The Universe in a Dewdrop

Week 3

Mindfulness & Creativity

Enhancing Creativity through Mindfulness

Mindfulness has been found to improve cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt to new situations and switch between tasks) and creative thinking (the ability to generate novel ideas and solutions). Brain scans have identified three key networks involved in creative thinking:

  1. Default Network: Associated with open awareness, daydreaming, and imagining the past or future.
  2. Salience Network: Detects important stimuli, integrating internal and external information, and facilitates switching between the DMN and CEN.
  3. Control Network (aka Central Executive Network): Activated when focusing on a task or concept, rendering the DMN dormant.

These networks work iteratively during creative processes:

  1. The Default Network generates ideas.
  2. The Salience Network identifies interesting and relevant ideas to send to Control Network.
  3. The Control Network evaluates the ideas, picking out the ones to act upon.

Creative capacity depends on the efficient communication and flexibility between these networks, and mindfulness strengthens this connectivity.

Since the Dalai Lama’s invitation to western scientists in 1987, studies on meditators have shown significant brain changes even with just 8 weeks of daily meditation. Research at Harvard revealed thickening in areas of the cerebral cortex associated with attention and emotional integration, and increased gray matter density in the hippocampus, linked to self-awareness, compassion, creativity, and introspection. Meditation also leads to reduced stress and anxiety levels.

Take a look at the comparative brain scans below. Notice how the brain on meditation shows greater connectivity, symmetry and overall activity!

Four Stages of Creative Brain Activation

  1. Open Awareness: Instead of silencing the DMN, mindfulness helps you become aware of its activity, allowing for calm and conscious daydreaming. This practice includes observing thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations as they arise and pass.
  2. Calming Effect & Sleep: Meditation promotes a calm state of mind, often reflected in alpha brain waves (when you are relaxed and alert), which are conducive to creative insights.
  3. Bringing Ideas to Consciousness: Meditation helps bring unconscious creative processes to conscious awareness, allowing great ideas to surface.
  4. Focused Awareness: When you focus on one specific object (like breathing or painting) and filter out distractions, leading to deep absorption in the creative process.

Guided Meditation + Creative Exercise

Now we’ll put this in action! We will alternate between short periods of open awareness and focused awareness meditation, with free writing sessions in between. The idea of this exercise is to activate the brain networks for creativity, encouraging the free flow of creative ideas alongside focused decision making.

Part 1: Open Awareness (10 min)

  • Guided Meditation, 5 min (Open Awareness Body Scan): Conduct a body scan from head to toe, then practice full-body breathing while observing thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
  • Creative Free Writing, 5 min : Pick a creative project or area of life, and write down everything that comes to mind, stream-of-consciousness style. Let your thoughts flow freely and explore all associations.

Part 2: Focused Awareness (10 min)

  • Guided Meditation, 5 min (Focused Mindfulness of Breath): Notice the subtle features of each inhale and exhale, getting fully absorbed in the still point of the breath, the one spot where the breath enters and leaves the body.
  • Creative Journaling, 5 min: Review your stream of consciousness notes, circle three important ideas, and reflect on why they are significant to your creative process. Take the next few minutes to write about each of these three ideas and how you would implement them.

What are some other ways you can use mindfulness to boost creativity? This great Ted Talk is chock full of great ideas, such as going on mindful and artful walks, “collecting with photography,” and finding the extraordinary in the ordinary: