In the zone of deep, transcendent play there is calm but also alert and focused readiness. Emotions are primed, charged, and ready for release. It is a state actually not unlike a kind of simulated anxiety attack, say researchers, but without the adrenaline and endocrine responses that normally accompany a sense of real emergency. This is the state of mind in which a person becomes so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Awareness to the task at hand acquires a kind of meditative brilliance.
Mindfulness zeroes in like a laser beam.
Everything feels in harmony. In the flow, we feel satisfied. This sense of being almost totally at one with your environment, with yourself in the moment, is perhaps the hallmark of play as a transcendent experience. Think about the tennis player totally focused on every move and strike of his opponent's racquet. This, says Csikszentmihalyi, is the essence of the flow experience.