By Bob Behull

Editor's Note: Behull, normally an economist, lives in Hong Kong. For more by this author, visit www.bobbehull.wordpress.com.

NEAR A TELEVISION SCREEN -- Some weeks ago, when randomly surfing the TV channels with nothing in mind other than an itch for some diversion while chomping down a hastily-cooked beef stew, I came across a rare treat. It was a documentary about a surfer. His name I missed entirely. At the time, it was immaterial. 

Before me on the screen appeared a swirling, twisting figure wrapped in a sweeping arc of water, his (webbed?) feet on the crest of the waves. My auditory and savoury senses seemed to shut down. While I watched spellbound, the TV narrator's drone receded into the background. Morsels of untasted food waited half-chewed in my mouth. Images dancing on the retinas of my eyes held me in a trance.

Riding the Waves

The surfer rose and fell, surging, flowing, turning and veering in tempo with a rolling water-mountain. He looked small against the giant waves in full swell, their jaws a wicked curl engulfing his torso. Yet for reasons both obvious and obscure, he wasn't dwarfed by the whirlpool churning all around him.

The sea whipped up a storm, sending 80-foot waves to crash down against this bronze Viking. My surfer took that as a beckoning call. Without missing a beat, he cut in to meet the waves, his knees bent to keep low, body leaning at an impossible slant. It was a breathtaking moment when grace, miracle and magic colluded as he glided across the roaring waves. As the swell subsided, he eased off in a semi-circular swing, not unlike a matador who has eluded a rampant bull's charge, ready for the next round of assault.   

In my eyes, he was a blurred, slippery form, an ocean-cat treading on cascading sheets of water, coaxing it to accept his water-jig as part of its motion. No harm would come to him. However long he rode the sea -- I lost track of time -- he was in a state of grace, almost immortal.

I have seen surfing before, even daring stunts that elicit all the usual superlatives. But this was no circus act. After recovering from the initial jolt, I tried to make sense of what I saw. At first, I attributed my heightened reaction to an instance when the mind, in full alertness, eagerly sucked in the images and mischievously went into overdrive with neurons racing.

To be sure, receptiveness played a part in my awe, but it was more, a stunning feat at once foreign, yet not off the map. Foreign because I, a landlubber, have never surfed and don't have a clue about the mechanics of water sports. But something about him -- the majestic grace, effortless ease and calm focus with which he rose to meet whatever came at him – looked familiar. Once I recognised that, something clicked in my head, and other great sportsmen sprang to mind.

The Maestro

I imagined a parade of the icons of our time, too numerous to list. Footballer Pele, for one, had the same qualities. Commonly seen as the best all-round player ever, this Brazilian legend mesmerised legions of fans with his dazzling displays. People said he was blessed with the gift of genius, his silky skills a fortuitous result of disciplined training and good genes. Not many understood his game or how he conjured up magic, so beautiful, yet simple and direct.

Besides sweat and genius, Pele ranked as special because he totally focused on his play. I don't mean an ordinary sense of mental concentration, but rather a total immersion one enters into effortlessly without knowing how. When Pele was on-form, his whole being was engaged, as shown in his moves on the pitch – maybe a measured pass into space for a winger to fetch, a jiggle to give himself space to shoot, or a sprint past defenders before driving the ball into the net.

With Pele in full swing -- he consistently played in that blessed way – his every atom stayed in tune with what happened near him. This heightened consciousness is not an extra-sensory perception, a drug-induced or mystical state. It comes naturally to a person fully absorbed in actions in the here and now.

Being truly focused makes a world of difference. Often it sets the world-beating athletes apart from competitors by allowing them to perform at their best. It unlocks new possibilities. A privileged few then reach deep into the well-spring of life.

Being fully focused provides a window to another dimension, a vista forever off-limits to non-members. That is how certain individuals respond creatively to any challenge, leaving the familiar territory of training manuals to improvise on the fly.

One feat in a World Cup match always stands out in my mind. It suggests the deep repertoire that Pele drew upon and what a player at the peak of his powers can achieve. The set-up was simple. A Brazilian midfielder lofted the ball into the penalty area. The odds didn't look good as two defenders shadowing Pele stood a good three inches taller than the lone attacker. That didn't stop him from launching a perfectly-timed jump to soar, eagle-like, above them.

For several seconds, he hung in mid-air, gravity humbled. Just when he might have headed the ball, Pele did the unthinkable by somehow arching his back to receive the ball on his chest, his body still several feet off the ground. The ball bounced languidly off him to bob past the defenders before dropping into the considerable space he had gained.

With the defenders caught completely out of the play, the rest looked easy. Swooping back to earth, Pele closed in and stabbed the ball past a helpless goalkeeper in a classic piece of football history. This feat, aesthetically beautiful and exhilarating, seared permanently into my memory.

For the uninitiated, it was a wonderful goal, pure eye-candy resulting from sheer athleticism and superb ball-juggling. Surely, it was just one of many tricks thanks to Pele's unique skills, right? Yes, it was all of the above and more.

Ad-Libbing

Even more remarkable than the wonderful display of gymnastics and ball-control was Pele's off-the-cuff response. A firm believer in simplicity, he wasn't an exhibitionist. He didn't opt for the spectacular to show off. He must have sensed that his angle didn't favor a direct aerial stab at goal.

What would you do? Lesser mortals would stick to their training and go for a header, hoping for the best. Not Pele! The maestro chose the path of least resistance. Improvising, he let the ball do the work. As usual, it turned out to be the right move. Pele pulled it off not due to training, but because he played in a different dimension.

Likewise, the surfer had glided in that rarefied way amid ocean waves. This wasn't a choreographed water-ballet. The treacherous sea would wreck rehearsed maneuvers, no matter how well planned and practised. Continuously, he made spontaneous mini-movements – a stance adjustment, a slight body twist, an easing of leg muscles at a crucial moment, all this plus myriad other moves known only to seasoned surfers -- that responded to the ferocious waves and kept him afloat. His consciousness stayed in harmony with what happened around him. He was in a state of flow.

Pele and the surfer are not the only people privy to such extraordinary experiences. Many elite athletes and sportsmen stumble on the same thing. In the past 30 years, hushed whispers in locker rooms about the mystifying experience have grown into common knowledge among pundits.

Not to be outdone, sport psychologists studied the “curious phenomenon” and even coined a phrase for it. Someone who breaks into the heightened state of consciousness is “in the zone".

No New Age fad, this is very real for those who have basked in the zone. Ken Robinson sums up the experience in his book, The Element: “We become focused and intent. We live in the moment. We become lost in the experience and perform at our peak. Our breathing changes, our minds merge with our bodies, and we feel ourselves drawn effortlessly into the heart of the Element.” 

In the Zone

Top athletes hesitate to discuss this athletic nirvana, as if referring to the “personal” experience would break the enchantment. When they do, it's often in reverential tones. For professional high-flyers, it is the only faith worth keeping. Many of the best athletes are cult devotees of the zone.

In a study of elite athletes and zone experiences, psychologists Janet Young and Michelle Pain found that “athletes recalled these special moments during sport participation as salient, highly valued and extremely meaningful”.

But the person who launched zone psychology is Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi. In a seminal work, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he writes “of a state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, and [people] want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake.” What he calls “flow” (and others call being in the zone) “happens when psychic energy -- or attention -- is invested in [a] realistic goal". In pursuing it, “a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else”.

The characteristics of flow, as experienced by people worldwide regardless of race and gender, include deep concentration, exceptional performance, emotional buoyancy, heightened sense of mastery, lack of self-consciousness and self-transcendence. Flow is significant because it “obliterates all else out of consciousness", according to Csikszentimihalyi. “It is the state of self-actualisation or transcendental behavior.”

For those unfamiliar with the zone, the lack of self-consciousness may be puzzling, but it is reported by all who have visited there. In Zen in the Art of Archery, German philosopher Eugen Herrigel explains the experience: “The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realised only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art.”

Physical exertion is not the only way to access the zone. Others have found it through physically passive activities like painting, writing, playing music, meditation and even math! Still, it appears that sports are how the most people cross the threshold.

Although researchers focus on top athletes, the zone is not completely off-limits to mere mortals. At some points in our lives, some of us accidentally hit upon the experience. I still vividly remember some extraordinary moments when playing soccer, the game I loved. It always began with a relaxed state of mind, playing purely for enjoyment and nothing else. Free of anxieties, mind and body somehow would work as one to focus on the present, on the ball and what needs to be done. It was never forced. I didn't snap my fingers and will the zone to come along. But when I was lucky enough to be in the zone, it was football paradise because every movement, every action was natural, intuitive, pure and perfect. (This isn't intended to trumpet my sports skills. It's merely an account of my experience of being in the zone.)

Anything Is Possible

For instance, 30-yard passes invariably landed at the feet of a galloping teammate. The precision often looked uncanny, as if machine-measured. But there was no conscious intent to aim the pass, much less to work out the geometry and motion of the ball and players.

It happened almost automatically. Amid the chaos of darting movements, I would look up, see the forward running through the middle and, spotting a space just beyond the defensive wall, let fly the ball. As if guided by an invisible force, it unfailingly reached the target. It wasn't the conscious mind imposing its command and deciding how to make it work. The obtrusive ego, the pesky “I” that intrudes into everything in our wakeful moments, didn't even get a glimpse.

On such occasions, when the mind and body merged as one, almost every move proved just right. With the ball at my feet, I improvised freely, doing what was needed. Sometimes that produced unorthodox, inventive play. Techniques not found in training manuals, skills I didn't even know were in my repertoire, rolled off my feet in the heat of play.

Actions were purely spontaneous, without conscious mediation (as distinct from conditioned, habitual reflexes). If play dictated going past the defenders and curling a shot on the 25-yard line, then it would be done, simply and effortlessly. I was a channel to transmit the flow of play. It was nirvana on a football pitch.

When a person is in the zone, almost anything is possible. Everything gets as easy as pie. Despite the glorious passes and all the goals scored, I didn't feel a tinge of pride. I played without self-consciousness. Of course, I didn't get into the zone in every match (I wished I did). But it happened often enough, probably because I had an intense passion for football. To gain admission to the zone, you must love the game.

The only other sport in which I experienced the blissful flow was table tennis, but only once, many moons ago, when I played in a school competition. That match remains fresh in my memory. Early on, I trailed by several points.

Ping-Pong Perfection

Then for no apparent reason, it happened. The ball and the game became the centre of my universe. There was nothing else. I paid no heed to the noise and the umpire keeping score. There was just the ball, my opponent and I in a cosseted space.

I wasn't playing to win, but simply hitting every ball the best I could. The focus was scary because I hardly missed a shot. It was a self-transcending moment and must have been unnerving for the other kid. The tide soon changed, and I led, although the score didn't matter to me at the time.

My opponent tried hustling my game by varying the pace. It didn't work. He even played to my forehand to tempt me into making hurried shots. That didn't do any good either. I returned everything he hit at me, blocking his shots or firing top spins to go on the offensive. Every shot had precision and verve. It was faultless table tennis. Everything flowed.

Then my opponent's game fell apart, and the final result made the match look easy. Never before had I beaten that rival, a regular playmate after school and my equal in every respect, by such a big margin. The umpire, the undefeated champion of our school, congratulated me. Looking concerned, he asked, “Who are you?” Coming out of a trance-like state, I mumbled a reply.

Three days later, I played in the quarter-finals against an adversary I used to beat regularly. It ended badly for me. The night before, I had fantasised about reaching the next round. “I had to win,” I told myself. In the match, my jitters got in the way. I played abominably, making countless errors. There was no trace of the sparkling earlier performance. My game was rushed, uninspired and lifeless. Predictably, I lost. The reason was obvious: I came nowhere near the zone and never found it again. In table tennis, it was a once-in-a lifetime experience, an unsolved mystery.

Zone Mechanics

While the zone has entered our lexicon, explaining how it works remains difficult. Words are ill-equipped to pin down a purely existential experience, one outside of daily conventions and language. What follows is, at best, an awkward attempt at rationalisation.

A game, or any activity, has distinct rhythms and energy. If you can zero in on that and merge with it, you have a perfect fit. When you are so drawn into the game that you become a channel, your internal energy becomes part of the flow. William Blake, the 18th-century poet, painter and visionary, once wrote somewhat cryptically, “Energy is eternal delight.” What he had in mind was not physical energy, but something far bigger.

A player or athlete in the zone gets in touch with his core. He taps into a primal source of energy, the inexhaustible spring that breathes life into everything. The liberating experience sets him free to transcend his limitations, and the outcome, naturally, is breathtaking performance.

All this is an after-the-fact account. When you are in the zone, you don't stop to dwell on what you experience. If you do, you soon find yourself shut out. Being detached and questioning is not how to stay in the zone. Self-consciousness is an enemy. That may have led to Michael Jordan's downfall. At the height of his career, he was a man on fire, a basketball demigod. In the first game of the 1992 National Basketball Association finals, he sank six straight three-point shots. “In that moment,” sports writer Andrew Cooper notes, “it appeared as though even he was overwhelmed by the immensity of his gift.... And that was the giveaway. He had become self-conscious, and so he had lost that edge, that intensity of concentration.... Even for Michael Jordan, visiting hours on Olympus are limited.”       

For top athletes, getting locked out of the zone resembles professional suicide. In an age obsessed with winning and success, that is worse than purgatory. Often forgotten is that the zone is about much more than achieving peak performances and victory. It is a portal for us to cross over to the other side, to glimpse the sublime landscape beyond, of what is possible when we soar above our drab selves.

Although this aspect of sports gets shoved aside in modern culture, it drew people in ages past -- from the athletes of ancient Greece to the Shaolin monks and martial-arts masters -- to pursue excellence. They understood that the zone is the essence of athletic experience and that, as Cooper puts it, “sports are a theater for enacting the drama of self-transcendence”.   

The Philosopher Warrior

Almost no one knew this better than Bruce Lee, the kung-fu icon still worshipped by millions of followers worldwide 40 years after his premature demise. In his time, vocabulary for the zone didn't even exist, but constantly he exhorted others to be fluid, to act spontaneously.

According to Lee, “A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking yet, not dreaming, ready for whatever may come.... To have no technique, there is no opponent, because the word ‘I’ does not exist. When the opponent expands, I contract, and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, ‘I’ do not hit, ‘It’ hits all by itself.”

Most people associate kung fu with a stylised set of lethal techniques, a form to be unleashed on an opponent. But Lee talked of a return to simplicity, about having no technique: “Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.”

That may seem paradoxical, but Lee referred to the spontaneity that comes with the zone. A person in that state is poised to act freely. In Lee's words, he is “using no way as a way, using no limitations as a limitation”. Arduous training remains necessary. You can't simply improvise without a complete mastery of basic moves and techniques.

Lee drew much of his home-brewed street-fighting wisdom from Taoism, the arcane Chinese philosophy that stretches back thousands of years. Like the Taoist forebears, he was emphatic about casting off the shackles of norms, conventions and rules. “When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical (read conventional) man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the shadow -- you are not understanding yourself.”

What is the ultimate in the departure from set patterns and ideas? For Lee, that must be fluidity, a form that can't be categorised or pinned down. Moving from this premise, the philosopher warrior offers the following counsel: “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless -- like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

The Elusive Path

What does it mean to be formless? The question dissolves once you are in the zone for that's what you have become, a being freed from fixed forms. Lee's ideas apply not just to martial arts, but to other sports and even life. What he didn't and couldn't say is how to get into the zone.

Lee wasn't being evasive. No one can take you into the promised land. In Tao Te Ching, an ancient Taoist text, Lao Tzu begins by saying, “The Tao (the path) that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” For the next 5,000 characters, the Chinese sage rides an allegorical carousel, alluding to the Tao, but never quite saying what the path or way is. Evidently, enlightenment in life – like the zone in sports – eludes intellectual grasp. If the zone is a place, you must find it yourself. No one can draw a map.

That doesn't stop legions of sport psychologists from trying. In the United States, where athletic prowess buys the American dream, an entire industry serves the wishes of athletes for permanent places in the zone. Much of it is pseudo-science.

Because it is so lucrative, an army of quacks does well, selling services and psychological aids. On the Internet, I see many products advertised – for example, DVDs titled Sports Psychology, Hypnosis for Golfers. Baseball players can order 101 Ways to Break a Hitting Slump for just US$129.95. This suggests modern miracles without clumsy participation by the divine, Viagra for those unable to penetrate the zone.

Whether it works is another matter. To be fair, the focus of top sport psychologists on mental preparation is valid. Done properly, it is as important as physical training. Removing stress, for instance, clears stumbling blocks. But restoring psychological balance tells just half the story. The rest is about reaching a state of intense focus. That's the thing: no amount of visualisation or meditation can produce self-transcendence. No psychologist can wave a wand to summon the zone.

Does that mean athletes can do nothing except hope? Not quite. Although entering the zone is largely accidental, some activities, to paraphrase a Zen master, make you more accident-prone. You can prepare by engaging in such activities.

As Cooper says, readiness depends on cultivating three components: skill, devotion and immersion. These preconditions must be satisfied to enter the zone:

-- The athlete must have mastered the core skills to be equal to the task;

-- He or she wholeheartedly must love and commit to the sport;

-- Immersion is likely only if the other two conditions are met. With complete mastery, an athlete can anchor the conscious mind in technique so as to distract it from making “noise”. Passion for the sport is a precursor to enjoyment and hence absorption in the activity.