Can Meditation Make you a Better Artist?
The benefits of meditation before creation
I have been meditating off and on for many years. Learning to be aware of my senses as well as my breathing has helped me open to the creative process in a new way. I’m able to quieten my inner critic and trust my intuition. As a creative coach, I begin many of my art classes, workshops and art retreats with a guided meditation. I have found that my students who have some fears around their art making are able to loosen up and allow more creative flow in their work after even 5 minutes of meditation.
In an article written in artsy.net “We might say that emptying the mind helps us not to fixate on stressors, stimuli, or things that don’t pertain to our work, and in doing so allows new ideas to enter the field of our thinking.” The reality is that we cannot truly “empty” the mind but we can certainly become aware of its incessant chatter. During that process, we gradually quieten the thoughts until they are no longer yanking us around! This in turn opens up space for convergent and divergent thinking, the hallmarks of creative thinking.
Creativity and the Neocortex
In an article in the Huffington Post : How Mindful Meditation Boosts Creativity and Innovation they break down the parts of the brain and focus on the neocortex (the newest part of the brain) as the seat of creative thinking and problem solving.
What types of meditation are useful for boosting Creativity?
There is Zen, Mantra, Transcendental Meditation and many more forms. However, I keep on coming back to mindfulness of the body. For me, focusing on the breath and the senses allows me to come home to the present moment and in so doing, observe my monkey mind! After I have meditated, I am more open to thinking laterally, less rigidly and be willing to entertain new ideas.
If you want to learn more about various types of meditation, this article outlines it very clearly: mbgmindfulness