100 • FLOWHere is how some of the dancers describe the sensation of moving on
the floor: “Once I get into it, then I just float along, having fun, just
feeling myself move around.” “I get sort of a physical high from it.
... I get very sweaty, very feverish or sort of ecstatic when everything
is going really well.” “You move about and try to express yourself in
terms of those motions. That’s where it’s at. It’s a body language kind
of communicative medium, in a way.... When it’s going good, I’m really
expressing myself well in terms of the music and in terms of the people
that are out there.”
The enjoyment of dancing is often so intense that people will give
up many other options for its sake. Here is a typical statement from one
of the dancers interviewed by Professor Massimini’s group in Milan,
Italy: “From the very first I wanted to become a professional ballerina.
It has been hard: little money, lots of traveling, and my mother always
complains about my work. But love of the dance has always sustained
me. It is now part of my life, a part of me that I could not live without.”
In this group of sixty professional dancers of marriageable age, only
three were married, and only one had a child; pregnancy was seen as too
great an interference with a career.
But just as with athletics, one certainly need not become a profes
sional to enjoy controlling the expressive potentials of the body. Dilet
tante dancers can have just as much fun, without sacrificing every other
goal for the sake of feeling themselves moving harmoniously.
And there are other forms of expression that use the body as an
instrument: miming and acting, for instance. The popularity of charades
as a parlor game is due to the fact that it allows people to shed for a time
their customary identity, and act out different roles. Even the most silly
and clumsy impersonation can provide an enjoyable relief from the
limitations of everyday patterns of behavior, a glimpse into alternative
modes of being.
Sex as Flow
When people think of enjoyment, usually one of the first things that
comes to mind is sex. This is not surprising, because sexuality is cer
tainly one of the most universally rewarding experiences, surpassed in
its power to motivate perhaps only by the need to survive, to drink,
and to eat. The urge to have sex is so powerful that it can drain
psychic energy away from other necessary goals. Therefore every cul
ture has to invest great efforts in rechanneling and restraining it, and
many complex social institutions exist only in order to regulate this