In November of 2011, I put on a seminar called “The Flow” that is, arguably, the BEST seminar I ever did. I say “arguably” because for years, those who’ve attended my events often marvel at how they “just keep get better and better.”
My answer to this phenomenon is simple: “It’s not that the seminar gets better – it’s that YOU do.”
This truism about life is true of the books you read, the CDs you listen to, even the movies you watch. As you grow and change, the message you may have heard or read before seems to change along with you.
But even so, as much as I’d like to use my stock answer, I really can say that “The Flow” was special.
With less than 30 days to go before show time, I announced the event – and we packed the house. And what a great group of people who gathered together to learn how to get into FLOW on command, day in and day out.
Getting into the Flow – or “the Zone” isn’t difficult. When you’re under stress, when you’ve piled unnecessary pressure upon yourself, when you don’t breathe correctly – well, then it’s very difficult to get into the flow. In fact, you can’t get into the flow when your mind-body is operating in this manner.
Yet, the good news is you can banish all those stresses and tensions along with the non-flow state fairly quickly. And when you do, life takes on an entirely different vibration. You see things differently – and have a sense of being whisked through life, with ease, instead of plodding along a path filled with nothing but boulders, potholes, walls and electrical fences.
A quick gut check can quickly determine if you can enhance your state of flow. Place your right palm on your lower abdomen. Now monitor for a moment how you’re breathing. If you don’t feel your lower belly expanding or contracting, chances are excellent that you’re NOT flowing.
When you’re flowing, you’re in a tensionless state of being. You’re not tensing muscles. You’re not tight, mentally or physically. Think of it, there’s a reason the tai chi masters are incredibly flexible without really training for it. Their bodies are in tensionless flow – and when there’s no tension, how can you have inflexible muscles?
In today’s world, we often think of heaping on the tension in order to make progress. In my book, this is the wrong approach. You get where you’re going faster by eliminating tension.
As Dan Gable once taught me in a camp between my sophomore and junior year in high school, “You need to relax so you can move. You need to relax so you can EXPLODE.”
To be sitting in Gable’s presence when he said this was an eternal blessing. To this day I can still see and hear him saying every word in the sentence in a calm and relaxed voice. But when he got to the word EXPLODE – it was like a bomb went off.
“You need to relax so you can…” – all said in a casual manner, like walking through the park – then without any warning whatsoever, the word “EXPLODE” booms through the gym where he was teaching.
To say the sentence any other way would make it forgettable. Just another line. But to say it with an EXPLOSION on the word EXPLODE – oh my. It literally scares the stupidity out of you.
In Zen, there’s Rinzai, known as the “Master of Shouts.” He woke people up with an electrically charged SHOUT. This is what Gable did for me that day. He woke me up to the importance of being relaxed – and I’ve been improving upon it ever since through my study of both western and eastern methods.
In “The Flow” seminar, you’ll learn how to bring this spirit of relaxation into your life through many different techniques and teachings.
Be on the look out for it as I’ll be launching it this week – and it’ll only be available for a short window of time.
Best,
Matt Furey
