On Finding Uneven Ground

Welcome to Khwan wanderings where every edition, I reflect on one principle and how it relates to the breath. To start us off, I’ll dive straight in with a memory from a pivotal time not so long ago before reflecting on the concept of Yu and the elusive state of flow.

On Hitting The Ground Running

Let me share a not very instructive moment from an intense season of my life. Last year, I flew back to Bangkok to care for a sick parent. My days passed in a blur, trying to continue working for a client online while spending most days at the hospital. I took tense zoom meetings from waiting rooms and Google translate diagnosis explanations from Thai to English. I could count the hours of sleep I got each night on one hand. Safe to say my mind was far from present, particularly one morning crossing the street to catch a ride.

As I stepped off the sidewalk my foot landed on a slanted surface, my ankle bent with a pop and I fell inches from oncoming traffic. The characteristic pain of a sprain immediately shot up my leg. I couldn’t walk properly but I had places to be. No mindfulness, just pushing through. Did I get it checked? Absolutely not. The injury took a full 10 months to heal properly. I now know that I much prefer being aware of my surroundings than trying to check my route on my phone or running alternative scenarios in my head.

That Which Wasn’t Beneath My Feet

This anecdote came to mind when reading about the concept of Yu in Taoism. In his seminal book Flow, author Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi likens Yu to “walking without touching the ground”, a state adjacent to that of flow. I will circle back to this enticing image – particularly when having to deal with Bangkok’s treacherous sidewalks – in a minute.

In 2024, a critique of the seminal book shed light on how flow may find resonance today. In their position paper, Why isn’t flow flowing? Metatheoretical issues in explanations of flow, Farrokh and colleagues pointed out that Cziksentmihalyi examined flow as an exclusively internal occurrence. The basis: autotelic (intrinsically rewarding) activities optimised by adequate levels of skill and challenge, clear goals and unambiguous feedback. In this light, walking definitely offers a runway to flow – have you tried walking backwards or in a perfect circle like a show pony?

Going Inward vs. Getting Out There

Drawing from ecological psychology, Farrokh and his colleagues propose that flow derives from both a match between the individual’s skill and the activity, but cannot exist without the unambiguous relationship with their environment. They go even further, bridging the pivotal role of safety with states of flow in activities like rock climbing and surfing. Whether it’s scaling a cliff face or being immersed in moving masses of water, attaining flow implies a sharp perception of the surrounding outside world.

Of this relationship between an individual and what surrounds them, Farrokh and his colleagues write of affordance, first coined by J.J. Gibson in 2014. I attempt to explain the logic as follows: a moment offers you an experience regardless of your own ability to be present to it.

When put in the context of our chaotic world, I find the idea of affordance extremely relevant. We can’t reach flow by clicking our fingers, but we can drop in and out of safety during most daily situations. Because if our nervous system remains constantly wired for survival, we will apply that lens to the outer world. When we are not trying to survive, fend off danger or avoid unequivocal threats, we can drop down into a state of balance with safety at its core.

The breath serves as a go in between, from the outside to the inside, and back. As such, it also carries our ability to reach autotelic experiences. An active and mindful breath practice has helped me to establish that sense of safety, untangling perceived threats from tangible ones. So much so that I want to share this competence with others.

A Competence That Makes Us More Human

Shifting our relationship to a situation is an underrated superpower – one that is indistinguishable from the human experience. In recent years, a sequence of opportunities for affordance have helped me fine tune this skill over time. When we are able to relate with the outside world in a manner that is both curious, generous and graceful, it is our experience of life that we get to redesign.

I knew that how I felt about an event, and how I made sense of it, determined my reaction to it. I also knew that creating a pause would give me the time and space to respond with more awareness. But I couldn’t feel it viscerally and there were more misses than hits at the beginning.

Then I realised that it came down to the very story I told myself, and the felt sense I attached to it. Once I noticed how heavily the bundle of information I had created around a situation diminished my sense of agency, things started to evolve. Difficult events didn’t feel as heavy, and joyful ones took on a lasting depth ; they even felt different.

Changing how I relate to my environment gave me the ability to face to unforeseen, complex and immutable situations with less apprehension. Don’t get me wrong, I still react in ways I wish I wouldn’t sometimes. We live in a continuous state of contradiction. What matters more now is that once the storm has passed, I’m able to remind myself of those qualities and even reverse engineer in case a similar situation happens again. And I strive to give others that same perspective.

Image by Alfred Schrock via Unsplash.

Is Yu still relevant today?

More than ever! Between threading hot uneven concrete and a smooth grassy lawn, which one would you choose? In one instance, we’d be inflicting burning pain to our soles whilst trying not to stub a toe or two, in the other we’d be enjoying the simple pleasure of our feet “touching grass”.

If the state of flow requires a balanced combination of difficulty and mastery, the hot concrete constitutes more fertile ground.

Seen through the lens of affordance, both grass and concrete are needed to offer a balanced perspective.

Luckily, our lives will most likely provide both metaphorical grounds. As I’ve learnt, wins and losses, effort and comfort, aren’t always where we think they are. More often than not, they reveal themselves as moving targets and surprise us.

Breathing Through It

You know how they say to catch your breath? Strong advice seldom taken – but also incomplete. Putting our attention on our breath connects us to the here and now, you get a chance to do so every inhale and exhale. Breathing practices offer a pathway to our nervous system, to regulate it and get back to a balanced state. While the mind and the body require the exchange of oxygen and CO2 to survive, modalities like breathwork can also help us interact with both the outside and our inner world in a way words can’t.

Have you ever tried to dig out a stone and realised it was only the visible part of a much larger boulder? It’s kind of like that. On days where I have reached a goal to my practice (release a rumination or ease stubborn neck pain), I’ve ended up somewhere else entirely. Often, interacting with my breath takes me much deeper.

While walking without touching the ground may be awfully seductive at times, I’m more inclined to meandering, whether it’s with your feet or by simply taking one breath after another.