Meditation, Movement, and the Making of Flow

I’m an amateur athlete in the equestrian sport of show jumping. Sometimes when I’m on-course with a horse, something special happens: thought disappears, time stretches or shrinks, and my body just knows what to do. There’s no conscious effort- just sensation, intuition, and movement. This feeling has been described by many athletes and was named “flow state” by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. It’s an amazing feeling, especially when shared with another being, which is the unique magic of equestrian sports.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

In the last couple of years, as I’ve built a consistent meditation practice, I started experiencing a similar feeling- timelessness, presence, effortlessness. But instead of moving through space with my horse, I was sitting in stillness. The feeling in my brain and body was nearly identical. That caught my attention.

And it made me wonder: What is this state? And why does meditation seem to make it more accessible?

At first, I dug into the science of flow and meditation. There’s clear overlap- changes in brain activity, nervous system shifts, neurotransmitter releases. But as much as I love science, what I really wanted to know was: How can I get there more often?

That’s when I realized that I was already using a tool that both explained my experience and gave me a map to continue to develop it- Polyvagal Theory. In short, Polyvagal Theory provides a roadmap for increasing awareness of your internal and external environments and how you are subconsciously responding to them.

Once you build awareness, you might notice when you are in “fight or flight” and how that feels differently in your body from when you are relaxed and enjoying your family or a pet, or when you are “done” after a draining experience. As you begin to notice your sensations in these states, you can then begin to develop tools to restore flexibility and balance if you have a tendency to get stuck in one or another. One of these states is the easeful open to connection feeling we get when we feel safe, and that is what I am developing intentional access to with the meditation practice. When that gets blended with some “fight or flight” energy, it can become the flow state where action becomes effortless and timeless. I’m feeling that more often on my horse because I have grooved a familiar path to flexible easeful open connection by meditating. So this is why meditation is helping my riding. By practicing access to safety and presence in stillness, I’m strengthening my ability to access that same state in motion. The more I build that neurological pathway, the more I spontaneously drop into flow—not just on my horse, but in other areas of life as well. Flow can show up in music, writing, running, dancing, deep conversations-any activity where action and awareness merge. The nervous system patterns are the same. The more we train our system to access presence and flexibility, the more flow happens. I’m sharing this because this is a trainable skill, and it has changed my life. Most people don’t realize that flow isn’t just task-specific skill development or luck-but it is something we can cultivate neurologically. Being human is complicated, but when we learn how to work with our nervous system we can create conditions for ease, connection, and peak performance-not just by accident, but by design.