FIND YOUR FLOW WITH IRIS
You know the moment when you feel ‘in the zone’?
Everything is clicking – you are focused and fully absorbed in what you are doing. Time flies by and you find the experience so rewarding and positive. You feel that you were simply at your best, but you can’t quite put your finger on how you got there?
Psychologists say that you’re in the ‘flow state’ and IRIS has created the technology to help you to get there – through immersive sound.
Professor J Bhattacharya
Goldsmiths, University of London
What is ‘flow’ state?
Imagine for a moment that you are running a race. Your attention is focused on the movements of your body, the power of your muscles, and the force of your lungs.
You are living in the moment, utterly absorbed in the present activity. You’re ‘In Flow’- a state of complete immersion in an activity.
IRIS enables flow
IRIS sound technology activates this potential by engaging your brain through active listening – sound that connects and stimulates biology – enabling you to find your ‘flow’.
Consumer benefit
This immersive sound experience brings neurological benefits; your experience of music and entertainment, your mental wellbeing and your performance levels.
How IRIS enables flow state
3 steps to listen well and feel more alive:
Why should I bother with flow?
Activity is much more rewarding in flow
Flow is related to dopamine, a key neurochemical relevant for learning and reward. The release of endorphins and other neurochemicals during flow state further makes the activity extremely rewarding.
We return to what we enjoy
As we are pleasure-seeking species, performing in flow state is one of the best ways to indulge this side of our personalities, making our desire to return to this state strong.
Helps motivation
Flow is crucially linked with high intrinsic motivation – we like doing for the sake of doing, but not for an external reward. Research has shown that flow experience may help us going when the going gets tough and rough.
Supports learning
When we are fully focused and engaged in an activity, we are able to digest more information but with effortless attention, and return to the activity more successfully, therefore increasing our memory retention in the process. Research shows that students who have higher flow experience tend to show higher learning performances.
Peak experience
Flow is related to peak experience and optimal performance, psychological states of intensely positive, blissful feelings and personal fulfilment.
What are the key markers of flow?
Challenge-skill balance
Feeling competent to meet the current challenge
Clear feedback
Knowing precisely how well we are doing
Loss of self-consciousness
Not worrying what others will think of us
Action-awareness merging
Attention comes effortlessly without thinking
Intense concentration
Being utterly focused on the task
Time distortion
Not being aware that the time flew by
Clear goals
Having a clear sense of what we want to do
Sense of control
A feeling of total control over the task
Intrinsic rewards
Feeling the whole experience to be extremely positive
How IRIS impacts our experience, brain and heart?
We have a richer, absorbing and more fulfilling experience listening to music with IRIS than we do without it.
IRIS stimulates our brain-boosting, high-frequency brain waves (beta, gamma, higher gamma)
Beta wave (13-30Hz)
Beta wave (13-30 Hz) is dominant in our waking state and is active when undertaking cognitive tasks. Beta wave is enhanced when we are alert, attentive and engaged in demanding task, making decisions or trying to focus.
Gamma wave (30-48 Hz)
Gamma wave (30-48 Hz) is associated with alert mental states, active information processing and binding information together in the brain. Gamma wave is enhanced by attention, memory and focus.
Upper gamma wave (52-80 Hz)
Upper gamma wave (52-80 Hz) is less studied but is supposed to be associated with higher cognitive functions such as working memory, language processing, and also suppressing distractions.
IRIS leads to a rewarding state
“IRIS boosts brain’s high frequencies the most over the frontal regions”
Earlier research showed similar brain activity patterns when people viewed their favourite movie trailers, expressed their choices, and consumed their preferred stimuli.
Therefore, IRIS evokes a brain state reflecting higher engagement, preferences, and reward.
IRIS improves motivation and engagement
A higher frontal alpha asymmetry (a neural marker representing approach/withdrawal model of emotion) for IRIS suggests a state with an increased motivational
and engagement.
IRIS improves cardiac health
Heart rate variability (HRV) is the variation in the time between consecutive heartbeats in milliseconds. IRIS is found to boost HRV, and an increased HRV is connected to reduced mortality and an overall improvement in cardiac health.
IRIS induces relaxation
A lower heart rate is an essential factor in maintaining healthy heart rhythm. IRIS leads to a reduction of heart rate, and a lower heart rate is a key marker of a more relaxed state.
Flow by IRIS
With IRIS enhances the engagement and absorption of the music and provides more stimulation of the brain. This, in turn, can lead to a flow-like state for the listener as they are listening more actively – the brain is engaged, focused, motivated and feeling rewarded.
Experiences with flow:
“Music is so important when you’re training, warming up. I have a playlist I listen to when I’m in competition, cooling down, stretching. It varies from Bob Marley to Diplo to Drake to Chris Brown. When I’m in competition I like to hear a lot of bass, a beat. I don’t care about the words too much, I just care about how it makes me feel.”
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