Meditation and Hypnosis

What is flow movement

We say that flow is an altered state of mind where a person loses himself and becomes one with his activity. Flow movement happens when the dancer is in an altered state of mind, where a stream of moves expresses through the dancer, without him needing to think about it.

Looks like flow, but isn’t

By nature, your mind wants to go a path that it has already taken. That is, when dancing, the mind suggests repeating movements that have already been made. It’s tempting because it feels safe and comfortable to stay in the already known world. There is a difference between evolution and innovation. The recombination of existing movements that have already been learned is evolution. But only when movements occur that are not recombinations or derivatives of other already known movements, then the movement is an innovation.

So if the sequence of movements is complex, but with altering elements of the same quality, the dancer is caught in a loop. This is a type of monotony that has the ability, like the rhythm of a drum, to hypnotize a person. The ego will take over the dance completely and every movement is the result of an automatism. The dancer could get lost in the stream of movements that could be mistaken for the “flow state”. But that is not the flow that we want to achieve as freestyle dancers. Falling into automatism is a form of unconscious sleep and what we want is a creative trance that is total awareness.

Be aware of repetitions

A good way to keep yourself from getting caught in a loop is to constantly watch where you are repeating your movements. Of course, you need to do repetitions to practice a movement, but be careful not to repeat it because it feels comfortable. Reinvent your style and your movement qualities again and again. Make an effort to break your own patterns.

“When you dance, your mind suggests repeating moves that you already know, and if you do so, you will be rewarded with a sense of security and comfort. Even if the movement sequence is complex, but with altering elements of the same quality, you are trapped in a loop. You could lose yourself in the stream of movements which could be mistaken as a trance. But what actually happened, is that you got self-hypnotized, which is a totally different thing.”

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