the tribe would dig up the sacred horns buried underground, and blow on them for days and nights on end, in an attempt to wake up the forest, thus restoring the good times.

The way music is used in the Ituri forest is paradigmatic of its function everywhere. The horns may not have awakened the trees, but their familiar sound must have reassured the pygmies that help was on the way, and so they were able to confront the future with confidence. Most of the music that pours out of Walkmans and stereos nowadays answers a similar need. Teenagers, who swing from one threat to their fragile evolving personhood to another in quick succession throughout the day, especially depend on the soothing patterns of sound to restore order in their consciousness. But so do many adults. One policeman told us: “If after a day of making arrests and worrying about getting shot I could not turn on the radio in the car on my way home, I would probably go out of my mind.”

Music, which is organized auditory information, helps organize the mind that attends to it, and therefore reduces psychic entropy, or the disorder we experience when random information interferes with goals. Listening to music wards off boredom and anxiety, and when seriously attended to, it can induce flow experiences.

Some people argue that technological advances have greatly improved the quality of life by making music so easily available. Transistor radios, laser disks, tape decks blare the latest music twenty-four hours a day in crystal-clear recordings. This continuous access to good music is supposed to make our lives much richer. But this kind of argument suffers from the usual confusion between behavior and experience. Listening to recorded music for days on end may or may not be more enjoyable than hearing an hour-long live concert that one had been looking forward to for weeks. It is not the
hearing
that improves life, it is the
listening
. We hear Muzak, but we rarely listen to it, and few could have ever been in flow as a result of it.

As with anything else, to enjoy music one must pay attention to it. To the extent that recording technology makes music too accessible, and therefore taken for granted, it can reduce our ability to derive enjoyment from it. Before the advent of sound recording, a live musical performance retained some of the awe that music engendered when it was still entirely immersed in religious rituals. Even a village dance band, let alone a symphonic orchestra, was a visible reminder of the mysterious skill involved in producing harmonious sounds. One approached the event with heightened expectations, with the awareness that one had to pay close attention because the performance was unique and not to be repeated again.

The audiences at today’s live performances, such as rock concerts, continue to partake in some degree in these ritual elements; there are few other occasions at which large numbers of people witness the same event together, think and feel the same things, and process the same information. Such joint participation produces in an audience the condition Emile Durkheim called “collective effervescence,” or the sense that one belongs to a group with a concrete, real existence. This feeling, Durkheim believed, was at the roots of religious experience. The very conditions of live performance help focus attention on the music, and therefore make it more likely that flow will result at a concert than when one is listening to reproduced sound.

But to argue that live music is innately more enjoyable than recorded music would be just as invalid as arguing the opposite. Any sound can be be a source of enjoyment if attended to properly. In fact, as the Yaqui sorcerer taught the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, even the intervals of silence between sounds, if listened to closely, can be exhilarating.

Many people have impressive record libraries, full of the most exquisite music ever produced, yet they fail to enjoy it. They listen a few times to their recording equipment, marveling at the clarity of the sound it produces, and then forget to listen again until it is time to purchase a more advanced system. Those who make the most of the potential for enjoyment inherent in music, on the other hand, have strategies for turning the experience into flow. They begin by setting aside specific hours for listening. When the time comes, they deepen concentration by dousing the lights, by sitting in a favorite chair, or by following some other ritual that will focus attention. They plan carefully the selection to be played, and formulate specific goals for the session to come.

Listening to music usually starts as a
sensory
experience. At this stage, one responds to the qualities of sound that induce the pleasant physical reactions that are genetically wired into our nervous system. We respond to certain chords that seem to have universal appeal, or to the plaintive cry of the flute, the rousing call of the trumpets. We are particularly sensitive to the rhythm of the drums or the bass, the beat on which rock music rests, and which some contend is supposed to remind the listener of the mother’s throbbing heart first heard in the womb.

The next level of challenge music presents is the
analogic
mode of listening. In this stage, one develops the skill to evoke feelings and images based on the patterns of sound. The mournful saxophone passage recalls the sense of awe one has when watching storm clouds build up over the prairie; the Tchaikovsky piece makes one visualize a sleigh driving through a snowbound forest, with its bells tinkling. Popular songs of course exploit the analogic mode to its fullest by cuing in the listener with lyrics that spell out what mood or what story the music is supposed to represent.

The most complex stage of music listening is the
analytic
one. In this mode attention shifts to the structural elements of music, instead of the sensory or narrative ones. Listening skills at this level involve the ability to recognize the order underlying the work, and the means by which the harmony was achieved. They include the ability to evaluate critically the performance and the acoustics; to compare the piece with earlier and later pieces of the same composer, or with the work of other composers writing at the same time; and to compare the orchestra, conductor, or band with their own earlier and later performances, or with the interpretations of others. Analytic listeners often compare various versions of the same blues song, or sit down to listen with an agenda that might typically be: “Let’s see how von Karajan’s 1975 recording of the second movement of the Seventh Symphony differs from his 1963 recording,” or “I wonder if the brass section of the Chicago Symphony is really better than the Berlin brasses?” Having set such goals, a listener becomes an active experience that provides constant feedback (e.g., “von Karajan has slowed down,”“the Berlin brasses are sharper but less mellow”). As one develops analytic listening skills, the opportunities to enjoy music increase geometrically.

So far we have considered only how flow arises from listening, but even greater rewards are open to those who learn to make music. The civilizing power of Apollo depended on his ability to play the lyre, Pan drove his audiences to frenzy with his pipes, and Orpheus with his music was able to restrain even death. These legends point to the connection between the ability to create harmony in sound and the more general and abstract harmony that underlies the kind of social order we call a civilization. Mindful of that connection, Plato believed that children should be taught music before anything else; in learning to pay attention to graceful rhythms and harmonies their whole consciousness would become ordered.

Our culture seems to have been placing a decreasing emphasis on exposing young children to musical skills. Whenever cuts are to be made in a school’s budget, courses in music (as well as art and physical education) are the first to be eliminated. It is discouraging how these three basic skills, so important for improving the quality of life, are generally considered to be superfluous in the current educational climate. Deprived of serious exposure to music, children grow into teenagers who make up for their early deprivation by investing inordinate amounts of psychic energy into their own music. They form rock groups, buy tapes and records, and generally become captives of a subculture that does not offer many opportunities for making consciousness more complex.

Even when children
are
taught music, the usual problem often arises: too much emphasis is placed on how they perform, and too little on what they experience. Parents who push their children to excel at the violin are generally not interested in whether the children are actually enjoying the playing; they want the child to perform well enough to attract attention, to win prizes, and to end up on the stage of Carnegie Hall. By doing so, they succeed in perverting music into the opposite of what it was designed to be: they turn it into a source of psychic disorder. Parental expectations for musical
behavior
often create great stress, and sometimes a complete breakdown.

Lorin Hollander, who was a child prodigy at the piano and whose perfectionist father played first violin in Toscanini’s orchestra, tells how he used to get lost in ecstasy when playing the piano alone, but how he used to quake in sheer terror when his demanding adult mentors were present. When he was a teenager the fingers of his hands froze during a concert recital, and he could not open his clawed hands for many years thereafter. Some subconscious mechanism below the threshold of his awareness had decided to spare him the constant pain of parental criticism. Now Hollander, recovered from the psychologically induced paralysis, spends much of his time helping other gifted young instrumentalists to enjoy music the way it is meant to be enjoyed.

Although playing an instrument is best learned when young, it is really never too late to start. Some music teachers specialize in adult and older students, and many a successful businessman decides to learn the piano after age fifty. Singing in a choir and playing in an amateur string ensemble are two of the most exhilarating ways to experience the blending of one’s skills with those of others. Personal computers now come with sophisticated software that makes composition easy, and allows one to listen immediately to the orchestration. Learning to produce harmonious sounds is not only enjoyable, but like the mastery of any complex skill, it also helps strengthen the self.