An inspired mind is the gateway to future!

Session F: Commanding the elements

During the formative stages of learning a new discipline, the students are seen to be awkward and lacking in any style. After some practice, they move about with grace and confidence as if they are ine with the environment around them.

Fulfillment is the consequence of meeting a meaningful challenge that testifies to our true potentials and reveals aspects of ourselves we may ourselves have been ignorant about.

• Externally, our performance is not influenced by the noise, heat, cold or chaos. Professional athletes are energy personified. Players, musicians or athletes seem to enjoy 'working themselves out' regardless of the conditions surrounding them.
• Internally, they seem to last for ever and never slacken their pace and power. They seem to regain their fitness and mood at the end of such a ritual.
• Technically, they seem to be able to elevate the standards of their performance effortlessly to ever greater heights of excellence under conditions of extreme pressure.
  
• The purpose of session E is to realize such a state of 'flow'.

Abraham Maslow: 'Eupsychia'

• We are all familiar with the word 'Euphoria' meaning, a 'feel good feeling.'
  
• Eupsychia, a word coined by a behavioral scientist named Abraham Maslow, means 'the good mind'.He alludes Eupsicia to a state of 'flow' when we begin to experience resonance at three levels
• Inside: Your body functions to the inner rhythm of the heartbeat.Hitchhikers are often asked to match their footsteps to the beat of the heart.
  
• Outside: Mountain climbers regulate their breathing to the rarefied air as they climb.   Intake of oxygen and 
• Balance: By learning to balance between two worlds, they body beats to a rhythm that is natural and timeless. 
• There appears to be a near harmony and synergy between the rate of outflow of effort and the rate of replenishment of it. In such a state people seem to never tire out; instead, the harder they play themselves out, the greater the reservoir of energy they seem to command. How do they accomplish that?
• Confluence is the state of union of the three dimensions we have been exploring until now. Initially, we were overwhelmed by the immensity of the world around us. 
• Now the world stands subsumed into the ability of the individual to deal with every aspect of change.
• Through steady practice, the science of time and timing had seemingly been perfected to an extend that time appeared to 'stand still' and await their command to serve their desires. Instead of being at the mercy of time and the elements, they seem to be in command of it.

Case study:Negotiating the deep end’:

Sonu enrolled herself for a three week program on swimming. While young children could manage to swim about effortlessly, she was still struggling to stay afloat. Disappointed with herself, she asked the coach to explain her disability. Without saying a word, the coach took her to the deeper end of the pool. He asked her to ‘take a deep breath and hold it.' With that she simply eased herself into water.  Before she could hit the bottom of the pool, making no effort on her own, she found herself beginning to surface up gradually. Before gasping for breath, she found her head safely above water.

Sensing her amazement, the coach commented :

• Although you signed up for swimming, your fear of drowning never allowed you to progress further. You had assumed the deep end to automatically mean the certainty of getting drowned. Hence you stopped short.
• ‘You thought you will choke to death under water. Your fear of drowning kept you from staying afloat; on the contrary, when you surrendered yourself to the water, the buoyancy of water lifted you up, gently.
  
• As long as you assume the water to be your enemy, it remains so. The moment you begin to befriend the world around you, it engulfs you in its care to support you .
  
• By alerting Sonu to the need to ‘challenge the deep’, the coach had helped her establish a rhythm between the her flawless strokes in swimming and the natural buoyancy of water. She experienced weightlessness that energized her to swim for longer hours with heightened enthusiasm.