The Best Meditation For Creativity
If you’re wondering about the best type of meditation for creativity – or just how to practice meditation for creativity, you’ve come to the right place. Meditation and mindfulness can help you to be more creative and the good news is that with just a small amount of practice each week, you too can reap the benefits.
First things first, which type of meditation should you try if you want to become more creative? — Or if you just want to have more good ideas in general? The best type of meditation is the one you enjoy and most feel like doing. While each style differs in its process, most types of meditation work toward a similar end point. And so whether you use a mantra, guided meditation, mindful noticing or even active meditations like dance of mindful walking, so long as you feel enthusiastic about your chosen form of meditation, you’ll be more likely to do it and therefore more likely to see some lovely creative side effects!
Why Does Practicing Meditation and Mindfulness Inspire New Ideas?
There are many explanations for the improved creativity enjoyed by those who sit quietly each day, here are just a few:
- Did you know your brain waves actually change during meditation practice? Quick beta brain waves are the calling card of the normal thinking mind. Alpha brain waves dominate when we’re in a flow state. And slower theta / delta brain waves are more closely associated with both creativity and meditation.
- Meditation has been linked with a decrease in activity in the brains fear centre (the amygdala). When you’re less anxious you feel safe to relax, and when you’re relaxed creativity often flowers as a result.
- When the usual parameters of the everyday thinking mind relax and expand during meditation, what we are aware of expands too. You could think of an expansive mind in the same way you’d think of a really big, broad fishing net. The bigger the net, the more plentiful the catch.
- When you sit quietly and you’re not busy – you’re in a perfect place for inspiration to strike! It can come as a surprise that one of the best meditations for improved creativity is to do nothing. It’s surprising because it’s at odds with the approach we might normally take to creative life, which is to get busy and make stuff happen. Meditation on the other hand gives you space to breathe and gets you used to being in a more receptive mode.
I recently read a zen poetry book called ‘A Drifting Boat’ by J. P. Seaton. On the back cover there is a tiny poem from Yuan Mei written nearly 300 years ago. It’s perfect for todays climate, and a great example of the creative insight that wells up and out of silence.
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