Exploring The Link Between Meditation and Creativity

Could Meditation be the key to fuelling your creativity? We speak to a Bondi meditation expert who says yes.

Picasso said all children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

This remains as true today as ever before. Could meditation be the solution to fuelling your creativity?

Creativity is a sought-after quality in more and more job descriptions. Whether it’s managing a customer’s query or problem-solving in a business, you probably won’t find the answer in a google search engine.

Nike, Facebook, Sony and Goldman Sachs are just a few of the many companies incorporating meditation to achieve a more productive and happier Workplace.

Bondi Beach Meditation and Mindfulness coach Janoah van Kekem says, “the biggest barrier to our ability to think expansively and to tap into our own internal creativity are things like stress. If you’re in survival mode you are stressed, you are only looking at things that are threats. Your body is running on adrenaline and cortisol.”

When anxious, “you are being driven by the limbic part of your brain, from the fear and emotion centre.” This stops creativity in its tracks.

Research shows that mindfulness meditation can have many positive effects on workplace outcomes. Other studies have shown concentrative meditation influences creativity by increasing cognitive flexibility.

Australian NGO, Headspace says, “When we meditate, when we rest in awareness, we are resting in creativity; we are creating the conditions to move through life effortlessly, from one situation to the next, with a sense of freedom. With this, there comes a sense of purpose with fluidity, and a sense of direction with ease. Everything changes and we change with it. Through the eyes of meditation, this is what it means to be creative, whether or not you are creating ideas or a piece of work.”

Worry and anxiety makes you revert to behaviours that might make you feel safe but are ineffective. According to Janoah, “you are less inclined to be creative and to think of something new.”

Becoming less attached to old ways of doing things, he says “we create space for so much more cool shit to drop in.”

‘Being in the zone’, or flow is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment.

Through meditation we can achieve flow where “we can process and remove some of the old stress and fatigue that has built up over time.”

In a 2004 Ted Talk positive psychologist and flow state expert, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explained flow as the state in which creative work thrives.

Try meditation next time you are feeling less than inspired or have writer’s block. It’s sure to work for you.

See also:

How to Reduce Stress and Anxiety Through Meditation

Free Beach Meditation

Free Online Meditation

Free Meditation Apps

Why You Should Try Vedic Meditation Now