Applied neuroscience—a fancy way of saying “how to use neuroscience knowledge in real life”—helps us understand how to practice the creative process. And it turns out, when you break down the brain processes involved in creative achievement, it becomes clear that mindfulness goes hand in hand with creativity. In fact, there are actually scientific ways to apply mindfulness to the creative process. First, let’s look at the key ingredients for the creative process.
Four Stages of the Creative Brain
The brain is like an orchestra, with different sections playing in synchrony at different times. Balance is everything—too loud, too soft, out of sync or out of tune, and it doesn’t sound quite right. The key to optimizing the creative process is balancing the brain networks.
How Does Mindfulness Help?
Balance between the ‘freestyle’ and ‘control’ networks is extremely important, and not just for creativity. Yes, jazz and rap improvisation involve ‘releasing control’, but in exactly the right amount and balanced with ‘self expression’ areas to produce creative results. We need our control networks, too: a total lack of frontal brain control is linked to schizophrenia, substance use, and depression. Mindfulness practice is the key to this balance. Meditation strengthens both the freestyle and control networks, but more importantly, it also strengthens a third network—the salience network—which maintains balance of the first two networks by deciding which is activated and when.
How to Apply Mindfulness to The Creative Process
Preparation: Mindfulness meditation boosts divergent thinking. This part involves a lot of learning. Try meditating before your brainstorming and ideation sessions so that you are less distracted, fully focused and can produce higher quality initial rough ideas. Incubation: Mindfulness is particularly useful for this important and often underemphasised phase. Many people find it hard to go offline, relax, and stop obsessing. Even a short mindfulness meditation can calm your distracting thoughts, reduce anxiety or stress, and help you enter a truly chilled state. Maybe your great idea may even appear during meditation! The point is, don’t try to make it happen—it will occur naturally. Sleep and any form of mindful practice that doesn’t involve active thinking of the creative task is helpful. Walking meditation is great for reducing stress and anxiety that may arise when ‘doing nothing’. Relax and let the insight come naturally! Illumination: When we practice mindfulness, we are more clear and can see our thoughts better—In other words, mindfulness increases awareness. If a brilliant insight appears in a cluttered and noisy mind, you may just miss it. So when the moment of insight comes, be sure to receive a clear signal. Verification: In this phase, where the veil of reality is laid over your genius idea, it is important to stay focused, positive and motivated without getting defeated. Even if the first attempt doesn’t get you the results you want, each time adds to the next. Exercise and meditate during your refinement process. This promotes attention and skill during convergent thinking, for choosing the most novel and effective pathways to solution. The creative process is a window into our cognitive tendencies—how well we are conducting the orchestra – and a chance to practice non-judgment and self-compassion, especially when things don’t turn out perfectly. Even the professionals encourage perseverance. Like this, balancing the art of the creative process also becomes a process of balancing our minds.
