Meditate to create: Why Mindfulness can help you strengthen your creativity

The practice of Meditation and mindfulness have seen a tremendous increase of interest and a growing body of research investigates the numerous effects of meditation. Research have shown that Meditation can enhance creative thinking and improve the ability to solve problems that require insight.[1] But not all meditation practices are the same and so far it is not clear how different type of meditations techniques can have different effects. Colzato et al (2012) investigated the possible impact of meditation based on focused-attention (FA) and open-monitoring (OM) on creativity – a process associated with both convergent and divergent thinking. The study shows that FA meditation and OM meditation have different effects on creativity: OM meditation promotes divergent thinking, a style of thinking that allows many new ideas being generated . This meditation practice – in contrast to FA – aims at acknowledging any experiences that might come up during the meditation without focusing on any particular object or specific phenomenon.

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[1] Lebuda, Izabela, Darya L. Zabelina, and Maciej Karwowski. “Mind full of ideas: A meta-analysis of the mindfulness–creativity link.” Personality and Individual Differences 93 (2016)

[2] Colzato, Lorenza S., Ayca Szapora, and Bernhard Hommel. “Meditate to create: the impact of focused-attention and open-monitoring training on convergent and divergent thinking.” Frontiers in Psychology 3 (2012): 116. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00116/full

2018-02-22T11:50:39+01:00
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