THE BODY IN FLOW ■ 95Its worth does not derive from chemical ingredients, or from the neural
wiring that makes information processing possible. What gives it a
preciousness beyond reckoning is the fact that without it there would
be no experiences, and therefore no record of life as we know it. Trying
to attach a market value to the body and its processes is the same as
attempting to put a price tag on life: By what scale can we establish its
worth?
Everything the body can do is potentially enjoyable. Yet many
people ignore this capacity, and use their physical equipment as little as
possible, leaving its ability to provide flow unexploited. When left un
developed, the senses give us chaotic information: an untrained body
moves in random and clumsy ways, an insensitive eye presents ugly or
uninteresting sights, the unmusical ear mainly hears jarring noises, the
coarse palate knows only insipid tastes. If the functions of the body are
left to atrophy, the quality of life becomes merely adequate, and for some
even dismal. But if one takes control of what the body can do, and learns
to impose order on physical sensations, entropy yields to a sense of
enjoyable harmony in consciousness.
The human body is capable of hundreds of separate functions—
seeing, hearing, touching, running, swimming, throwing, catching,
climbing up mountains and climbing down caves, to name only a few—
and to each of these there correspond flow experiences. In every culture,
enjoyable activities have been invented to suit the potentialities of the
body. When a normal physical function, like running, is performed in
a socially designed, goal-directed setting with rules that offer challenges
and require skills, it turns into a flow activity. Whether jogging alone,
racing the clock, running against competition, or—like the Tarahumara
Indians of Mexico, who race hundreds of miles in the mountains during
certain festivals—adding an elaborate ritual dimension to the activity,
the simple act of moving the body across space becomes a source of
complex feedback that provides optimal experience and adds strength
to the self. Each sensory organ, each motor function can be harnessed
to the production of flow.
Before exploring further how physical activity contributes to opti
mal experience, it should be stressed that the body does not produce
flow merely by its movements. The mind is always involved as well. To
get enjoyment from swimming, for instance, one needs to cultivate a set
of appropriate skills, which requires the concentration of attention.
Without the relevant thoughts, motives, and feelings it would be impos
sible to achieve the discipline necessary to learn to swim well enough to
enjoy it. Moreover, because enjoyment takes place in the mind of the