There’s a great book by Jonah Lehrer called “How We Decide” which talks about how people who are well-practiced at something (experts, if you will) do much better when they don’t think about what they are doing but let their inner knowledge of their task take over…as other comments have suggested, I think that’s the essence of “the zone”.

No matter where you catch “the zone”, there’s one universal truth about it I’ve found – you feel like a million bucks afterwards!

Tazs last blog post..All I Really Need to Know I Learned From My Raid Leaders

I have on many occasion felt that during the frantic raid healings i’ve done i felt that time drastically slows down. The excitement and adrenaline rush i felt was fun when things end up well and the boss spews loot from every orifice, but its also such a crushing feeling when you’re in that “zone” where your senses are on overdrive your reflexes are super human yet in the end it wasn’t good enough.

Matticuss last blog post..The Zen of Healing

After a few failed attempts, we pulled and within the first minute our paladin died. But DPS was through the roof on the fight, after the collective “oh no!” on vent, RL called out “Just keep going!!” And I suddenly found myself solo healing the whole thing. Frozen Blows were nothing, Tank healing felt simple… and somehow we got the achievement with 9 people alive.

I totally felt “in the zone” there, dodging ice, flash freeze, and keeping the whole raid topped off. Definitely one of my proudest moments

I dont have any rituals myself, I just head in there and pewpew heals. although I do find myself playing better when I have game sounds on, I hate playing without them.

I do want to thank you for chiming in with a great comment and with fantastic information regarding the topic. Thank you.

In the Zen tradition, meditation, or zazen, is simply being present with what is. Sitting in meditation, you focus your attention on your breath and you simply notice whatever appears in your mind or body without judgement. If you’re bored, you notice that. If you’re angry, you notice that. If your legs hurt, you notice that. Then you return your attention to the breath. If you lose yourself in daydreams, you notice that, wake up, and then return to your breath. Meditation is hard. It’s often uncomfortable, and one doesn’t always feel good when it’s over. All this to say that meditation is a far-cry from being in the zone or intuitive during an encounter. I tend to find the focus on being present with what is more when someone is being a complete asshole during a raid or the raid is repeatedly falling apart and sucking on an encounter. I feel the heat of anger arising and I try to just let it be rather than react in anger myself. Of course I don’t always succeed, and frustration sometimes gets the better of me, but that’s the intention.

Enlightenment experiences are very different from their pop culture reputation as some magical, mystical experience. They’re sometimes called openings, and they can be neither pleasant nor calming, especially at first. Imagine one’s whole sense of self or I collapsing, falling apart, breaking down into emptiness. Sometimes they might feel invigorating, but more often they’re puzzling, and they can feel downright terrifying when you haven’t experienced one before. They’re not really the focus of a Zen practice anyway, meditation is. Being present with oneself, day after day, year after year. It’s about learning how your mind interacts with the world so that in your daily life, you can react not from a limited sense of self, but from a place of true compassion and openness regardless of what is happening.

I also find that intuition can be a misleading word and concept. Intuition is not something that you magically have, like intelligence or beauty, it’s something that you acquire through much hard work, practice, failure, and mistakes. If you’re playing football or an instrument for the first time, it doesn’t matter how intuitive you might be, you’re going to suck at it. It’s only through months of practice and many boring repetitions that you refine the basic skills of any activity. At first, you have to do small tasks and analyze/overthink everything. It feels downright awkward. Then, gradually, you don’t need to think as much, you find that you know what to do because you’ve practiced the basic skills so many times before.

I think one of the great points you bring out in your article is that teamwork is also something you practice over time, something that becomes intuitive. If you threw six of the best healers together for the first time and put them before a challenging encounter, they might do okay, but more than likely they will not, and they certainly won’t have a moment of flow like the one you described on Vezax. But, if they had been healing together for a long time and had learned how the other healers react and play, then they’d know how to adjust to support each other under changing circumstances. When that becomes intuitive and doesn’t need to be called out on vent, you have a true healing corps, and that’s something to be treasured. But it’s the endpoint of a long process of practice and failure together, not something that can be magically found at the drop of a hat.

Rituals are great. There are many psychological studies that show how associating items or rituals with particular activities and mindsets can help the mind recall them later. For example, if you’re studying for a tough exam, it’s a good idea to use a particular pen or water bottle or whatever. Then bring this to the exam and it will actually help you recall the subject matter more easily. But all this is not necessarily the same thing as Zen.

Regardless of what raid we are doing, I always have my Death Metal on.

Healing + Metal = love

It’s a nice fuzzy feeling.

“It’s almost a Great Unknown that only a healer can understand. We analyze, adapt, and perform on very short notice. The way that a lot of healers think can be the same or very similar and we’re used to interpreting what other people are going to do, so it comes easily to us.”

More so than any type of inner Zen, is the ability to quickly react to the situation, based on what the other 4-5 of your counterparts are going to go.

When it all falls into place…Zen!

Caness last blog post..Yogg