What is Flow?
What is Flowology™?
What is the Flowology Mindset™?
Is poi a meditation or a performance?
How can I be good if someone else is better?
Why use a flow journal?

What is Flow?

Flow is a state of being in which one is consciously transferring energy generated through easy and effective access to one's center.

Temple of Poi artists have said accessing flow can feel ecstatic, expansive, liberating, exhilarating, amazing, healing, peaceful and like oneness with all. They have described it as a a naturally occuring euphoric state of being.

What is Flowology™?

Flowology™ is the study of life. It is the study of living with artistry. It is the study of flow: the study through which one develops the skills, mindset and artistry to more consciously and beautifully transfer energy generated through easy and effective access to their center.

What is the Flowology Mindset™?

At the Temple of Poi, the primary tool we use for this study is the mind. By opening the mind and relaxing into being, the body, mind and spirit can connect to encourage artistic development. The Flowology Mindset™ outlines 3 practices we can use to remind ourselves how to remain open to flow -- in ourselves and in those around us:

• leave your judgment behind
• choose powerful language consciously
• self to self comparisons through time

Is poi a meditation or a performance?

Poi is the art of swinging weighted objects around the artist. Poi can be used as an outlet for self expression as a moving meditation practice, performance experience and/or exercise. The artist decides if the practice is a meditation, a performance, both or neither. Each artist may choose in each moment what they want their poi practice to be and, in each moment, can create different experiences.

How can I be good when there are so many other good artists?

Imagine you are comparing a white lily to a thorny red rose. The lily is "better" than the rose when measured on the scale of thorny being bad and thornless being good. That same red rose is "better" than the white lily when measured on a scale of colorless/white being bad and colorful being good.

They are both beautiful and unique experiences that are simply different. One person may prefer the rose, one person may prefer the lily, and the same person may prefer different ones (or neither!) at different times.

That changes nothing about the rose or the lily. They are still there, being the rose... being the lily.

Why use a flow journal?

If you were going to school to learn how to become a surgeon, you would be studying for many years before you were performing surgery regularly. Along the way, you would have learned concepts and taken note of them so you might review the ideas later, building on them as you progress through school. You would undoubtedly have text books to guide you as well. As a matter of fact, you would likely own dozens of text books and have dozens more you could choose from available to you before you became a surgeon.

The art form of poi a relatively new with few books available. That means that what you are discovering may be lost to you if you don't document it, as you can't easily recapture that information by going to the library and doing some research.

A flow journal allows artists an opportunity to take notes about what they have learned and practiced. In addition to the valuable information, this provides students a historic view of their progress through time and a tangible record of the work they have done to grow and learn. By tracking their progress through time, artists can measure their effectiveness as students and practitioners and use the journal as a tool to help promote more effective learning.

[last updated 050901]