The three core factors that make Adventure Athletics the top domain for Flow states--Rich Environment, Deep Embodiment and High Consequence. Learn more in our new book, Stealing Fire: The Secret Revolution in Altered States. www.stealingfirebook.com

1. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports
flow in
www.flowgenomeproject.co

2. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / in 140 words
flow in
Adventure Sports (defined as those athletic pursuits involving uncontrolled
natural environments, largely non-motorized propulsion, and threat of serious to
severe consequences) prompt an unusually high incidence of Flow state experiences,
and they elicit the core features of Czikszentmihalyi’s Flow criteria more frequently
and more reliably than other disciplines such as conventional sport or music.
The 3 factors explaining the high Flow of adventure sport are:
 exposure to powerful wild surroundings
 a high degree of physical engagement and mental focus
 serious to fatal consequences
While these factors emerge in literal relief in adventure sports, their insights are
transferable to other domains such as education, healthcare and business. They
can serve as a helpful guideline for designing experiences and programs that prompt
Flow and its associated benefits of accelerated learning, enhanced creativity, focus,
and peak performance across disciplines and populations.

3. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / at a glance
flow in
 neuro-kinesthetic programming
Deep  hedonic engineering
Embodiment  autotelic drive
FLOW
 radical novelty in adventure  peak arousal
 natural sublime sports  immediate feedback
 super-egoic  existential impact
distantiation
Rich Environment High Consequence

4. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / rich environment
flow in
Radical Novelty - unlike the controlled
environments of traditional sports, where
handlers take great pains to ensure that
every court, field, or apparatus conforms
to exacting standards of consistency—the
big mountains, rivers, and oceans of the
world defy grooming. The Alaskan snow-
pack morphs from moment to moment, the
swells breaking at Teahupoo or P’eahi peak
and lurch to their own rhythms. The result?
Constant stimulation and a “never the same
river twice” newness that penalizes the
complacent and rewards the attentive with
heightened shots of dopamine for getting
it exactly right—just when it could all go
horribly wrong.

5. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / rich environment
flow in
Natural Sublime - from the Old
Testament prophets to the 19th century
Romantics like Emerson, Thoreau and
Muir—seekers have always retreated
to “God’s Country” for inspiration and
perspective. The sheer scale, the vastness
and power of a snow-capped mountain
range, giant breaking wave, or thundering
watefall—the geologic sense of Time
where canyons and mountain ranges rise
and fall through eons, and the ephemeral
play of the elements—shooting stars,
sunrises and alpenglow—all combine to
offer adventure athletes moments of
visceral and aesthetic awe and a
simultaneous sense of significance and
insignificance in The Big Scheme.

6. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / rich environment
flow in
Super-Egoic Distantiation - complicated term for a simple
concept. With the growing exception of RedBull media and their imitators,
the majority of great moments in adventure sports occur in solitude, or in
the company of core friends and accomplices. No Jumbotrons, no Twitter
feed, no gossip columns to refract or distort the immediacy of the moment.
Back in the day, Sigmund Freud outlined three components to the human
psyche - the Id (our primal impulse) the Ego (our sense of self) and the
Super-Ego (the collective voice of society). Getting far enough away from
the madding crowd to silence the Super-Ego, has always been a prime
driver of the adventurer - and the reward? Quiet. Inside and out. An
experience that stands on its own merits - unpackaged, commoditized or
mangled by armchair mountaineers or marketers. And maybe, just maybe,
a chance for Original Nature (a Zen term for pure existence, popularized
by Pulitzer winning poet and Dharma Bum mountaineer Gary Snyder) to
rise up in its place. And for proof of the significance of this concept, look
no further than the escalating debate in climbing, surfing and other iconic
backcountry pursuits around the tech-enabled intrusion of the Super-Ego,
from Laird Hamilton’s refusal to compete on the pro surf tour, to Steve House’s
insistence on pure-pursuit alpinism, to the “GoPro Courage” epidemic.

7. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / deep embodiment
flow in
Neuro-Kinesthetic Programming - because
adventure sports require full bodily engagement
in dynamic environments, they promote a degree
of vestibular (bodily balance) and proprioceptive
(awareness of limbs in space) intelligence
rarely seen outside of gymnastics, circus or
martial arts. Constant seeking of the Big Three
Somatic Triggers that are the nectar of gravity
games - zero G, (hucks, off the lips, dynos)
high G (railed berms, bottom turns, and straight-
lines), and Polyaxial Rotation (on/off axis flips
and spins) hones these athletes’ embodied
cognition - the linkage between body and brain -
and creates durable neural networks that
leave these athletes running broadband while
everyone else is still on dialup.

8. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / deep embodiment
flow in
Hedonic Engineering - with its outlaw Bohemian
culture (think Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, Malibu in the
60’s, Yosemite’s Camp IV in the 70’s, or virtually any
ski-town anywhere in the world)—Adventure athletes
remain masters of the art of fine tuning their buzzes.
Some of these efforts can be chalked up to simple youthful
partying, but others, like the infamous Hippie Speedball
(a cocktail of espresso and bong hits) should be seen for
what they also are: precisely calibrated combinations of
stimulants and euphoriants that create an alert
physical self, hyper attuned to sensorimotor inputs, and
free of the chattering distraction of the conscious self -
in other words, locked, loaded, and ready to shred. Add
iPods and earbuds pumping stereophonic tunes that
entrain the brain with driving beats per minute (BPM) and
a vague but distinct affinity for all things Zen, Tao and
Yoga—and you’ve got a potent cocktail that many Flow
hackers routinely knock back just before they drop in.

9. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / deep embodiment
flow in
Autotelic Drive - “Only a surfer knows the feeling
—There are no friends on powder days”. Both of these
bumper sticker aphorisms highlight the simple fact
that once you experience a deep Flow state - getting
barreled in an overhead wave, or floating down a mountain
on a bottomless powder day - you possess a potent felt
sense, a flashing beacon on the map of your lived experience,
of as close to Perfect as many of us will ever get. And we’ll go
to astonishing lengths (like chasing swells around the world,
or winter camping at trailheads for first tracks) and take
enormous risks (injuries, divorces, pink slips) to get back to
the Zone. Compared to the ruthless self-denial and delayed
gratification typical in the “10,000 Hours to Mastery” camp -
the instant and overwhelming gratification of the Flow
state flips the Protestant Work-Ethic on its head - if it feels
that good, do it (and keep doing it) - and by the time you’ve
practiced enough to log even 100 hours of Flow, you’ll have
passed the 10,000 hour mark anyway.

10. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / high consequence
flow in
Peak Arousal - as Samuel Johnson quipped,
“when a man knows he is to be hanged in the
morning, it focuses his mind wonderfully.” No
different than staring down a few thousand
feet below your ski tips, or letting go of the tow
handle at Jaws. Our survival instincts kick in,
norepinephrine floods our system, our vision
sharpens, our heart races, blood shunts from
our extremities, and suddenly, we can move
mountains (or at least make it down them
alive). Adventure athletes have taken our most
primitive urges and rewired them in service of
going Big--From Fight or Flight to Huck and
Hope (and any conventional athlete or artist
who thinks that they actually experienced Peak
Arousal at a free throw line, or in a concert hall
needs to get out more).

11. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / high consequence
flow in
Immediate Feedback - “in the mountains,” NOLS founder Paul Petzoldt observed, “feedback is instant.” Same
with rivers, rocks and oceans. Miss that shot at Madison Square Garden, and the crowd boos. Chunk the solo at the
Kennedy Center and the conductor cuts you off. Not fun, to be sure, but not the same as catching an edge in a no-fall
couloir in Chamonix, or under-rotating a gap jump in Moab. If you get it seriously wrong out there, you die, or have
to quit the game for good. And as the studies on Expert Performance demonstrate - in disciplines with less direct
feedback loops in place - like stock analysis, psychiatry and medicine - even the most revered practitioners get worse
over time, not better. Surgeons, for example, are the only class of physician that actually improve the longer they’re
out of medical school. Why? Because if they cock it up someone dies on their table. A radiologist never knows if he
missed a melanoma. In adventure sports, the laws of physics deliver direct, unmediated feedback straight up. No
judges, no scorecards, no review in the New York Times, or pundits on SportsCenter to make the call. The result?
Rapid, no bullshit learning curves and some extremely fit survivors.

12. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports / high consequence
flow in
Existential Impact - for most of human history, heroes traded
their lives for immortal greatness on the battlefield. The last century
and a half has seen an unprecedented shift from that ancient mano
y mano warrior ethos toward the mano y mouse realities of tech-
buffered warfare. Today, we’re left with very few venues to observe the
best truly putting it all on the line and reaffirm our deepest values in
the attempt (despite the hype and incessant military metaphors of pro-
team sports matchups). Adventure athletes have taken the armor, the
weaponry, and the ethos of the warrior tradition, and refashioned them
to face the giants and dragons of our own time - the Unclimbable, the
Unrideable, the Unfathomable. And every time they cheat Death, they
come back with something immortal to share. That’s why there’s a
different level of respect for Laird Hamilton and Travis Rice than for Kelly
Slater and Shaun White - the latter are masters of the Finite Game. The
former are initiates of the Infinite Game. And that connection to the
bigger story - to the epic - gives them and us a narrative that goes
beyond point tallies, season rankings and endorsements, and offers
hints of more durable truths - tempered by the memories of those brothers
in arms no longer alive to share them.

13. THE
IDEA
BIG adventure sports
flow in
www.flowgenomeproject.co