"Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel and perform our best".

As many of you know, the topic of flow and its deeper implications are subjects I have spoken about on many occasions in this podcast – and in today’s episode we dive into what is a fascinating area. Steven Kotler is a New York Times best-selling author and executive director of the Flow Research Collective.

Steven has spent decades exploring flow and working out ways for people – from elite athletes and Navy seals through to your everyday man and woman – to hack their way into 'the zone'. As well as being about flow and how to get in to it, this episode is also about peak ageing and performance, and is full of actionable insights, tips and hacks.

In this episode we discuss:

• How the feats of extreme athletes in the 90s informed Steven's decades of work on Flow
• How Flow is a trillion dollar industry - we pay to watch it and love to experience it
• Flow underpins peak performance - and peak ageing
• Why accessing Flow is so crucial as we age (think inflammation & stress and Flow's direct anti-ageing properties)
• How Flow can increase the speed of learning by as much as 500%
• Flow & releasing the 5 Potent Reward chemicals
• Steven's Peak Performance ageing experiment
• The Four Stage Cycle of getting into Flow
• Deliberate Practice v Deliberate Play
• Understanding Allostatic Load - the cumulative burden of stress & life events
• How to do a Flow Walk
• Friction that gets in the way of Flow
• Understanding Flow Triggers

The Flow Research Collective: https://www.flowresearchcollective.com/

Steven's website & book Gnar Country 'Growing Old, Staying Rad': https://www.stevenkotler.com/book-pages/gnar-country

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