WHY CREATIVE MINDFULNESS?
Anxiety, depression, and digital life compromise your concentration, which impacts all aspects of your life. This was evident before COVID-19—which accelerated this decline—and is likely to persist in the face of economic fluctuation, political polarization, workplace tensions, climate change, and physical and/or mental health challenges.
There’s good news, however.
The methods for reversing this setback have existed for millennia. I teach them in my creative mindfulness workshops, which merge the meditative and creative to cultivate calm and concentration while connecting you to your purest being—creative presence. We can express these ritualistic experiences through artworks.
This is what I teach.
THE THREE PILLARS OF CREATIVE MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness meditation has been used for promoting physical and mental wellbeing for millennia. By focusing on the breath, you observe the activities of the mind without getting caught up in them. You return your attention to the breath as you drift and teach yourself to cease rumination, mind-wandering. You remain present. Clear-minded.
Focus, concentration, and self-awareness are enhanced as you learn to “let go”, remain in the present moment, and settle into the deep concentration and healing stillness of samadhi.
Sound meditation releases physical and mental stress through the resonance of singing bowls, soundscapes, and chanting. Visualizations are guided meditations for accessing the subconscious through the description of imagery such as light spheres, forests, and oceans. These include “body scans” for releasing physical tension.
You move into the realm of creative mindfulness by using automatic creativity as a focus for present moment attention. This includes automatic drawing and/or painting and other spontaneous expressions that bypass overthinking to tap into the subconscious mind, which allows your abstract creativity to flow.
This anchors you in the present moment and is easy to learn. You bypass the control mechanisms of the ego (such as judgment/inhibition) to tap into the subconscious mind where, guided by intuition, you overcome blocks in creativity while unveiling your primordial wisdom.
CREATIVE PRESENCE: FLOW AND SAMADHI
When combined, The Three Pillars spark “flow states”, the open stretches of focused absorption where calm, clarity, and creativity fuse into wellbeing. This slows your brainwaves, nervous system, and heart rate, an ideal state for creating a lasting sense of relaxation and wellness. For thinking outside the box, gleaning insights. Innovating.
Artists and athletes often describe the “timelessness” they experience in flow states, when endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine—pleasure chemicals—are released. This feeling of openness is ideal for developing the depth and wisdom of meditative concentration, which connects you to the healing energy of creative presence.
Flow states and samadhi can lead to:
· Optimized stability, focus, and calm
· Enhanced performance and productivity
· Reduced rumination (mind-wandering)
· Improved problem solving
· Innovative thinking
The result? Wellbeing.
Innovators like Intel, Google, Nike, General Mills, Goldman Sachs, and many others have established cultures of mindfulness to cultivate workforce wellness for these reasons and more.
Creative Mindfulness Lab© workshops introduce a sense of playfulness into high-pressure workplaces. Benefits begin with the strengthening of individual and interpersonal bonds which impacts collaboration, ideas-sharing, performance, and productivity. This program can offset the exhaustion that drives attrition.
These are more than just wellness workshops. They’re a way to teach your staff/constituents wellness practices for reducing stress, settling the heart rate, and cultivating physical and mental wellbeing. Their artworks can also be exhibited or presented as gifts.
These are ritualistic experiences.
SCIENCE AND BENEFITS
Creativity is our superpower, the life blood of civilization, commerce, and culture. Human beings have harnessed its power for transforming ideas into reality since the dawn of existence. Artists tap into it to bring the imagined to life for others to experience, for activating the openness of “flow states”, which can lead us to deep meditative experiences.
Various studies have reported on the benefits of mindfulness practice which include the calm, clarity, and stability that the discipline is known for. Mindfulness training in schools has also been reported to help with managing stress and anxiety, resolving conflicts, controlling impulses, and improving resilience, memory, and concentration.
A report by the National Library of Medicine (2019) states that “the value of faith-oriented approaches to substance abuse prevention and recovery is indisputable.” It goes on to mention that “the inner, spiritual aspects of healing are common in the Eastern philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, and traditional Chinese medicine. Their research demonstrates significant improvements in patients when taking the body–mind–spirit integrated model of intervention.”
A report circulated by the Journal of Business Research (2018) states that an openness to aesthetics and artistic expression resulted in overall inspiration and enhanced problem solving in research subjects. In work environments, this resulted in improved product design, branding, and problem solving. Individual wellness impacts collective wellness.
In 2010, the American Journal of Public Health reported that visual art making, expressive writing, and combined activities contributed to positive emotions, psychological wellbeing, and social functioning, as well as drops in physical and emotional stress and depression rates. I’ve witnessed this across all the programs I’ve designed and taught.
The same report demonstrated that creative self-expression resulted in reduced stress and anxiety for individuals, while also improving focus on their positive life experiences, self-worth, and social identity. This enhanced sense of positivity can impact productivity.
Other studies have established a connection between middle-aged and elderly subjects who engaged in arts and crafts practices and the positive impact it had on delaying mental decline. The benefits that creativity and wellness can contribute toward your health are just beginning to be acknowledged. Age-old wisdom never expires.
*Recommended reading: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Harper, 2008)
