WHAT IS FLOW?
Flow exemplifies “health-first” fitness. It encompasses the full range of human movement, incorporating intuitive awareness, integrating structural alignment, synchronizing breath and allowing movement to become unbound in all its degrees of freedom.
Flow not only opens the body in all of its potential, it challenges the entire system until you reach the pivotal internal event which unlocks flow. In less than an hour movement, you can create the biochemical environment to increase not only your fitness, but your health and wellness as well.
Flow takes you beyond merely building muscle and burning fat. It teaches you how to access Flow in your fitness, and throughout your life.
As a result, this is not a conventional exercise system. Our ability to move through all of the six degrees of freedom in an integrated, efficient manner is mandatory for our health.
Flow enables participation when we are new to exercise, when we are post- rehabilitation and even if we have physical and learning “disabilities.” There is an exercise option and flow sequence available for any fitness level and physical capacity.
But the movements aren’t the point. It’s not being able to move, but rather how we perceive our movement, how we send our awareness to the internal experience of our breath, structure and movement.
It is the internal experience of integrating breath, structure and movement which enables you to tap into this biochemical event which psychologists call the state of “Flow.”
WHY FLOW?
There are two types of forces which improve the health and performance of the human organism: the generation of driving forces – or power output; and the removal of restrictive forces – or decreasing drag.
The driving forces are like the accelerator on your car; and the restrictive forces are like the emergency brake. If you stomp on the accelerator without disengaging the emergency brake, you will have some sort of rapid part failure.
And yet, that is how many fitness systems train their members: to push harder and harder, without considering the many brakes that have engaged during their adaptation to increased power output, and increased life stressors.
All of your fitness efforts will yield more efficient results by removing the internal blockages, impediments and preconditions which stop, slow or injure your ability to safely apply force.
Flow explores all of the potential ranges of motion, by moving through each of the six degrees of freedom, so that as restrictive forces appear, you can disengage them, and maintain optimal flow.
Tabula Rasa: “Clean the Slate”
The first ring of Scott Sonnon’s Circular Strength Training® (CST) System – called “Intuitive Flow Restorative Mobility” – seeks to “clean the slate” by removing the restrictive forces which inhibit your ability to perform efficiently and healthily.
Physiological Differences of Flow:
The key to flow is moving and challenging the body dynamically, so we train whole bodily movement, not individual muscles.
The unique inclusion of the Six Degrees of Freedom (6DOF) in Flow means you will connect your movements into the synchronous patterns we refer to as “flows.” You perform a flow through a continual chain of movement which allows you to tap into the integrated systems of your body: your neurological system, your endocrine system, and your immune system through your myofascial body.
The mental, emotional and physical euphoria associated with this phenomenon is called “flow-state.” The “kinetic chains” (movement sequences, or flows) were designed to stimulate the physiological mechanisms which release that state of optimal human experience.
What makes Flow so singularly successful in this goal is that every single exercise was specifically chosen, crafted and dissected for all fitness levels so that everyone – no matter where you are in your recovery and growth – can open and challenge your anatomical ranges, and thereby unlock this state of flow.
