What is flow state? Here’s the science behind top athletes' laser focus.
Flow state isn't just for top runners and creatives. Neuroscientists share how to tap into peak focus like a pro.
Steph Davis had reached the halfway point in her ropeless climb up the Sister Superior—a slim, 300-foot-tall natural sandstone tower. Surrounded by miles of red rocks, there was nothing but her grip strength keeping her from falling thousands of feet down into the open desert.
As a professional rock climber, Davis often does free solo climbing, which means leaving her harness and ropes at home. Her plan on this climb, which took place in 2010, was to reach the top, then jump off with a parachute.
As she climbed the tower in southeast Utah, the holds for her hands started getting smaller, and she was getting tired. She felt mentally distracted, and took a moment to pause. Suddenly, a feeling of calm energy washed over her. Her body seemed to take control, bringing her to the top.
(Why a pair of adventurers decided to make their treacherous climb much harder.)
Davis had entered a flow state, an experience that athletes, musicians, scientists, and artists say they tap into when they’re confronting challenging situations. In this state, a person becomes completely engrossed in what they’re doing and achieves a loss of self-consciousness while also feeling completely in control—a mindset that actor Chris Hemsworth leverages in Limitless: Live Better Now (currently streaming on Disney+ and Hulu, and on National Geographic starting August 25). In episode two, the 41-year-old enters a flow state while ascending the Luzzone Dam, an artificial climbing wall in the Swiss Alps that, at approximately 540 feet tall, is the world’s highest.
Though most of us likely don’t find ourselves hanging onto a rock or a climbing wall hundreds to thousands of feet in the air, life’s daily challenges can feel equally insurmountable. Can entering a flow state help push through all the difficulties you might encounter daily? While the mindset is a rewarding experience that comes from taking on life’s hardest tasks, it also requires a certain set of conditions in place in order to be activated.
What is flow state?
In 1975, Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi became fascinated with how artists lost themselves in their work. His research found similar experiences reported by chess players, dancers, mountain climbers, athletes, and musicians. Csíkszentmihályi called the engrossed attention he observed a “flow state” after many people he interviewed said they felt like they were floating and being carried by the flow.
(Your body changes in fascinating ways during the first 10 minutes of exercise.)
Regardless of profession or hobby, the states of mind these people entered all sounded similar. They lost their sense of time, became impervious to pain or fatigue, and achieved a laser focus on what they were doing.
One later report from 1996 asked professional athletes what flow was like. “You're just so absorbed in what you're doing that you're not really aware of what is happening around you,” one tracker runner said. A javelin thrower experienced time slowing down, saying, “When I went to throw it, it was like things were in slow motion, and I could feel the position I was in, and I held my position for a long time."
Based on his interviews, Csíkszentmihályi determined that to enter a flow state, a person first had to have a clear intention in mind; then, they had to be put under pressure, but not too much or too little. People entered flow states when they were pushed to their limits and had the expertise to accomplish their goal.
“It’s a balance between your skills and the challenge,” says Abigail Marsh, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University who worked with Hemsworth on the show.
The science behind the flow state
Over the years, scientists have come up with different theories about what happens in the brain during the flow states. These theories fall into roughly two camps, says John Kounios, a cognitive neuroscientist at Drexel University. Some believe that flow states happen during periods of intense focus, when the brain is exerting more attention and greater effort to exclude everything but the task at hand. An alternate view argues that the brain calms down during flow, rather than ramps up, allowing a person’s skills to take over.
In 2024, Kounios and David Rosen, another cognitive neuroscientist, brought 32 jazz guitarists to a lab to study the location and intensity of electrical activity in the brain while they were in flow. Some of the guitarists were newer at playing, and some had played at an expert level for years. The researchers asked them to improvise solo performances and report back whether they fell into flow states, all while being measured by an electroencephalogram (EEG), which records electrical activity in the brain.
The experienced musicians had a higher number of flow states that were also more intense. The scientists then compared what was happening in the brain when musicians said they had high-flow performances versus low-flow ones, and the difference was notable—there was less activity in the frontal lobes during flow states.
The frontal lobes are responsible for executive processing, which organizes thoughts and behaviors, focuses attention, and forms goals. “If the flow state was a matter of heightened concentration [and] focus, we would have seen greater activity in the frontal lobes when a person was in a state of flow,” Kounios says.
The more experienced musicians also had activity in brain regions associated with hearing and vision during their flow states, while the less experienced musicians didn’t show this activity. Kounious says it was as if the seasoned jazz players had their own brain networks for improvising that they relied upon, while at the same time releasing conscious control in the frontal parts of the brain.
Kounios believes the study's findings show that flow takes place when the brain lets go and expertise takes over. “It doesn't become something you have to consciously, deliberately do,” he says.
How you can achieve a flow state
Some amount of expertise is required for flow, whether it be during something thrilling like rock climbing, or a less intense activity, like building model ships or putting up drywall. As long as a challenge you’re confronting demands that you utilize your expertise, that’s when the flow state can be activated. If you’re attempting a task that you’re not skilled in at all—playing a concerto at Carnegie Hall as a beginner, for example—then you’re more likely to experience frustration or fear instead.
However, there’s no way to rush a flow state—it’s something that comes on its own time. When you first learn a new skill, it’s unlikely you’ll experience flow; but if you turn away at the first sign of challenge or stress, you won’t be able to increase your expertise to tap into those flow states later on.
“The flow state is the reward you get for tackling a difficult challenge,” says Marsh.
You can still be highly focused and engaged in activities without needing to be an expert, however; Kounios calls this absorption. When you see a beautifully shot movie, read the end of a thrilling novel, or even clean out your garage, you might find yourself absorbed.
Rather than chasing after flow, Marsh recommends thinking about what hobbies you genuinely like to do, keeping in mind that flow states are an eventual pleasant side effect of doing these activities that you find valuable and rewarding.
(Your brain shrinks after 40. Learning a musical instrument can reverse it.)
After all, the best way to gain expertise is to take on new and difficult experiences. It’s not satisfying when a climb is too easy, Davis says. “The goal in climbing is to get into the flow state,” though climbers call it “sending.” When she’s climbing at her limit, there’s nothing better than entering flow and reaching her goal.
In Utah, when she reached the top of that summit, “I just had this incredible sense of well-being: Everything's right with the world. Everything feels good," she says. "It’s a very euphoric feeling—you want to stay in that feeling for as long as you can.”
