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Meditation for Creativity and Focus

Published on February 25, 2020 – Last Updated on February 28, 2024

Do you ever envy those people who can think of ideas at the spur of the moment? They offer creative solutions, and you wonder how they came up with that idea in the world? Everyone can be creative. It’s just a matter of tapping into your imagination and allowing yourself to think outside the box.

You may watch your children play and wonder how their imagination takes over, and they believe they are Spiderman, or when you play tea party, how your little girl believes her stuffed animals are having a conversation. Kids are full of creative ideas.   

Or maybe you read a great book or look at a piece of art that touches you inside and wish you could be that creative. You may even think, “How do these musicians come up with these songs?”

Creativity is not only for artists, though. Many jobs in the business world also require creativity. Our guide will help you tap into your creativity by allowing you to relax and focus on what matters most. But, then, you can use it every day, anywhere, anytime!  

meditation for creativity and focus
meditation for creativity and focus
creativity and focus are the key ingredients for success

Meditation practice can help your creative thinking

If you’re in advertising and marketing, you must be creative to come up with unique ideas that beat the competition. In the business world, you always need to be prepared with a “plan B,” which may mean finding creative solutions in a hurry. 

Engineers, architects, and even mathematicians need to boost creativity to do their jobs. 

If you want to be more creative, you might want to start thinking about meditation for creativity as a technique to help you get those juices flowing. 

Whether you are a writer, actor, artist, or want better creative problem-solving skills, meditation practice can help you come up with those unique ideas you’re craving, help with problem-solving, and even help you concentrate better.

Want to start your meditation practice? Check out our morning meditation post.

What Blocks Creativity?

When you need to be creative, sometimes you are just plain stumped. You feel like there’s a wall in front of you, and there is no way to get around it. So here’s what happens in your brain when you’re trying to have that breakthrough moment.

The Mother Board of Creative Work

creativity leads to success if used properly
An excellent illustration of the brain work

The neocortex is the top layer of the brain and the most significant part of the brain. It goes all the way from the frontal lobe to the back of the head. It has six layers and receives input from the two other regions of the brain (more on that in a minute). 

The neocortex is involved in many brain functions such as spatial reasoning, sensory perception, visioning, problem-solving, and, you guessed it, creative thinking. 

Since it works on a variety of processes, the neocortex gets picky. It will only process things that the other two brain parts agree on. Therefore, everything must be in harmony. 

Emotions and living in the present moment

Below the neocortex is the limbic system. This part of the brain handles emotions, memory, and motivation. For example, when you are emotionally upset or distressed, the limbic system is activated and is too busy putting out fires to allocate resources for creative thought.

Read more about crystals for pregnancy.

The Primal Zone

The amygdala is the most primitive part of the brain. You can think of it as a reptilian. It oversees fear and is responsible for the fight or flight response and the mating instinct and hunger needs. However, it only likes to work on things that deal with survival. It has no idea what a creative thought is.  

This translates to being worried about something, stressed, having relationship problems, problems at work, etc. As a result, your brain doesn’t bother giving you creative inspiration; it just wants to solve your emotional crisis.

Only when the reptilian part of the brain is calm, and the emotional brain is satisfied will the motherboard say, “Hey, I have a great idea!”

Meditation and Creativity mean creative inspiration.

start focusing and being creative in order to achieve your goals
Hypnobirthing

Meditation can be the perfect technique to help the brain become more in sync so that the creative process can flow. In addition, studies on problem-solving have shown that meditation can help with finding solutions.

In a study done by the Leiden Institute for the brain in the Netherlands, researchers looked at two types of meditation for creativity concerning creativity and focus. They looked at Focused Attention (FA) meditation and Open Mind (OM) meditation. 

Focused Attention meditation concentrates on a focus such as breathing, and you focus on how the breath feels. They are ignored, whatever bodily sensations you have, outside noises that are heard, or thoughts that creep in.  

Open Mind meditation is a complete acceptance of whatever the moment offers. OM focuses on acknowledging the thoughts that come into your consciousness without reacting to them. 

The study looked at how these methods affected creative and divergent thinking (a way of thinking that generates new ideas in a situation where more than one solution is correct).

The study involved 19 participants who had been meditating for about two years. After the meditation for creativity session, they were given six common household items (brick, shoe, newspaper, pen, towel, bottle) and asked to list as many uses for each item they could think of. 

The researchers found that OM meditation led to better performance on tasks that distributed attention and better focus on the present moment.

Creativity is the joining of divergent and convergent thinking

creativity meditation and focus

Another study found that meditation improves insight problem-solving, which is the spontaneous discovery of a solution. Researchers found that mindfulness meditation may facilitate the process. They are showing a link between meditation and creativity. 

The above studies included participants that were advanced meditators. However, a Chinese study found that participants with no previous meditation experience that meditated for 30 minutes a day for seven days also had improved creativity performance!

These studies indicate that Open-Minded meditation helps induce a calm state that promotes divergent thinking. On the other hand, focused meditation sustains convergent thinking, supporting one solution to a problem. 

These studies also concluded that those who meditated could find solutions to problems quickly and figure out how to solve the problem more efficiently with fewer steps. 

Those who did not meditate regularly had difficulty finding solutions to easy problems and usually became frustrated. 

Creativity lives in the subconscious mind. Although we only use a small portion of the brain, the rest houses our subconscious mind that holds our memories, dreams, and creativity. The subconscious is like an extensive reservoir. 

To dive deeper into the powerful subconscious, you must quiet the conscious mind. That’s where meditation comes in. It soothes the mind and lets your subconscious be heard!

How can we increase these skills with Meditation?

benefits of meditations for focus and creativity
Meditation benefits infographics. Brain empowerment is creativity alongside mind focus to help you reach your goals.

Meditation benefits infographics. Brain empowerment is creativity alongside mind focus to help you reach your goals.

Another area that meditation helps with is the area of focus. If you’ve ever been working on something and get interrupted, you can’t concentrate anymore when you go back to try to work on it. That’s because the brain is not geared to multitask. So your concentration drops every time you break away and then return to a task.

Meditation can help with concentration in a few ways:

But, first, get back on focus faster & increase focus!

When you meditate, and a thought comes into your head, or your mind starts wandering, you get into the habit of bringing your focus back to your breath or sound. This filters into daily life.

 When you are trying to concentrate on something and you get interrupted, you learn to get back in focus quickly to finish the task. 

Mindfulness Meditation for Creative Thinking

Mindfulness meditation is a powerful tool for cultivating creative thinking. By focusing our attention on the present moment, we can learn to become more aware of our thoughts and feelings and let go of the negative thoughts that can block our creativity. We can also develop a greater capacity for focus and concentration through mindfulness meditation, which is essential for the creative process.

In addition, mindfulness practice can help to increase our awareness of our surroundings and the people in our lives, opening up new possibilities for creative collaboration. There are many different mindfulness meditation techniques, and it is essential to find one that works best for you. With regular practice, you will begin to see a difference in your creative thinking and in your ability to access your creativity when you need it most.

Improve Your Flow State by Focusing on the Present Moment

It’s no secret that negative emotions can take a toll on our physical and mental health. Stress, anxiety, and depression are just a few of the conditions that can wreak havoc on our well-being. But what if there were a way to offset the negative effects of these emotions? What if we could actually use them to improve our health?

Recent studies suggest that it may be possible to do just that by flow state. A flow state is a state of complete focus and immersion in the present moment. When we’re in a flow state, negative emotions fall away, and we can tap into our full potential. What’s more, a host of health benefits come with a flow state, including improved immunity, increased creativity, and reduced stress levels.

Open monitoring training is one way to achieve a flow state. This type of training involves using mindfulness techniques to focus on the present moment. Once you’ve mastered the ability to focus on the present moment, you can then begin to monitor your thoughts and emotions without judgment. This allows you to let go of negative thoughts and emotions and open up to new possibilities.

With regular practice, you will find that you can better achieve a flow state when you need it most. So whether you’re facing a challenging project at work or simply trying to relax and de-stress, a flow state can help you reach your full potential.

Reduces Stress with Mindfulness meditation, which involves observing

Meditation helps reduce stress by helping the brain to react more calmly to stress. This allows you to stay calmer under pressure and not let little things bother you. In addition, a calmer mind will enable you to focus longer on the task at hand. 

You don’t have to be a long-time meditator either to start improving your focus. For example, a study on focus participants improved reading comprehension scores on the GRE and working memory after only two weeks of a mindfulness training course. 

Since a meditative practice works towards sustaining attention and ignoring unwanted thoughts, it’s only natural that it translates into a greater focus on your work. Focusing can also help push those emotional thoughts aside to make room for creative tasks and ideas.  

To work and contribute to society, you need focus and creativity. Creativity helps you to become relevant by thinking outside the box. 

Will guided meditations help increase our natural creativity and focus?

focus meditation

We all need to enhance creativity in our lives because we use it every day, even when we don’t realize it. Whether you are trying to solve a problem at work, putting together a meal from leftovers, or teaching students at any grade level, it involves creativity, and meditation can help you start thinking more creatively.  

Beginning a meditation practice is not difficult. Mindtastik has targeted guided meditation to help you bring out your creativity and work on other aspects of your life you’ve wanted to improve. 

Meditation helps you look inward and gives you a heightened awareness, so you begin to make the right choices. It allows you to concentrate on focusing better on tasks and improving your learning. Meditation also helps you with creative mind problem-solving. 

If you want to improve yourself and your life, a meditation app for creativity like ours is a way to change the way your brain thinks.  

Download MindTastik Mindfulness, one of the best meditation apps, today to start seeing how meditation can change your life.

You can download the app at the Apple App Store or Google Play.

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