How To Use Stealing Flow

The Stealing Flow Suite is a diverse and powerful toolkit, and its components may be combined in a number of different ways for a number of situations. My philosophy, as always, is one of open-minded experimentation. As you become familiar with each of the tracks and the way it affects you, you’ll have a better idea of which tracks to use for which purposes. As you use Stealing Flow, we encourage you to share your stories with our community of practitioners on Facebook.

Stealing Flow uses a comprehensive entrainment matrix, which includes isochronic and monaural beats, enabling the tracks to work when played through speakers. However, the effect is substantially more powerful when headphones or earbuds are used, so using headphones or earbuds is our "best practice" recommendation when possible.

Keeping the above in mind, here a few sample suggestions that may help you begin your exploration.

Using Stealing Flow for Creative Work (and The Pomodoro Technique):

1. Begin with Warm-up for the first 25 minutes of your creative period. Before starting the track, establish a clear intention for your creative work. What will you work on? What will you explore? As the track guides your brain waves, allow yourself to run through a “mental rehearsal” of your creative work. See yourself sitting at your desk, standing at your canvas, working at your computer, or performing any task with skill and fluency. (You can also work with any other meditation practice you choose, such as following the breath, using a mantra, circulating chi, focusing on the heart center, and many more.) By starting your creative work period using Warm-up, you will neurologically push your brain waves through the “Struggle Phase” of the Flow cycle, making “Release” into flow easier and more powerful in the next step.
2. When the track finishes, take a 5-minute break. Stretch your legs, drink some water, gather your supplies. (Resist the temptation to surf the web, check your email, or browse social media, as these activities leave a sort of “attention residue” that can detract from your work.)
3. Start the primary Stealing Flow track and begin your process of creation. Allow yourself to jump right in and keep moving, working quickly enough to outrun the inner critic. Using your forward momentum as a “meditation object,” continue returning to your work as often as necessary as the “distraction” of the internal monologue falls away. Trust your intuition and go with the flow.
4. When the track ends, take a 5-minute break. Even if you’re on a roll. Especially if you’re on a roll. Why stop now? Because you’re deep in the process and excited about what you’re doing. Right now, you’re eager to get started again, whereas if you worked until your brain became fatigued, you’d be less likely to continue. So stand up and stretch your legs. Pet your cat. Do some jumping jacks.
5. Repeat steps three and four.
6. Repeat steps three and four again. Now you’ve worked for two hours, and it’s time to take a longer break. Take 15-60 minutes to disconnect and recharge. Have a snack, drink some water, get some sunshine. Try to completely disengage from your project; you’re in the recovery phase. This is also a great time to sit (or lie down) and listen to Relax, Release, Recharge.
7. Advanced: (Use caution if you’re sensitive to entrainment overwhelm; experiment with the tracks first to see how they affect you.) Repeat the process above. Four blocks work/rest, followed by a longer break.

Note I: For any of the work/rest cycles outlined in steps 3 and 4, feel free to substitute High Focus or Breakthrough for the primary Stealing Flow track. Use the right tool for each stage of the process, depending on what you need to do next.

Note II: There’s a productivity method called The Pomodoro Technique, which I’ve found to be incredibly effective. You work in 25-minute blocks, followed by a 5-minute break, and you repeat about four of these cycles. All six tracks of Stealing Flow are 25 minutes long, so you can listen to one, and when the track is over, you take a break, then you come back and do another one, then take a little break. When I was using this technique with my writing, I was able to get a lot more done, with a lot better quality, explore my creativity—I just had better results. So, if anyone is interested in using Stealing Flow that way for work, for study, for whatever you need, it’s already set up as a perfect complement to this type of productivity practice.

Using the Stealing Flow Suite for Meditation:

There are a number of ways to use Stealing Flow as a stand-alone meditation, or as an addition to your current favorite iAwake tracks:

Option 1 -- Meditate with Warm-up, using your meditation practice of choice. Use the breath, the heart center, or the music as a “meditation object,” gently returning your attention when it wanders. This practice helps facilitate “state flexibility,” allowing you to drop into meditation, flow, focus, or relaxation more easily, any time you need to.

Option 2 -- Begin your meditation with Warm-up, as described above. When the track ends, follow it with Relax, Release, Recharge for a deeply rejuvenating and healing meditation.

For more suggestions, see the user manual.

Are these tracks made to be listened to for 3 or 4 hours in a sitting, or are they really powerful and you should just use it one time and keep going, or what do you recommend?

What is the Pomodoro technique and how does it work with Stealing Flow?

 
From the creator, Doug Prater:

Have you ever been so fully engaged in something – a creative practice, a sport, a conversation, a meditation, or even (gasp) your job – that it felt completely effortless? Perhaps your sense of time seemed to fall away, and the hours flew by in what felt like a matter of minutes. Or maybe time slowed down, and every second of your experience came alive in rich and vivid detail? When this happens, our “inner critic” goes silent, freeing us from the doubt and fear that held us back. Action merges with awareness. We trust our intuition. And we experience the richest, most enjoyable moments of our lives.

If you’ve ever experienced what I’m describing, you’ve experienced what psychologists call the “flow” state. Athletes call it “being in the zone”. For experienced meditators, it’s jhana. Characterized by selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness, the flow state helps us perform at our best, live our happiest and most fulfilled lives, and bring our gifts to the world. Most of us have had this experience at some point in our lives. For many, though, this state of flow feels elusive, like the stars need to align under perfect conditions for the experience to unfold.

As a writer, I recognized long ago that entering the flow state allowed me to do my best work. In flow, the words poured onto the screen; my fingertips could hardly keep up. The characters of my stories took on a life of their own, acting entirely of their own accord, often in ways that surprised me. I felt free to trust my intuition and see where the journey led. These moments of flow allowed me to create better work, faster. And they have been some of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

The trouble was, it was a challenge to enter the flow state reliably. There were countless days when, even with a deadline looming, the words wouldn’t come. Self-doubt and perfectionism overcame me, and every labored sentence I wrote lacked “magic”. I needed a tool to help me enter the flow state reliably, when I needed it.

The insight hit me, as I struggled with a manuscript a few years back, that I needed a tool to help me reach the flow state on demand.

I’ve been meditating, composing music, and crafting brainwave entrainment tracks for nearly fifteen years, so creating my own tracks to enter flow felt like the realization of a very personal calling – the nexus of my passions. My new mission took on a life of its own as I began experimenting and testing the tracks. The ultimate crucible, of course, was their usefulness in my own creative and productive work. The program had to be strong enough to override the conscious “resistance” that inevitably shows up when pursuing deeply meaningful work, yet harmonically pleasing and smooth enough to use regularly. After countless iterations, I finally succeeded in “Stealing Flow.”

These tracks are the result of that work. The primary tracks, Stealing Flow – with subtle affirmations and Stealing Flow - clean have been important tools in my own creative work, helping me to enter that place of relaxed, creative attention. They’ve been the muse in my ears for a number of published works. And I hope that they’ll be a powerful tool for you, as well.

The creative process, of course, isn’t limited flow states. And Stealing Flow is far more than a tool for creative work. Bringing our gifts to the world involves an idea generation phase, a highly focused, “convergent” evaluation and polishing phase, and the space to let go and recharge in between bursts of inspired work.

Perhaps the most interesting track of the series is Warm-up. Designed to build mental flexibility and the ability to rapidly shift mental states on demand, Warm-up has proven to be a powerful meditation track in its own right. And, as the iAwake team serendipitously discovered, Warm-up adds an intensely catalytic effect when used as a precursor to meditation with PMP3, Deep Delta, and other iAwake tracks. The Warm-up track alone is, as they say, worth the price of the ticket.

Stealing Flow is something of a departure from iAwake’s traditional offerings of meditative, spiritual, and healing programs. But I believe that it fully aligns with our larger mission of helping people to discover their best selves and bring their gifts and talents into the world.

May these tracks guide and empower you on your journey of discovery and creation.

Blessings,

Doug

Target Brainwaves

Gamma: Energy and focus, bursts of insight, “a-ha!” moments of clarity

Beta: Alertness, attention, motivation, focus

Alpha: Relaxed focus, heightened creativity, stress-release

Flow Zone (alpha/theta border): Selflessness, timeless, effortlessness, richness – peak performance and creativity

Theta: Deep creativity, insight, healing, intuition, access to inner guidance

Delta: Deep meditative, formless awareness, and non-dual consciousness

Track Details

Stealing Flow - with subtle affirmations and Stealing Flow - clean: The track begins with a ramp from 12 Hz Alpha to the 8 Hz Alpha/Theta border (the “flow zone”). Over the course of the track, this target frequency rolls slowly back and forth between 7.5 Hz and 9 Hz, allowing you to find your precise optimal flow frequency. In addition to the alpha/theta “flow zone” entrainment, a more subtle, 48 Hz Gamma helps create moments of “binding consciousness” and bursts of insight, particularly as the entrainment intensity of the gamma “peaks out” above the flow bed at several points in the track.

High Focus: The high focus track begins at 14 Hz Beta and slowly ramps to 30 Hz High Beta. Over the course of the track, the target frequency continues to slowly roll back and forth between 22 Hz and 30 Hz, mirroring the natural cyclic nature of energy, motivation, and intensity of focus. The track concludes at 14 Hz Beta.

Breakthrough: The Breakthrough track targets the theta state, oscillating between 4 Hz and 6 Hz over the course of the session, promoting profound relaxation, access to insight and intuition, and deep creativity. It concludes with a return to relaxed low alpha 10 Hz.

Relax, Release, Recharge: The healing and recharging effects of this track come from the strong, stable entrainment to the Schumann Resonance frequency of 7.83 Hz. This frequency is associated with a number of powerful effects, including relaxation, a sense of grounding, balance and harmony, enhanced rejuvenation, and intuition.

Warm-up: Designed to facilitate versatility and easy shifting between states, Warm-up is a full-brain, all-state experience. The track begins with 12 Hz Alpha, ramping down to 1 Hz Delta. From there, it ramps slowly to 48 Hz Gamma, then back to a relaxed 10 Hz Alpha.

The Music

Forming the musical bed, recorded and triggered samples of double bass, cello, viola, violin, a flute ensemble have been dynamically arpeggiated at a rate consistent with the shifting entrainment frequencies, then carefully filtered to accentuate their naturally rich overtone signatures.

Each note of the primary chord, which makes generous use of soothing “perfect fifths” at the golden mean ratio, is played by a different instrument, providing a rich harmony of overtones working in concert. The sounds were run through a slow decay reverb, tuned to the proper room size that allows the reflection series to reach the ears at the rate of flow-state brainwaves.

On the lower end of the frequency spectrum, a pair of LFO oscillators drive a gate-trigged filter to shape the envelope of the sound. The result is a tonally smooth and highly effective synergy of non-standard entrainment modalities.

Entrainment Technologies

Stealing Flow combines multiple entrainment modalities which work together to enhance its effectiveness.

• Harmonically layered Binaural encoding – Multiple layers of binaural entrainment at harmonically related frequencies
• Frequency-filtered Isochronic Pulses for a powerful, but pleasant entrainment effect.
• Comprehensive Spatial Binaural Encoding of natural sounds for a complete entrainment experience
• Psychoacoustic Resonance in the overtones of the musical bed to promote a natural state of well-being
• Monaural Beats created by the layering of musical patterns at the lower-end of the frequency spectrum
• Generous use of “perfect fifths” at the golden mean ratio for balance, wholeness, and harmony.

Stealing Flow - with subtle affirmations

The Stealing Flow Suite includes two versions of the core Stealing Flow track, one of which contains a series of affirmations subtly layered throughout the stereo field. The affirmations have been mixed at a level that is loud enough to be perceived by your ears, but quiet enough to be masked almost completely by the musical tone bed and natural sounds in the recording. In my research and in my own testing, I have found that this level – above the threshold of hearing but below the threshold of conscious perception – is the ideal level for affirmations of this type. At this level, the affirmations can be perceived by the subconscious mind, where they will be the most helpful, but effectively bypass any conscious resistance to the ideas. (Not to mention, the spoken voices won’t distract you from your work.)

It’s important to note, when working with a recording of this nature, that your subconscious mind cannot and will not be influenced by any suggestion that doesn’t align with your personal values and intentions. While I have made every effort to ensure that these suggestions are helpful, positive, and beneficial, I understand that this added element won’t appeal to everyone. I chose to include this version of the track, which was originally designed for my personal use, because I have found it to be quite helpful in shifting my mindset. However, you always have the option of using Stealing Flow II, which contains music and entrainment (but no affirmations), should you choose to do so.

Below is a sampling of the affirmations in Stealing Flow I, which have been recorded in first, second, and third person tenses.

I easily relax into flow.

My focus is sharp and effortless.

I deeply experience the eternal now.

I trust my insight and intuitive guidance.

I am capable and in my element.

I perform with effortless mastery.

I effortlessly follow my intuition.

I am capable.

I am valuable.

I am enough.

You are a valuable and important part of the world.

It is easy and safe for you to express your feelings and ideas.

It is safe for you to be vulnerable.

You feel happy and peaceful.

Your fear is melting away.

You are courageous.

You take courageous actions.

You are comfortable and relaxed.

You know what to do, and you trust your actions.

You trust your creative flow.

Flow is deep in the present moment.

Immersion is effortless and complete.

Insights come like lightning bolts.

It’s okay to be curious.

It’s okay to be creative and brilliant.

Superior focus is effortless.

Grit and dedication are rewarding.

There is courage and strength in effortless forward motion.

Relaxing into flow is easy and natural.

Flow brings joy and gratitude.

__________________________

NOTE: For full list of affirmations see manual.

I work in a high stress job. You walk in the door at a 1 on the stress level most days right into a 7 or higher. Warm-Up and Breakthrough really prepared me for what I might end up walking in to. Every day is different. I find it worked well with all situations I confronted. –Cynthia Entringer

Creativity is really hacked with this product!  – Scott

All I can say is … something happened, when I tapped into these. I’ve been a writer all my life and have long relied on soundtracks (meaning, music I enjoy) to aid my creative process. And now, thanks to my discovery of Stealing Flow I have “upped my game", especially around the ever-tricky issue of discipline vs. inspiration. I’m currently using the Stealing Flow tracks to kick-start (and continue to support) a focused, productive, and now near-daily writing session. I’m still also using my regular music, but overall, I’m working on bringing the discipline I apply to my ‘corporate side’ to my ‘creative side’, and these tools have been uniquely helpful in that regard. I recommend giving them a try.  -- T.S. Vale, Author

The whole release is gentle and approachable while still being quite sophisticated, and the targeted states are immediately applicable to a wide range of activities that aren't specifically "transformative", so it has the possibility for wide appeal. I could easily recommend to anyone from an athlete to a bedridden invalid, and I would feel confident in saying that both would find it useful. Stealing Flow is an impressive debut, and would be an excellent gateway drug for BWE. I plan to recommend it… – SC

These tracks all do what they state they do. I used them during creative work (producing videopodcasts, emailing etc.) and also during taiji practice. In the latter they were a very pleasant background to practice too - enhancing the present state focus – KM

Warm Up is great as a lead in track to other, deeper brainwave states/tracks. Really enhances their effects. Stealing Flow awesome for everyday use to get a flow going, feel good & confident. Relax very nice to wind down, and blissful if used right after Warm Up. Focus good to hold focus while working. – Heidi Mitchell

I am writing a doctoral dissertation. Found the tracks helped with focus and analysis and creativity. – Heather

Warm up was amazing! It's like caffeine on steroids. – Cynthia Entringer