# Surfing gave Kotler moments of clarity during Lyme disease

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/surfing-gave-kotler-moments-of-clarity-during-lyme-disease/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Steven Kotler](https://realalpha.app/people/steven-kotler/) · Steven Kotler is a bestselling author and executive director of the Flow Research Collective. · Founded the Flow Research Collective and wrote bestsellers including The Rise of Superman and Stealing Fire.
- Host: [Shane Parrish](https://realalpha.app/people/shane-parrish/) · Founder, Farnam Street · Former intelligence agency employee; wrote the bestseller Clear Thinking.
- Show: The Knowledge Project
- Episode: [No.1 Flow Expert: How to Enter Deep Lock-In Mode](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/), Oct 27, 2026
- Moment: 53:24 to 1:00:12 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/surfing-gave-kotler-moments-of-clarity-during-lyme-disease/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3204

## Quote

> “And it felt it was amazing because the best part about it is like **my head was clear**. I could surf. The pain was gone.”
> — [Steven Kotler](https://realalpha.app/people/steven-kotler/) at [56:30](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3390) · The Knowledge Project

## Takeaways

1. Kotler says he was largely bedridden and had little functional capacity.
2. Surfing brought temporary clarity and relief from pain.
3. He connects flow with nervous-system regulation and immune function.

## About this segment

Steven Kotler recounts being severely ill with Lyme disease and finding brief relief and flow while surfing. He describes how he thinks flow may affect the nervous system and immune response.

From “No.1 Flow Expert: How to Enter Deep Lock-In Mode”, Oct 27, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[53:31](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3211) One of the things we have in common is that we both had Lyme. Tell me about your story. It's sort of the second half of my entrance into flow science comes out of this. I had this crazy sort of year of sort of the last year of where I was a journalist. I had a bunch of badass assignments. I went to Africa and lived on the side of a river in Madagascar for a couple of months. I was part of the first National Geographic sand surfing expedition into the Sahara.

[54:01](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3241) Then I did the first biotic survey ever in a slot canyon. It was like all this man stuff. And then I went to a wedding, a friend's wedding in Long Island and went for a walk in the Arboretum because I'm shy around people I don't know. And he was his friends and I didn't know anybody. And I got bit by a tick at a wedding in Long Island. But I lost. I spent three years in bed. I was one of the first cases in California, so they had no idea what it was.

[54:24](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3264) uh, on me and it was no, and nobody could fix me so that I was on drugs, uh, to my stomach lining. I was on doxycycline till my stomach lining started bleeding out. And they were like, we don't know if you're ever going to get better. We're done with you. We can't do anything more for you basically. And, uh, it's so interesting because doxycycline is the, I know it's the drug, but they kept me on it for so long that like now they'll keep you, it's a month or two months.

[54:52](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3292) they kept me on it for a year and a half like which was insane so they it did a lot of bad stuff to me the story i always tell is i was functional like 10 of the time i don't know how sick you got but i couldn't i was really sick yeah my brain stopped working my short-term memory was gone my long-term memory all of it and i couldn't you know walk across the room and after i was going to kill myself i had sleeping pills i had booze i had a plan it was just it was like when not if and i was in la at the time and a friend of mine showed up my dressed up and demanded that we go surfing and i was laughing i was like andrew i can't walk across a room i'm not saying i'm not going surfing and she would not leave my apartment and wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave and wouldn't leave and after like three hours and you know how irritable you are with lime right you have no

[55:39](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3339) reserves um and she really just didn't matter what i said to her she was not leaving and after three hours I was like I give up let's just go surfing today what is the worst that can happen I'm gonna kill myself anyway right so um she took me to the Pacific they gave me a giant board right and surfing the bigger the board the easier it is to surf and it was summer it was a mellow warm day and that people had to like take me by the elbows and lead me out to the break and I was on my board like less than 30 seconds and a wave came I think I took literally all the energy I had in the world and popped my feet and I had no intention like when we went surfing I was like I'm gonna sit out in the sun for an hour and then we're gonna go home I'm not gonna surf that would be insane and impossible and I popped up into a dimension I didn't even know existed I time slowed to an

[56:25](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3385) absolute crawl and I've been flow states before but not a full-blown macro flow state I started to have a an out-of-body experience um and a bunch of other really crazy things happened and And it felt it was amazing because the best part about it is like my head was clear. I could surf. The pain was gone. And it was amazing. four more waves that day and i was i was done and they drove me home and they put me into bed and i didn't move for 14 days people had to bring me food because i couldn't even get to my kitchen i was so destroyed from it and on the 15th day i could walk again i had a neighbor who was a pro surfer a foreign pro surfer and i didn't even know him and i just like knocked on his door and i said hey can you drive me to the beach and i went surfing again and over the course of like

[57:10](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3430) six months i went from about 10 functional to about 80 functional and the only thing i was doing was surfing and coming back being destroyed. And slowly over time, I got healthier and healthier and I was having these wild altered state experiences in the waves. And Lyme, as you know, is only fatal if it gets into your brain. And I'm a hardcore science guy. I'm a rational materialist. I'm having basic quasi-spiritual experiences in the waves. And I think, okay, I might be feeling better, but it's got to be an illusion. The disease is in my brain and I'm clearly dying.

[57:44](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3464) So I lit out on a giant quest to figure out what the hell happened to me. And I had seen flow sort of work earlier in my career with athletes and getting them sort of from zero to superhero. But I didn't exactly know it was flow. We didn't quite know what was going on. It was hard to tell what was flow, what was a quote unquote spiritual experience. The literature was very confusing. The science wasn't there yet.

[58:07](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3487) The neurobiology wasn't done yet. So it was really hard to figure that out. But I, you know, quickly figured out that these states have a name. And from a neuroimmunology perspective, Herb Benson, who sort of at Harvard is the cardiologist who's famous for the relaxation response. He actually mapped the original neurochemistry, the flow cycle. Flow is a four stage cycle. It's not a light switch experience. And he mapped it and he looked at healing. And he has said in his book, The Breakout Principle, that he thinks flow is responsible for most cases of spontaneous healing.

[58:39](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3519) And I think, by the way, that's a massive overstatement, but not for an autoimmune condition. And here's why. As we transition into a flow state, there's a global release of nitric oxide, right? It's a gaseous signaling molecule. You go to the gym and when your lungs open up after about 20 minutes, it gets quiet upstairs, that's nitric oxide. And it pushes stress hormones out of your system. In flow, when you transition into flow, it's a huge nitric oxide release.

[59:03](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3543) So the stress hormones are good stuff in your system, and they're replaced by performance enhancing feel-good neurochemistry. The biggest problem over time with an autoimmune condition is you no longer know where homeostasis is. Your body can't find baseline because it's always bouncing it. So, like, a lot of that is because your nervous system doesn't know where's normal. So by moving into flow and just having the stress hormones pushed out of your system resets the nervous system to baseline.

[59:27](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3567) So the system can sort of the prediction engine brain can start making more accurate predictions again. It brings back agency. It does a whole lot of stuff psychologically and emotionally and physically. And the neurochemistry of flow, dopamine and norepinephrine and serotonin and endamine, all those things boost the immune system. They don't just sort of reset the nervous system and feel good. They're immune system boosters.

[59:52](https://realalpha.app/v/w_p-68aRdmc/?t=3592) This is why flow can often be really healing from especially from autoimmune conditions. And this is now much more well-established back in the 90s. You know, the mind-body connection was still suspicious right back in the 90s.