You Can’t Capture Flow.

You cannot beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its current and use its power as your own.

~ The Ancient One, Dr. Strange

Ahhhh the feeling of flow. Those blissful productive moments when motivation, creativity, and inspiration seem to pour from you like a fountain overflowing with purpose and fulfillment. Flow is something we all crave but it can also be inexplicably fleeting. In fact, oftentimes we get so desperate we literally try to “capture our flow” as if it’s a fugitive running away from us that may never return. But any avid flow-hunter knows that trying to capture your flow is like trying to harness the ocean, an impossibly large and fruitless task resulting in exhaustion and loneliness.

Don’t Force it

What we don’t realize is that flow was never meant to be captured or forced into a box of consistency for us to use whenever we feel like it. Flow was never meant to fulfill our empty needs to be valued and seen as productive or busy. The very reason we love flow is for its unpredictable and powerfully spontaneous nature, sweeping in out of nowhere to give us the final push or epiphany we need. Yet we still try everything in our power to make flow a consistent occurrence.

Consistency by its very nature renounces flow. It seeks to make the ever-moving immovable, the unpredictable predictable. You cannot force flow with logic. You can prepare as much as you like, set the perfect schedule, meditate for hours, eat only the healthiest of foods, and spew love and light out of every orifice of your body and still not get the flow you’re looking for. That’s because flow exists outside the bounds of logic. How do you expect to “capture” something in ecstatic motion with stability and stillness?

The Universe Has a Pulse

Like flow, we were never meant to stay stagnant. Energy moves in pulsations and flow is after all an energy. The universe has a pulse and so do we. Every second of everyday we are experiencing these pulsations of energy in our bodies. It’s in the way our bodies expand with inhales and contract with exhales. It’s in the way our heart rate varies based on what we are doing. It’s in the daily rhythms of waking and sleep, hunger and thirst, satisfaction and striving. The Earth has a pulse. It’s in the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon. It’s in the currents in the rivers and tides in the oceans. It’s in the seasons and the falling of the leaves. That is flow. That is what makes something alive.

The Fastest Way to Kill Creativity

The fastest way to kill your creativity is to try and make it consistent. I see this all the time in my healing sessions, people feeling like they’ve lost their creative spark. Most of the time it’s because they are trying to force it. They want the “spark” to be at their beck and call. Well in that case, that’s no “spark” — that’s a lighter and sooner or later lighters, like people, burn out; they run out of fuel.

Ebb and Flow

That’s because there’s a part of flow we often overlook and that is the phenomenon of the ebb. Ebb and flow are not opposites; they are bound to one another and you cannot have one without the other. Why does ebb get overlooked so easily? Well because it has been deemed boring and a waste of time by our masculine society focused on production. But without ebbs, flows cannot exist. Ebbs are those moments between the waves of flow when the tide recedes back out to sea. They are the moments of rest between creations. They give us the time to reset and witness in awe what we have just birthed into the world. Ebbs keep us in the present before the flows propel us into the future.

So the next time you get frustrated because you can’t force a flow, acknowledge the ebb. Take that time to regather yourself and the energy you need to meet flow the next time it arrives. Sleep in late. Spend more time than usual making dinner. Go outside. Be bored. Read. Do less. Remember it is the receding of the tide that powers the next wave.

Embrace the Ebbs

Embracing the ebb does require a level of trust. We’re afraid that when the flow passes through us that it will never return, but by chasing it we are always one step behind. Energy doesn’t move in straight lines but in waves and circles and corkscrews. We need to trust that by being still, flow will find us the next time it comes back around. Trust that the flow will return just as the seasons will change and the sun will rise. Cherish flow when it comes and cherish the ebbs as they arrive too, for they are the promise of something more powerful coming your way. Relish in the in between. Allow the sparks to fly and in between marvel at the beauty of the night sky.

Ready to find your flow? Book your One-On-One Energy Healing Session. Together we’ll clear out the distractions and get you back into alignment with your genuine self.

As an Energy Healer I use muscle testing, breath work, chakra clearing, and more to connect you to the truth your body is telling you. I work with experienced healers and first time explorers looking to release mental, physical, and emotional blocks that are causing pain. Book your energy healing session here to start your healing journey.