Describing the Experience of Flow during Musical Improvisation with a Client

P5: …My sense of being in that experience with the client…. it’s almost like that’s the magic of music therapy. If I can use that word in a not…you know, cheap way. It’s like, actually the meaningful part …what makes music therapy so distinct.

This is an extract of what participant 5 said when asked to describe the experience of flow during musical improvisation with a client.

Participant 4 touched upon many elements when describing flow (see full quote in Section 10.5 in Appendix). He starts out by saying:

Flow
 Describing
the
 experience
of
4low
 during
musical
 improvisation
with
a
 client
 The
Music
 Frequency
of
Flow
 Experiences
in
Clinical
 Improvisation
 Therapist
 Flow
as
a
Music
 Therapist
vs.
Flow
as
a
 Musician
 Control
and
 Awareness

 Clinical
Intention
 Working
 Therapeutically

 Relationship
 Shared
or
Individual
 Experience?
 Therapeutic
 implications


P4:...I suppose, very simplistically, this idea of not being stuck. Of…being carried along somehow, so it’s not me deciding what note to play next, but somehow the music happens, and I feel carried along by it …rather then me doing the music all the time. And a bit of both I suppose.

Int: mhm

P4: does that make sense? Int: em, yeah…

Being stuck is about being “fixed in a particular position or unable to move or be moved” (COED, 2006, p. 1416). Here he describes an experience by stating what it is not. The opposite of being stuck is to be loose or detached. He continues by saying he feels “carried along”. Being carried implies being supported and/or being moved. Carried “along”, he says - “somehow”. He is supported and moved, and he does not seem to understand exactly how. The music happens, or partly does itself. I found this interesting and asked:

Int: …so you’re sort of carried away? By the music?

P4: …Not being carried away but carried along. I suppose it’s bit like a river …and instead of there being no current in the river and you doing all the work, there’s all of a sudden some current that helps you progress. I guess.

The metaphor of the river is interesting, and is also mentioned in the literature about flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993). Being carried by the current in a river could be frightening, but that is not the impression created here. Participant 4 describes feeling taken care of and no need to struggle to defy the current. The current helps him, and he does not seem to completely understand where this current came from. But he is not worried:

Int: …so you feel like you have sort of control of the situation? As you described it as a river, and not…

P4: I think…I’m not out of control. I’m not, cause that would be scary. It’s not …frightening.

Here participant 4 touches upon an important aspect of the flow experience; it seems like the participants had difficulties describing and defining their feeling of control when

experiencing flow. This will be further elaborated in Section 5.2.2.

There seems to be some ambivalence connected to more than one of the properties that the participants attribute to the flow experience. This applies to the aspect of control, and also to the aspect of pleasure that participant 4 continue to talk about:

P4: But there’s a kind of ease, that comes from feeling that I’m part of something more than me somehow, that the music is doing something and I’m enjoying it. There’s certainly a pleasure aspect to it.

The aspect of pleasure is central in flow theory, and there is some ambivalence connected to it. In some situations it may be appropriate, or even just what is needed, but can this feeling of enjoyment sometimes be counterproductive? This will be further elaborated in Section 5.2.1. Participant 4 continues his descriptions:

P4: And sometimes there’s a sense of being able to do things you didn’t realize you could. Or things are happening that you didn’t realize would happen.

Here participant 4 talks about experiencing himself in a different way, expanding his

expectations of himself and the music he is able to make. This is a very interesting aspect, and it will be further discussed in Section 6.3. Participant 4 summarizes his reflections:

P4: …I can think, for me in music therapy, of situations where I’ve kind of found myself playing in a style, being able to sustain style, which I didn’t think I could. And it has something to do with my understanding of flow, because I find myself in this river of ragtime or whatever, and it just kind of happens and it keeps me going rather than me keeping it going.

The participants’ descriptions vary in terms of focus. There are elements that are mentioned by several participants, and some that are unique to one of them. We have already seen some of the elements in the flow experience, and they will be systematically elaborated and

discussed.

The aspect of time is an important one when trying to describe the experience of flow. Participant 1 says:

P1: You kind of loose the sense of time in a way, when you are …very deeply engaged in the music making.

All the participants were asked about the experience or sense of time when in flow, and the answers were somewhat similar. Participant 3 described time as “standing still” or being “frozen”, and others used words as “flexible” (Participant 5), “suspended” (Participant 2), Participant 2 and 4 talked about having a “reduced awareness of time”. Participant 2 proposes that maybe time becomes less important when the focus is very much in the present moment:

P2: …I think that’s because I’m just personally feeling very much in the present and therefore the time sort of becomes irrelevant, because our experience is just

happening right now, and that’s the focus.

Participant 4 associates the changed sense of time with flow, and also with something generally musical. He calls it “a musical experience of time”, and explains:

P4: …that could work either way. It could be that you feel like you had an amazing experience in a short time, or it could be surprising that you spent twenty minutes in this thing that didn’t seem to take that long at all. I think it does change your

perception of time. It’s just different from clock time. I guess it’s that chronos kairos thing …the different experiences of time.

“Chronos” and “kairos” describes two versions of time: Chronos is the objective time that is measured in seconds, minutes etc. Kairos is the subjective experience of time and may be perceived differently from chronos (Trondalen, 2004, Stensæth, 2008a). The distorted sense of time is something that is significant to the flow experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1988a, 1993), and supports the assumption that these participants are speaking of the type of flow that was defined by Csikszentmihalyi (1975)18.