This is How you Boost Your Creativity Through Meditation

There you are behind your laptop again. To eat yourself from frustration, your work has to be finished. It doesn’t go completely well. You desperately try to stay focused. There really is no pause! Or is it? From research has shown that you can increase your creativity by meditating for ten minutes.

Meditation Increases Creativity

The effect of a short meditation has been investigated at Erasmus University Rotterdam. The focus group consisted of students who were divided into three groups. One group practiced mindful meditation, one group a ‘fake’ meditation and one group immediately started the brainstorm.

The ‘fake’ meditation was an exercise in which they were told to think about everything and there was no focus as with mindful meditation. With mindful meditation, it is therefore important to focus on the present moment. Also nicely said: focus on the here and now. All exercises lasted ten to twelve minutes. The mindful meditation group eventually came up with more ideas in the brainstorm than the other two groups.

Mindful Work

In companies such as Google they apply mindfulness training through meditation. This is to optimize the creativity and working atmosphere among employees. More and more research is being done into the effect of meditation and mindfulness. For example, the study Specific Mindfulness Skills Differentially Predict Creative Performance revealed that short mindfulness meditations can increase creativity.

Increase Your Focus

For example, mindfulness training reduces the fight or flight response of the brain. This area of ​​the brain is used extra when we experience acute stress.

This used to be necessary to stay alive, if you were attacked by a big bear for example. Now our stress triggers are often not life threatening, but we still respond in the same way. So do you feel the stress coming up or are you in the middle of it? Through meditation you increase your focus again, however contradictory it may seem.

Do you feel that you are stuck, bump into a block or are you stressed? Then find a quiet place and meditate. There are various (free) apps that can support your meditation. You can also apply these tips for your meditation. That way you learn better and better how to meditate and which meditations you like. Not everyone is happy with the same voice or meditation form. This is always very personal. It is good to see this out.

Meditate GO!

You fall down on your meditation cushion, relax chair, simply at the table or lying down. In any case, you adopt the position in which you feel most comfortable and you initiate guided meditation. For example via an app. The voice helps you to put your thoughts back on track and helps you to gain certain insights.

For example, he can tell you (or have it visualized) that seagulls fly above your head and that your ‘disturbing’ thoughts are. You breathe deeper and the voice tells you that the seagulls are slowly flying away. He can also ask you to put all the thoughts that are of no use to you at that moment and that you cannot do anything with, on an imaginary car. You look at your thoughts as it drives off the car and disappears from view. Okay, bye! You’re rid of that. These kinds of tools show you that it makes little to no difference at that moment whether the thoughts are in your head or that you turn them off. After ten minutes of meditating and thus putting a broom through your mind, you stretch and your head feels tidy. You have room again to fully focus on your creative process. Go, go, go!