Short meditations boost creativity proved a study out of Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
An article from that study published in HBR, "Can 10 minutes of Meditation Make You More Creative?" tells us how:
"In his book Mindfulness for Creativity, Danny Penman argues that mindfulness meditation and other mindfulness practices enhance three essential skills necessary for creative problem solving. First, mindfulness switches on divergent thinking. In other words, meditation opens your mind to new ideas. Second, mindfulness practice improves attention and makes it easier to register the novelty and usefulness of ideas. And finally, mindfulness nurtures courage and resilience in the face of skepticism and setbacks, which is important because failure and setbacks are inextricably linked with any innovation process."
Painting as meditation. Artwork by Tristan Elizabeth Gribbin
Meditation works to enhance creativity and innovation. "Many executives have taken up meditation because they find it helps them switch gears when stress piles up. Meditation is not only useful as a stress-reduction tool but can also enhance creativity, opening doors where once there seemed to be only a wall."
"Research shows that mindfulness meditation can have many positive effects on workplace outcomes. Regularly doing it boosts your resilience, enabling you to mitigate stress, regulate emotions, and have a more positive outlook so that you can bounce back from setbacks. It helps you develop the ability to switch off reactive fight-or-flight responses and engage in a more thoughtful mode that’s crucial for making balanced decisions."
The study proved that ten to 12 minutes are enough to boost creativity.
Here are some easy ways you can achieve this at any point in your day with Flow:
Go to the Flow website, and press "Meditate Now". Choose three modes of Flow and practice them in a sequence, for example:
You can try playing with these sequences, and mixing the modes in different combinations to suit your mood.
The HBR article, "Can 10 minutes of Meditation Make You More Creative?" is by Emma Schootstra, Dirk Deichmann and Evgenia Dolgova from Erasmus University's Rotterdam School of Management