Meditation for Creativity

Creativity is an important part of our daily life and is more and more a part of our job descriptions.  From communication to creating joy and beauty in your life to solving simple or complex problems, ideas and innovation are fundamental to creating the fulfilling life of your dreams.

I’ve found that meditation is one of the best ways to cultivate creativity, to create, clarity and open space in your mind for new ideas to come in.

So why is that?  Well, meditation is about sitting in calm stillness and focusing your attention (such as focusing on your breath, the sensations you are experiencing, an image in your mind).   Meditation trains your mind to see below the layers of mind chatter, to see beyond the distractions.  In this way, your creativity…insights, ideas, creative energy…will be more easily accessible.   It’s always there!  You just have to clear away the clutter in order to get to it.

The more you practice meditation, even for just a few minutes a day, the more it can help your mind open up to inspiration and new ideas.  Being open to new ideas is one of the best ways to increase your creativity.  Or to get yourself out of a creativity rut.

And studies have proven it!  Even Harvard Business School set up a series of experiments to test the effect of meditation on creativity. They’ve concluded that 10 to 12 minutes of mindfulness meditation a day are enough to enhance creativity and innovation as well as being a tool to relieve stress (reducing stress is also helpful for better creativity).


TWO MEDITATIONS TO UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVITY
Any type of meditation can help you to be more focused, to give you a sense of spaciousness and clarity so that you can enhance your creativity.  

1.  If you like guided meditations, you could try a Mindfulness Meditation such as the one below (click the arrow) which will train you to focus your attention on your sensations.

2.  Another option is an Expansiveness Meditation that helps to expand awareness, to extend the boundaries of the mind and open it up to unlimited ideas and insights.  Here are some simple instructions for an expansiveness meditation you can do on your own.

• In a comfortable meditation position, begin by breathing slowly and deeply for a few moments.  
• Close your eyes and visualize or imagine your wishes of love, light, peace and wellness as the beautiful golden glow.
• See that glow start as a tiny flame in your heart space, then watch it grow and grow to flood your whole body with healing, loving light.   Feel it warm your body and your soul
• After a few minutes, imagine that loving, peaceful glow grow and expand to three or four feet around you.  Stay here in this glow for a few minutes.
• Then see the glow slowly expand out to the room, out to others in your home, then out to your neighbours, and to your wider community.
• And then expanding out and out and out into the world. Allow yourself to visualize sending that golden glow of love and kindness all around the globe, connecting you to everyone you know and then to everyone you don’t know. Remembering that we are all ONE. We are all the same. We are all in this together.
• When you’ve finished expanding as far out as you like, allow the glow to shrink back into your own body’s presence.
• And when you are done your visualization, slowly open your eyes and take a moment to notice how you feel.