Cannabis & the Flow State – Living life as a Trance Monkey

cannabis and the flow state

Have you ever been in a Flow State? Do you even know what I’m talking about? You know – when you’re “in the zone” or when someone is “hot”?

In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time. - SOURCE

The Flow State in itself has garnered a lot of attention and in essence, is part of the “study of excellence”. It is a means of finding out what makes people be “the best” at what they do – what are the conditions, and how do you achieve this.

While the psychological world calls it “flow” – the concept of “single-minded focus” has been a long for thousands of years under Dao and Buddhist philosophies. While there have been many techniques developed throughout the ages on how to achieve Flow – neuroscience has opened up a new world where we can see the effects of “flow” on our physiology and neurological structures.

The Life of the Trance Monkey

According to psychology, there are a few things you need to enter into Flow which are;

Clear goals that, while challenging, are still attainable

Strong concentration and focused attention

The activity is intrinsically rewarding

Feelings of serenity; a loss of feelings of self-consciousness

Timelessness; a distorted sense of time; feeling so focused on the present that you lose track of time passing

Immediate feedback

Knowing that the task is doable; a balance between skill level and the challenge presented

Feelings of personal control over the situation and the outcome

Lack of awareness of physical needs

Complete focus on the activity itself

While it’s not necessary to have each one of these active – having several of them “active” can induce a state of flow.

But what is flow? It’s a trance…it’s a state that completely envelops your reality and focuses you on a singular action or activity. Understanding the nature of trance allows us to manipulate the conditions mentioned on the list above.

So what is trance all about then? And when do we know when we are in trance? The fact of the matter is that we’re in trance more often than not. When you’re watching TV – you enter into a form of hypnosis. When you’re daydreaming, you’re essentially watching trances in your mind’s eye.

When you remember what happened last week on Tuesday, and see, feel, smell and interact with elements within that memory – you’re in trance.

While this is a very rudimentary explanation of trance states – you can read books on Generative Trance or Deep Trance Identification to become more acquainted with the subject matter.

The big take away is that your life is comprised of memories, images, beliefs, etc – all of which play out as a movie in your head. Sometimes you’re in the driving seat, seeing how it all plays out, and sometimes you are so immersed in your trance that you cannot even realize that you’re in a trance.

Cannabis breaks the spell

One of the things that cannabis does to reality is that it alters it. I’m not saying it makes it different, it makes you perceive it differently. You hear a bassline in a song that you have heard a million times or taste a particular flavor in something that you’ve eaten a hundred times.

Suddenly, you enter into a state of shock and awe. Something is “out of the ordinary” which signals your brain that “there’s a new learning opportunity”. Dopamine is released and neurons begin to access neural pathways to find relevant experiences which it will compute and write a “subconscious response” for.

All of this happens in the blink of an eye – and suddenly, you have an opportunity to break free from your reality filters and venture into a new area of experience. This increases neuroplasticity, it excites the subconscious and suddenly entering into deeper states of trance is a bit easier.

Using Cannabis to Suspend disbelief

There is one thing that the Flow State isn’t congruent with – you can’t “think about it”. Being in Flow means that you are submerged in the experience – there is no room for “pure logical thinking”. It’s like shooting an arrow with a bow – if you think about shooting, you’re going to mess it up. Rather, entering into a “flow state”, a moment of blissful surrender – you can connect with the “whole of the action” and allow the creative subconscious to “flow”.

Cannabis allows you to suspend the “rational thinker” not by turning it off – but by making the brain enter into a state of higher neuroplasticity; it allows the mind to shift into different states of trance.

Become a master of the trances in your brain will allow you to gain more control over how you respond to particular situations. Cannabis – is at no point counterproductive in this kind of work. One could argue it can help break people into deeper trance experiences if done correctly.