12. What Darts Taught Me About Meditation And Flow State

Feeling Sound — Episode 12

Finding Flow: What Darts Taught Me About Meditation

is in a minute. So, we've got: 2013

How are you doing? I wanted to make a podcast about something that's actually pretty wild. We recently got a dartboard at home, and I've discovered a genuinely fascinating link between how the brain works when we meditate and what's happening when we play darts. I'm properly excited about this one - I've actually got slightly breathless just starting to make my coffee while we chat about it.

So, as a result of me learning and leaning into the world of darts, I've put together an episode that might blow your mind a little. If you're curious about meditation, maybe you're a pub darts player. Maybe you're a musician too. I'm going to draw the link between all of these things and our nervous system on this episode - a very different kind of episode to what we've been doing.

As I've been making this series, I think what's been really good for me is exploring how the things we look at, like meditation, translate into everyday life. Something I've been working on in my personal practice recently is mantra meditation. If you're not familiar, mantra meditation is the gentle repetition of a word or phrase, without getting too caught up in the meaning behind it. We just gently repeat it, and when we lose focus, we come back to it. It's part of my training to help build focus and concentration, and it works different parts of the brain - like the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.

I'm doing this mantra meditation, along with a couple of other techniques, as I work towards my half marathon in October - my longest ever run. I've only ever done 10ks before, never a half marathon, but I wanted to find out how meditation could help me be a better "athlete" - and I say that with air quotes, because I'm not going to lie, it's going to be a slow plod, but I'm all right with that.

I've previously looked at how meditation can help runners and athletes, but what I hadn't thought about was professional sport - hence, darts. So how did this happen? A few weeks ago, with the team I work with at Riverside, Whaley Bridge, we got together for a Saturday night out in Manchester and went to a place called Flight Club. I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's somewhere you can play darts with a modern twist - electric screens, different games, all of that. I loved it. I loved it so much that a couple of weeks later I took Matt out for a day off, and we went and played again. And we loved it so much that the very next day we found a dartboard and put it up in our living room that same night.

I don't know what it was about darts for me, but I really clicked into the rhythm of it - it's like a waltz, one-two-three - and I just found myself, whenever I was waiting for the kettle to boil or watching adverts on the TV, getting up and throwing a few darts.

What I noticed was that whenever I went to the dartboard, I'd slow my breathing, let my heart rate drop, and lock into this flow and rhythm. For the time I was throwing, I was truly in the present moment - not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future. It reminded me of that feeling so many of us crave when we set out to meditate, and even in sound baths, that sense of freeness and flow we talk about. I was intrigued by how something as simple as throwing three pieces of metal, or plastic, could get me into that state. And I've got to say, that opened a bit of a can of worms.

So here's what I learned about darts. One of the key things is that it's been associated with neuroplasticity - I've talked about this before on the series, where gentle, repetitive actions can actually change the structure of the brain. It can shift things like our fear and stress response. It can do harm too, in the sense that repetition can create addictive behaviours, but it can also be used for good - and that's what we're working towards when we practise something like meditation or sound baths. Neuroplasticity is genuinely part of the darts game: by throwing over and over, we're strengthening our focus and attention. So that feeling of being truly in the moment wasn't imagined - it was me clicking into years of meditation practice, which has started to feel more intuitive, like I can dip into it whenever I need to.

know that the term came from: 1975

As a musician, when I play my instruments, I'm so in the moment too. Some of you have been to my sessions in person, and you'll know how much I love playing the gongs and the other instruments - I lean right into that passion and expressionism, and for that period, nothing else matters. I'm not thinking about the bins, or that I forgot to get bread from Tesco. All of that just goes.

I originally trained as a classical violinist - grade 8 - and I never really considered that my musical training could translate to something like the oche, the line you stand behind at the dartboard. I never really thought about how rhythm and musicality could influence other parts of life until I started pulling all these strings together for this episode. So, let's come back to the idea of repetition.

So how does that translate to a meditative state? Think about mantra meditation - repeating a word gently, and coming back to it whenever the mind wanders. This is where it can really quieten things like the default mode network. You know that feeling when your mind is noisy, or you're overwhelmed, or totally overstimulated? That's the default mode network being loud. This gentle repetition, this focus on a single word, can really help - it doesn't have to be a big meaningful word, it could just be something like calm, peace, or focus. It's especially helpful when we first set out to practise, because as a beginner, it's hard to just sit there with nothing to do. It's a bit like walking up to a dartboard and just looking at it, thinking: what do I look at, how do I stand, what do I hold? It's the same kind of uncertainty. So mantra meditation is a helpful way in if you're new to this world, or if you want to improve your dart game - more on that in a bit.

When we do these gentle repetitions, we're exercising the part of the brain that's the control centre for attention and decision-making, staying on task - the prefrontal cortex, which I talk about often on this podcast. This type of meditation also engages the motor cortex, the part that automates habits and actions. Think about learning to drive - these days it's mostly automatic, but I learned on a manual, and I didn't even have a car to practise on. I learned to drive by visualising - I didn't realise that's what I was doing at eighteen, but I visualised, over and over, the feel of the clutch, the accelerator, the gear stick in my hand, and that rhythm: clutch down, change gear, bring the clutch up, accelerator down, clutch down again into third. That kind of rhythm you just know. This is down to a deep brain region called the putamen, which automates so many of these actions.

Even something like making my coffee has its own rhythm - grinding the beans fresh (I know, I'm a bit of a snob, even though the machine only cost a hundred quid from Argos), giving it a blast and a clean, frothing the milk, cleaning the frothy bit, getting the order right - coffee in, hot water, then the frothy milk. These are habits we don't even realise we have, but years of gentle repetition make them feel completely natural. It's the same with mantra meditation and darts - who'd have thought it? So, what other techniques have we got?

That's a big part of why I do this series - to make sure people know there are always options, and it's about finding what works for you, rather than taking a meditation technique off the shelf because someone told you it's what you should do. I'm more about exploring and playing, finding what feels good and when. Sometimes you need two or three techniques up your sleeve, to know what to use and when.

Another repetitive technique is focusing on the breath - the breath in, the breath out, gently resting your attention there. Notice where it comes in, where your body moves - is it your chest, your belly? Notice the temperature and sensation, coming in through your nostrils and leaving your mouth. You can count the breath up to ten, or label it as you breathe in and out - that's one of the most secular, simple beginner practices people talk about, and it can just mean following your breath at your own pace, rather than doing structured box breathing (in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four). Sometimes it's just about being with your breath as it is. Over time, you'll find your breath and heart rate naturally slow, and your out-breath gets longer as you become more relaxed. Breath is always a great place to come back to.

A walking meditation, or moving meditation, is great if you're not mobile or don't have the use of your legs in the way you'd need for something full-body - it's about slowly moving in sync with your breath, or just finding a rhythm. Walking really gets me into that flow state - just the feeling of one foot moving after the other, holding my focus on that sensation, noticing whether I speed up or slow down. You might notice where you're holding tension in your hands or shoulders, and let it relax as you rest your awareness on the movement. Even just moving your hands - stretching your palm, bringing one finger in at a time, then stretching each one back out - these gentle repetitions and stretches are really good for us.

If you're someone who struggles with sitting still - and I work with a lot of people who have ADHD - that stillness isn't always a great entry point. That's where syncing breath and movement with gentle walks, or using the hands, touch, comes in. These are things I'm bringing into my own personal practice too - this isn't just something I'm telling you about, it's something I work at myself. I don't profess to be a master of meditation.

I've done this for over a decade now - it must be about twelve years that I've really given meditation a proper go. But I'm always looking at what I need to work on, and which technique might help. That's the idea behind doing mantra meditation on my recovery days while training for the half marathon - in some ways, I was training for the event without resting my body physically, but I was training my mind. So that's something worth thinking about if there's an area of your work, a hobby, or something you'd like to get a little better at or develop - that's something we could potentially explore together. These little nuggets of information add up - a bit like a Formula One car, just being a hundredth of a second better.

So there we go. We've talked about this focus muscle, neuroplasticity, flow state, different parts of the brain, the prefrontal cortex - always seems to get a mention on this podcast - and nervous system regulation, this idea of helping us switch into a more relaxed state through rhythm and mindfulness. I think there's really only one thing left to do to finish this off. We talk about moving from that fight-or-flight state, the sympathetic nervous system, into the parasympathetic nervous system - that's what we're really after, isn't it?

Imagine I'm on the World Darts Championship stage right now. Can you imagine how nervous you'd be? How could you not be in fight-or-flight? And yet these simple actions - drawing your focus, taking a few deep breaths, relaxing your body, lengthening the out-breath - and... boom. Oh my goodness, that's just outside the outer bullseye! Okay - I've got it. You've got to do it three times to be sure it's not a fluke, haven't you? Okay, I got eleven - still really in the centre, though. Oh, treble twelve! That's not a bad throw at all.

So, how simple is that? Thinking about rhythm, using my musicality and this flow state to translate into another part of my life, and how darts is ultimately helping me regulate my nervous system and chill the heck out. I hope this has given you a different perspective on why I'm so passionate about this, and how meditation, and the benefits of it, can genuinely be fun and impactful.

I'll let you chill out and listen to the sound of the sea in the Shruti box, and I'll be back very soon. See you in a bit.