John Gunst Flow

Flow

-Today we talked about flow, the idea of “being in the zone”. I wanted to use two examples from my life, one physically and one emotionally to help add real life examples of how flow impacts us beyond just the idea. Like everyone feels at one point in there life, I was physically in the zone on a cold November day my sophomore year of high school. I ran cross country, a sport that forces people to push their bodies to the extreme and on that day I had the easy race of my life. It was District race and as a young gun in the program I was running JV. Not much went through my mind as soon as the gun went off and physically I felt like I wasn’t even pushing myself that hard but I was passed person after person I soon realized I was in the front. I won that race, ran a person best and as I recuperated it all hit me. The pain in my legs, the burning in my lungs, everything that comes with running your heart out. That is the most prevalent example in my life of being in the zone, physically. On a more emotional and spiritual level, the example that comes to mind happened in the summer before senior year when I worked at a summer camp in Pennsylvania. Each day we were given two separate one hour breaks. For no real reason, I decided to go for a walk in the woods one day during my break. As I got to the top of one of the camps many large hills I could help but feel the presence of God all around me. The trees swayed all around me and I just sat there on a log for the entire hour just enveloped spiritually. Those are the two key times in my where I’ve been “in the zone” and experienced flow.