Revti Vadjikar's Key Ideas from Flow
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

1. Yama: one must achieve restraint from acts and thoughts that might harm others.
2. Niyama: obedience, follow routines in cleanliness, study and obedience to God. Help channel attention into predictable patterns and hence make attention easier to control.
3. Asana: ways of sitting and holding postures for long periods without succumbing to strain or fatigue.
4. Pranayama: breath control, aims to relax the body and stabilizes the rhythm of breathing.
5. Pratyahara: Withdrawal, learning to withdraw attention from outward objects by directing the input of the senses.

6. Dharana : holding on, is the ability to concentrate for long periods on a single stimulus and thus is the mirror image of the earlier stage of pratyahara.

7. Dhyana: one learns to forget the self in uninterrupted concentration that no longer needs the external stimuli of the preceding phase.

8. Samadhi : self collectedness, when the meditator and the object of meditation become as one.

• Keeping order in mind from within is very difficult.
• Person needs external goals, stimulation, feedback to keep attention directed.
• When external input is lacking, attention begins to wander and thoughts become chaotic.

1. Unselfconscious self assurance: the recognition that one's goals may have to be subordinated to a greater entity.

2. Focusing attention on the world: Concentrate on the internal disorder: but by paying attention to what is happening around oneself instead, the destructive effects of stress are lessened.

3. Discovery of new solutions:

a. Focus attention on the obstacles to achieving one's goals and then move them out of the way, thereby restoring harmony in consciousness.

b. To discover whether alternative goals may not be more appropriate and thus find different solutions possible.