Research on the Flow Experience of Tai Chi Chuan

(1) Objectives Tai Chi Chuan has substantial benets of strengthening the body, helping people to maintain a high level of energy, etc. In this paper, we investigated the experience and psychology state of Tai Chi Chuan exercise. (2) Equipment and methods Based on ow theory, we used semi-structured interviews and Chinese ow state scale 2 (CFSS2) to study the experience and psychology state of college students exercising Tai Chi Chuan. (3) Results In the process of Tai Chi Chuan, there did exist ow experience or a similar mental state. The score of "autotelic experience " dimension increased with exercise years increased, and the increasing time spent on Tai Chi Chuan after class was positively related to the score of "action-awareness merging " and "concentration on the task at hand "dimension. Also, an interaction effect was found.


Abstract (1) Objectives
Tai Chi Chuan has substantial bene ts of strengthening the body, helping people to maintain a high level of energy, etc. In this paper, we investigated the experience and psychology state of Tai Chi Chuan exercise.
(2) Equipment and methods Based on ow theory, we used semi-structured interviews and Chinese ow state scale 2 (CFSS2) to study the experience and psychology state of college students exercising Tai Chi Chuan.
(3) Results In the process of Tai Chi Chuan, there did exist ow experience or a similar mental state. The score of "autotelic experience " dimension increased with exercise years increased, and the increasing time spent on Tai Chi Chuan after class was positively related to the score of "action-awareness merging " and "concentration on the task at hand "dimension. Also, an interaction effect was found.

Introduction
As one of the quintessence of Chinese traditional martial arts, Tai Chi Chuan can strengthen and maintain high level of energy in human body (Sprod et al., 2012). It plays a great role in physical therapy (Kirsteins et al., 1991), relieving depression (Zhang et al., 2018), easing pressure (Sandlund & Norlander, 2000), and improving chronic diseases (Mansky et al., 2006). It is widely loved by people all over the world (Lan et al., 2002). However, most of the current researches on Tai Chi Chuan only focus on the e cacy of it. The researches on the experience of Tai Chi Chuan participants in sports from the perspective of the participants' psychology state are very limited.
The concept of ow in positive psychology is often used to study the experience of athletes and sports participants. The so-called ow is a concept put forward by the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi. It is a state that people deal with manageable challenges by achieving a series of goals, continuously obtaining feedback, and adjusting actions according to feedback. In this state, people will concentrate on the challenge, losing self-awareness and time perception, and do not care about the reward of the challenge, but enjoy the challenge itself (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Csikszentmihalyi classi ed this state into nine dimensions (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), and several ow experience models based on challenge skill were established (Ellis et al., 1994).
Flow theory have been widely adopted in sports psychology research, such as on tennis (Fortes et al., 2019; Koehn, 2013; Koehn et al., 2013), swimming (Larson et al., 2019), E-sports (Hsu & Lu, 2004). For example, Jackson et al. conducted interviews with several high-level skiers. The results showed that when completing high-quality skiing movements, the experience they feel was very similar to the heart ow experience (Jackson & Susan, 1992). Furthermore, Jackson et al. found that the level of ow experience was associated with high level of exercise performance (Stavrou et al., 2007). Sports psychology researchers have also found that hypnosis and target setting could be used to control the generation of ow experience (Pates & Maynard, 2000;Stavrou et al., 2015).
In the early stage, qualitative interview, self-report and experience sampling methodology (ESM) were used to study the ow experience in sports (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987;Scollon et al., 2003). After Jackson developed the ow state scale (FSS) (Jackson & Marsh, 1996), and ow state scale 2 (FSS2) successively (Jackson & Eklund, 2002), the two scales have been widely used in the study of ow experience (Huang et al., 2019;Yanar et al., 2017). However, most of the researches involve the subjects of European and American races, and focus on the world's major sports, such as ball games, swimming, skiing and so on. It is reported that there were differences in ow experience among subjects from different cultural backgrounds (Moneta, 2004). Although Sato introduced the theory of ow experience into the study of Japanese mobs in an early stage (Sato, 1988), there are still limited researches on the ow state of Asian people in the national traditional sports under the background of different cultures.
Grounded theory, which is a classic qualitative research method (El Hussein et al., 2014;Glaser et al., 1968), has been used in the sports psychology related research, such as the study of football career in uencing factors of success (Holt & Dunn, 2004), the resilience of Olympic champions (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012) and the in uence of sports on the positive development of teenagers (Holt et al., 2017). This method has also been adopted in studying ow experience (Pace, 2004).
In this paper, we carried out a study of ow experience in college students who taken Tai Chi Chuan courses based on semi-structured interviews and Chinese ow state scale 2 (CFSS2). We had two hypotheses: In the process of Tai Chi Chuan, there exists ow experience or a similar mental state.
With increasing exercise years and time for Tai Chi Chuan exercise every week, the ow experience of Tai Chi Chuan participants will also increase.
From the perspective of sports psychology, this paper explored the ow experience of Tai Chi Chuan excises, to provide a theoretical basis for the development and research of Tai Chi Chuan. It is suggested that, in a qualitative research, more than 70% research ndings were from the rst six participants, and 12 participants could provide almost 92% of the saturated research ndings (Guest et al., 2006). Therefore, this paper selected 13 interviewees, 9 male and 4 female. All interviewees are college students. Three of them exercised Tai Chi Chuan for less than one year, and were classi ed as beginners. Four of them exercised for 1 to 3 years, and were classi ed as experienced ones. The other six interviewees are with more than 3 years' experience, and were classi ed as rich experience. Table 1 showed the basic information of the interviewees. The explanation of ow experience was: "Flow experience is a kind of experience in which one's attention is completely immersed in the current activity and can control his movement effortlessly. In this state, people do not care about the outcome, but concentrate on ful lling the challenge in front of them. They enjoy the feeling very much. In the process, time seems to be faster (or slower). In the current theory, the concept of ow was divided into nine dimensions: challenge-skill balance, action-awareness merging, clear goals, unambiguous feedback, concentration on the task at hand, sense of control, loss of self-consciousness, time transformation, and autotelic experience." (2) The main contents of the interview are as follows: Based on Liu Hong-bo's research on Tai Chi Chuan (LIU, 2012), ve questions were put forward for interview.
1. Combined with your own experience, talk about your understanding of the ow experience.
2. Have you ever experienced the ow state or a similar state in Tai Chi Chuan? 3. Do you think the practicing time and level of Tai Chi Chuan will affect the generation of ow experience? Please describe your reasons in detail.

When Tai Chi
Chuan is exerting force, it is necessary to control the strength to make it rigid and exible, fast and slow. Do you think this concept has something in common with the concept of "sense of control" in the ow experience? Please describe your reasons in detail. 5. Do you think that the ow experience is like the state of "harmony between human and nature" in Tai  We collected a total of 197 questionnaires from college students who participated in Tai Chi Chuan course. After excluding the invalid questionnaires, such as blank ones, the answers of all "yes", "very Yes" and "very no", or other invalid information, 185 valid questionnaires were used for analysis. The questionnaires was collected immediately after the Tai Chi Chuan activity, so as to minimize the interference (Jackson et al., 2004). The questionnaire was collected in the indoor gymnasium with a suitable temperature (about 24°C) and su cient light, and the subjects were fully warmed up and in good physical condition.

Questionnaire objects
Among the 185 participants, 67 are male and 118 are female, with an average age of 19.26 years old. 88 participants were with less Tai Chi Chuan experience (0-1 years), 58 participants with more experience (1-3 years), and 39 participants with rich experience (more than 3 years).
In terms of the time spent on Tai Chi Chuan every week, 44 participants do not practice Tai Chi Chuan after class. 66 participants spend less than 1 hour every week, 43 participants play Tai Chi Chuan for 1-2 hours, and 32 participants choose to spent more than 2 hours on exercising Tai Chi Chuan.
In the aspect of the time spent on sports other than Tai Chi Chuan, 24 participants do not play any sports after class. 54 participants play sports less than 1 hour every week, and 48 participants have 1-2 hours for sports every week. 59 participants will spend more than 2 hours every week on sports except Tai Chi Chuan.

Ethical statement
All participants were informed of all questions of interview and questionnaire in advance. Written informed consent was obtained before the interview and questionnaire survey conducted. All participants agreed to answer the questions and be recorded. This survey was approved by the ethics committee of the P.E Department of Fuzhou University. It was conducted according to the standards of the ethics committee of the P.E Department of Fuzhou University and laws and regulations on survey of China.

Data analysis
For the content of the interview, we conducted a qualitative study. For the questionnaire data, we rst tested the normal distribution of the data, and then did one-way ANOVA to test the signi cance of the data of nine dimensions in different groups and compared their mean value.

The six categories of ow experience state in Tai Chi Chuan
From the interview, it was found that the feelings of the interviewees in Tai Chi Chuan had a variety of characteristics of ow experience. Based on grounded theory, the interview materials were coded into six categories, i.e., sense of control, concentration on the task at hand, time transformation, autotelic experience, challenge-skill balance, action-awareness merging.

Sense of control
In the ow experience, one of the most important characteristics is the sense of control. People have a high degree of con dence in their tasks and can easily and accurately complete the actions they want to take. The following are the key responses of the interviewees who embody the state. relaxed, but I am also very integrated into the movements I play. I mean, at that time, you will nd that you will deal with some details on the contrary, and the balance is easier to maintain." P5: "Until later, when I put myself into it and avoid the "spiritual entropy", I am able to realize the integration of movements of Tai Chi Chuan, rhythm and music in my mind, which can shield external interference and integrate Tai Chi routine and music in my mind." P6: "The excitement of the challenge gradually decrease, but the feeling of concentration become stronger. Especially for the speed control of cloud hands, I have a clearer experience." P9: "Because when you are skilled in technique, or remember your actions deeply, you are more in pursuing of inner peace than in remembering some actions." From the above quoted responses, we could discover that when the interviewees' pro ciency in Tai Chi Chuan is improved, they could easily reproduce the actions in their memory without deliberately recalling them. They could control their own bodies, ensure the accuracy of their actions, and have a high con dence in their own actions. This was consistent with the concept of "sense of control" in the ow experience.

Concentration on the task at hand
In common sense, the concept of " concentration on the task at hand " is used to describe a high degree of concentration, and it is also a major feature of ow state, including two aspects: no response to external interference and no other subjective thoughts. The following are the key responses of the interviewees who embody the state.
P8: "In this case, the desire of my teammates will not come true. This is a state still fresh in memory. " P13: "Sometimes in the process of boxing practice, there will be a very special state, very focused, focused on their own initiative out of the process of boxing. Most of the time, I may feel tired after practicing for a certain period, and even don't want to persist any more. But in that state, I can't feel tired under the same training time. " P14: "It's easy for me to show myself when I'm on the eld." In the interview, three interviewers mentioned the concentration in the process of Tai Chi Chuan, which could be seen in ordinary practice and competition, and it was di cult to take the initiative to get away from it. In this process, people did not feel tired. They immersed in their own world, not feeling the disturbance from the outside world. It was a very excellent psychological state.

Time transformation
In the ow experience, people often feel that the ow rate of time has changed, a few hours as fast as a few minutes, or a few minutes as eeting as a few seconds. On the contrary, a few minutes seems to have been extended to allow enough time to complete the ongoing activities. They tend to slow down in time. The following were the key responses of the interviewees who embody the state.
P6: "I felt a little tired when I was a child (playing Tai Chi Chuan), but generally speaking, I felt that the ow of time was slowing down (at that time)."P 8: "When practicing Tai Chi Chuan, I don't think time passes quickly. On the contrary, sometimes I think time passes slowly. After each practice, I feel I have practiced for a long time, but when I look at the time, I nd that it is only about half an hour. " P13: "I feel that time goes by very quickly. In fact, after completing the movements, I will nd that it is not the speed of practicing Tai Chi Chuan that has been accelerated, but the psychological feeling that the time has become faster." Similarly, the transformation of subjective time velocity was also re ected in the interviews of different interviewees, which indicated that there was a phenomenon of time transformation in Tai Chi Chuan like ow experience.

Autotelic experience
In the state of ow, people describe this state as very comfortable, painless, feeling very strong and having an endless source of power. The perception of clear feeling is also another element of enjoyment experience and a major feature of ow state. When athletes describe autotelic experience, they feel at the peak state. This experience is the best reward for the hard work of sports. The following are the representative statements of the state. P3: "(In practicing Tai Chi Chuan) Every exercise is a pleasure for me." "In the process of practice, I will constantly experience the comfort of the body." P4: "When playing Tai Chi Chuan, it's basically immersive. I'm totally enjoying the process. It's not too much to say that it's natural and comfortable." P6: "(Tai Chi Chuan training) It is a very comfortable state, and it will make people more immersed in this state, very happy. It becomes a very enjoyable experience for me." P8: "In the process of practice, I will feel my body is oating, and I am not bothered by time and trivia. I will forget all my worries and fears. I enjoy the process (practicing Tai Chi Chuan) very much. " P11: "When practicing Tai Chi Chuan, I can feel that the it is bene cial for my body. It's a very natural state of the body. It's a very comfortable way to experience the expression of the body. I don't feel any pain or discomfort. It's more like a healthy exercise, so that I can feel a very happy feeling in my slow steps. " P13: "I feel that the more I practice, the more I feel the pleasure of relaxation. I don't want to stop." P14: "With the deepening of practice, I can gradually focus on the whole process of practice and enjoy the process." A considerable number of respondents expressed their experience of enjoying Tai Chi Chuan, including "immersive", " oating body", "happy and do not want to stop", and so on, which re ected the interviewees' pursuit and love for this feeling, hoping to experience this state many times, which is consistent with the "autotelic experience" dimension of ow experience.

Challenge-skill balance
One of the essential characteristics of ow state is to achieve a positive balance between the following two elements: the challenges faced by oneself and the skills possessed. In order to experience the ow state, it is not enough to match the challenges and skills, but it is necessary to expand these two elements to reach a new level. Easy victory or failure caused by uneven strength rarely leads to ow state. So, everyone can nd a balance suitable for their current skill level and enter the ow state. The following are the representative statements of the challenge-skill balance concept.
P6: "I was very nervous at that time (when participating in competition), but I didn't feel nervous after I boarded the arena. I was excited and gentle. The excitement is due to the exciting feeling of competition, and the calmness is due to the smoothness of Tai Chi Chuan itself. I think this might be challenge-skill balance." P7: "I have participated Tai Chi Chuan competition before. In fact, I'm not pro cient in playing Tai Chi Chuan. As there were many people watching me at that time, I was still a little nervous. But with this tension, there was a sense of excitement. I think Tai Chi Chuan has given me a new experience, which is exciting but should be played slowly. " Compared with the previous concept, fewer respondents mentioned their own feelings about "challengeskill balance", but all mentioned their feelings when participating in competitions. There was a possibility that the experience of "challenge skill balance" in the ow theory would occur in the competition of Tai Chi Chuan.

Action-awareness merging
Action-awareness merging state can be described as follows: I feel that I am integrated with the ongoing movement, and I am in a state of physical and mental integration. In ow theory, this integration with movement is achieved without effort. In fact, feedback happens spontaneously, as naturally as breathing. In this process, physical and mental operation has reached the limit of individual ability, but it is effortless. The following are the representative statements of the state.
P4: "The action-awareness merging state of the appreciator is to completely integrate myself into the Tai Chi Chuan movement, to achieve the state of "forgetting both things and myself. " P5: "If you are a veteran of Tai Chi Chuan, and you love it from your heart, you will be able to use the electrical signals of your brain to cooperate with the movements of your hands and feet, and you can effectively integrate them." Similarly, fewer respondents mentioned the state of "action-awareness merging ", which may be since it is too close to the state of "concentration on the task at hand".

Summary of qualitative research ndings
From the interview materials, we summarized and re ned six categories related to the dimensions of ow experience, and got the representative responses which could re ect their characteristics. There are three dimensions not mentioned by the interviewees, i.e., "clear goal", " unambiguous feedback" and "loss of self-consciousness". Among them, the rst two dimensions are not clearly re ected. In the question "Do you think that the ow experience is like the state of "harmony between man and nature" in Tai Chi Chuan culture? " Many interviewees mentioned their understanding of the goals and rewards of Tai Chi Chuan, but most of them could not quite grasp the deep meaning. This might be due to the characteristics of Tai Chi Chuan. However, in the evaluation of the latter dimension of "loss of self-consciousness", the interviewees' understanding of this dimension was somewhat confused with other dimensions, which might be the reason why no interviewees mentioned this state.
3.2 Factors in uencing the nine dimensions of ow state 3

.2.1 In uence of exercise years
After the homogeneity test of variance, the signi cance of variance homogeneity of seven dimensions corresponding to the in uencing factors of exercise time was greater than 0.05, and ANOVA test could be used. The results of homogeneity test of variance and ANOVA test of nine dimensions scores in different exercise years groups were shown in Table 2 and Table 3.  (Martin & Cutler, 2002). Only one dimensions was signi cantly increased as the exercise years increased (shown in Figure 1). However, it should be noted that the participants were the college students who taken Tai Chi Chuan course. Their exercise years were the time they accumulated in class, which might be different from the training years of Tai Chi Chuan athletes.

In uence of time spent on Tai Chi Chuan and other sports every week
The exercise years of college students participated in Tai Chi Chuan course might not really re ect the time and energy they consumed in Tai Chi Chuan. Thus, we further investigated their participation in Tai Chi Chuan and other sports after class. Because of the interaction between the two groups, a two-way MANOVA test was used to study the effect of time spent on Tai Chi Chuan and other sports on ow state score. Table 4 showed the results of tests of between-subjects. When participating in other sports for the same time, the change of time spent on Tai Chi Chuan had a signi cant effect on two ow state score dimensions " action-awareness merging " (partial η 2 = 0.067) and " concentration on the task at hand " (partial η 2 = 0.055). As shown in the Figure 2, when practicing Tai Chi Chuan for 0-2 hours a week, the ow score state of concentration on the task at hand dimension increased with the increase of practice time. However, the score of action-awareness merging dimension rstly dropped and then rose when the practicing time went up in two hours. After practicing for more than two hours a week, both of the scores of two dimensions decreased when the practicing time increased. This trend partially con rmed hypothesis 2: with increasing exercise years and time for Tai Chi Chuan exercise every week, the ow experience of Tai Chi Chuan participants will also increase. The drop of ow state score when practicing for more than two hours might due to participants entering the boredom or relaxation state (low challenge and high skill) de ned by Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1997;Deitcher, 2011). When the exercise time of Tai Chi Chuan after class every week was controlled at the same level, no signi cance was found in the change of time for other sports after class every week. But the interaction between after class Tai Chi Chuan exercise and doing other sports had a signi cant impact in the ow state score of " autotelic experience " dimension. It con rmed the fact that the enjoyment of sports mentioned above was affected by many factors.

Conclusion
Through semi-structured interviews and CFSS2 questionnaires, this paper studied the ow experience in Tai Chi Chuan, and veri ed the three hypotheses made previously.
In the interview, we demonstrated the hypothesis 1: in the process of Tai Chi Chuan, there was ow experience, or a similar mental state. Through qualitative research and coding, we extracted six categories of Tai Chi Chuan, which are generally consistent with the six dimensions of ow experience from previous researches. The other three dimensions not mentioned were "clear goal", "unambiguous feedback", "loss of self-consciousness". It might be due to the characteristics of Tai Chi Chuan. Tai Chi Chuan paid attention to achieve the mysterious state of "harmony between man and nature", and its goal and feedback were relatively vague compared with other sports. The participants did not feel deeply about the goal and feedback of the movements of Tai Chi Chuan, and did not fully understand the meaning of "loss of self-consciousness". However, at the same time, all the interviewee described the characteristics of ow experience in the other six dimensions, especially for the dimension of " autotelic experience ". Most of the interviewee said that they had a pleasant experience in Tai Chi Chuan.
Through the analysis of the CFSS2 data, we tested the hypothesis 2: with increasing exercise time, the ow experience of Tai Chi Chuan participants will also increase. Results showed that score of "autotelic experience " dimension increased with exercise years increased, and the increasing time spent on Tai Chi Chuan after class was positively related to the score of "action-awareness merging " and "concentration on the task at hand "dimension. Although it was not observed that the ow state score increased with the increase of Tai Chi Chuan exercise time in all nine dimensions, it partially con rmed hypothesis 2 in two dimensions. The change of time for other sports after class every week found no signi cant effect on ow state score. At last, we found an interaction effect between after class Tai Chi Chuan exercise and doing other sports on the score of " autotelic experience " dimension.
Due to the in uence of covid-19 epidemic situation, it was di cult to conduct a more extensive investigation. The interviewees and questionnaire objects were students who took Tai Chi Chuan course in universities. In the subsequent investigation, we should choose the participants with different occupation, age span and Tai Chi experience.

Con ict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

Funding
None Figure 1 Chart of mean score of autotelic experience of different Tai Chi Chuan exercise years