Several studies show that meditation can rev up your creative skills. Here, we shed light on one technique that will give wings to your imagination.
Meditation is an age-old practice with a history of several thousand years. This mind-body technique aims to stimulate our thoughts and awareness and the benefits are science-backed. A growing body of research reveals that meditation is a great stress reliever. It also has a calming impact on our central nervous system. That is why meditation can help in increasing our attention span and other cognitive skills. In fact, a study, published in the journal Mindfulness suggests that this mind-body technique can give a boost to your creative spurts. Also, you don’t have to be a seasoned meditation practitioner to reap this benefit, notes the study. There are innumerable forms of meditation. But the form that has been found to significantly influence your capacity to conceive new ideas is known as Open Monitoring Meditation. Here is a low-down on this meditation technique.
Open Monitoring Meditation (OMM)
OMM is a technique that bolsters our capacity to monitor our own experience sans any reaction or judgement. In OMM, we open up to everything that is occurring in and around us instead of focusing on anything specific. Through this process we become a better observer of our chain of thoughts. It also enables us to track the direction of our mind. All these increase our capacity of divergent thinking, a cognitive process that aims at generating novel ideas. OMM also facilitates a seamless movement from one idea to another, which is crucial for creative thinking.
Practising OMM
- Choose a quiet corner for practising this meditation technique.
- Close your eyes and compose yourself to focus better.
- Start by paying attention to your thoughts, emotions, memories, and visualizations.
- You can also try and focus on your bodily sensations, starting from the beating of your heart to the tingling sensation of your nerves.
- Gradually, shift your attention from the ‘internal’ to the ‘external’. Focus on the smells, colours and sounds around you.
- Don’t try to restrict your mind to anything specific. Let it wander in the maze of thoughts and observe from a distance. At the end, let them go without any judgement.
- Practise this for 15-20 minutes
It will be good if you practise open meditation monitoring before taking part in a task that involves imagination or creative thinking. If you get stuck in the middle of such a task, taking an OMM break will also help.
