Meditation is an amazing and helpful habit for creative minds, but finding the right technique for your creative process can be a challenge. Here are 5 unique meditation techniques for the creative mind.
Lao Zi once asked, “Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?” When the mind is full of racing thoughts, each fighting for attention, it can be challenging to relax into the flow of creative thinking. Meditation has many benefits for the creative mind and improving one’s well-being, and there’s no one way to do it. With how old the practice of meditation is, there are many techniques and styles to try.
Try different styles, techniques and keep your meditation habit fresh, unique, and personal to support your creativity and well-being in new and exciting ways.
Sunrise Meditation
Difficulty: Beginner – Time: 5min+
Every day, nature gives us two incredible and inspiring gifts, the sunrise and sunset. And yet, how often do we stop and make time to enjoy these moments?
Start the day with a clear mind and a burst of inspiration by timing your meditation to end with the sunrise, so when you finish your moment of stillness, you open your eyes to inspiring beauty.
By starting this meditation habit, not only are you making time to savor and start your day with beauty, but you’re opening up your mornings to be productive and creative.
Benefits
- Vitamin D strengthens the immune system, improves bone health, and can fight off depression.
- Waking up early improves cognitive functions – Early risers tend to have better concentration, awareness, and energy throughout the day.
- Early risers tend to have a better mood and mental health.
- Waking up early takes intention and dedication that can direct focus for the day.
Steps
- Prepare the night before by knowing the sunrise time and set your alarm to give you enough time to wake up and get to a place to meditate before sunrise.
- Find a comfortable sitting position facing East. Make sure your spine is straight as you begin to relax your muscles and prepare for meditation.
- Set a timer to go off when the sun rises.
- Begin the meditation by closing your eyes, dropping your shoulders, and slowly relaxing the rest of your body as you bring focus to your breath.
- When the mind wanders, bring the focus back to the breath.
- When the alarm goes off, take a few deep breaths before slowly opening your eyes to a beautiful sunrise.
- Sit in silence as you watch the sunrise on the horizon and soak in all its beauty. You can also use this time to journal and contemplate what you’re grateful for.
Tips
- Use Lumy and SolarWatch apps to track sunrise time and placement in the sky.
- Turn your meditation into a sunrise walking meditation.
- Pair with other healthy morning habits like journaling.
- If you’re meditating outside, be sure to wear warm clothes.
- Stretch or do yoga as the sun rises.
Water Meditation
Difficulty: Beginner – Time: 5min+
Inspired by Bruce Lee and the fascinating science behind water and well-being. This meditation uses the source of life as an asset in the meditation process to help visualize breathing and clear the mind.
Water has always been a source of healing and inspiration. In this meditation, submerge yourself in water to induce relaxation and use the harmonic waves to focus your breathing and mind.
Because of the natural benefits of water on the mind and body, it’s also a great tool to support meditation, especially if you have trouble relaxing or focusing. Meditating in your bathtub, for example, can help remove distractions and keep your focus on the present moment.
Benefits
- Warm water can decrease stress hormones and balance serotonin levels, which help regulate mood, relaxation, and more.
- Even the color of water affects us both cognitively and effectively, making us feel more comfortable.
- Submerging your body but keeping your head out can help you breathe easier.
- Water can help relax the muscles, joints, and bones for better meditation.
Steps
- For best practice, choose a water source that is still like a bathtub, hot tub, etc., where you won’t be bothered by distracting noises that can reverberate underwater.
- Get in the water and get comfortable with the temperature.
- Begin to focus on your breathing.
- Submerge your body but keep your face above the water.
- While keeping your ears below water but mouth and nose above, close your eyes and begin to meditate, focusing on your breath.
- Pair your breathing with the harmonic sounds and wave patterns.
- Visualize your breath going out like ripples and returning.
- Continue to relax your body with the flow of water.
Tips
- When distracting thoughts pop up, recognize them and imagine them floating away.
- Focus on the sounds of water to bring your back to the present moment.
- Use affirmations to inspire flow and relaxation.
- Add brainstorming and creative work to your bath meditation time like other famous creative minds like Dalton Trumbo and Salvador Dalí.
Tesla Visualization
Difficulty: Intermediate – Time: 5min+
“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.”
– Nikola Tesla
Tesla might not have called this a meditation, but the elements are all there. This is an active meditation where you focus the mind on the creative act of visualization. Visualize your creative process and create something in your mind before you create it in reality. Get lost in the details and experiment with the process using your mind and imagination.
Writers:
Visualize a story you want to write, telling it to yourself over and over again. Try different perspectives. Visualize different details. Find problems to brainstorm by immersing yourself in your world-building.
Artist:
Before creating your next piece of artwork, take some time to meditate and visualize every stroke and color of your next art piece. Play with the image in your head. Sit in front of a blank canvas and meditate on what comes to you.
Benefits
- Visualization trains the brain for actual performance and can support motivation, confidence, flow, and more.
- Visualization is an opportunity and tool of play/experimentation.
- Imagination needs no resources and is limitless with what you can visualize in your mind.
- Visualization can provide new perspectives and build empathy.
Steps
- Get comfortable and relaxed with a normal meditation to ground yourself and clear your mind.
- When ready, begin to visualize a piece of artwork, story, or creative project you’d like to finish and imagine finishing it in your mind.
- Ask yourself questions to guide the process.
- Consider every detail in the process.
- If your mind gets distracted, try starting the process over, you may see something new each time you recreate it.
- Repeat this process until you know every detail and feel the absolute urge to bring your project into reality.
Tips
- Use all your sense to focus on your visualization process.
- Don’t judge yourself for distractions – recognize the distraction, let it go, and refocus.
- Connect with your emotions during the process but stay relaxed.
- Keep a journal nearby to write down ideas and explore the process further.
View From Above
Difficulty: Intermediate – Time: 10min+
“Think of the whole universe of matter and how small your share.”
– Marcus Aurelius
This stoic meditation involves shifting your perspective using visualization to view problems objectively and see the bigger picture. The exercise teaches a new way to see the world and your place in it by slowly zooming out until all you see is the vastness of nature and how small your part in it is.
When we’re actively seeking new perspectives, we seek out novelty and embrace curiosity which lays the foundation for lasting creativity. New perspectives challenge our assumptions and relax our cognitive constraints. Instead of limits, we see possibilities.
The view from above exercise can also help separate the mind from its anxious feelings. By visualizing a grander perspective, we can see ourselves and our problems more objectively.
When we create distance between our perspective and our problems, we can better understand the problem and find solutions without distracting worries and anxieties. We can see more clearly and less emotionally. By zooming out and shifting our perspectives, we can be more grounded in the present moment and see problems in context. We can separate what is important and what is trivial. And then, when we bring our perspective back to our body, we make better choices and improve well-being.
Benefits
- Visualization trains the brain for actual performance and can support motivation, confidence, flow, and more.
- Visualization is an opportunity and tool of play/experimentation.
- Imagination needs no resources and is limitless with what you can visualize in your mind.
- Visualization can provide new perspectives and build empathy.
Steps
- For best results, practice this outside to aid in the visualization of your surroundings.
- Before closing your eyes, take in your surroundings.
- When ready, close your eyes, relax your breathing, and get comfortable in the present moment.
- With your eyes closed, visualize your surroundings.
- Slowly shift your perspective and imagine looking down on yourself and your immediate surroundings.
- Zoom out until you can visualize your home and the people around you. Think about how they feel and see the world.
- Zoom out further until you can see your neighborhood or city. Think about all the people going about their lives, each with their own story and problems.
- Continue to zoom out until you see is the land and maybe lights from cities. How big are your problems at this height?
- Continue to broaden your perspective, zooming out further and further until you’re above the planet floating in the emptiness of space. Think about all the people, animals, and plants spread across countries, races, cultures, etc.
- How far can you shift your perspective, the solar system, the universe, all existence? The further we zoom out, the more we continue to see just how small our place and problems are in the universe. We are just a moment in time in the vastness of space.
- Seeing how small you are in the bigger picture, consider what you can and can’t control.
- When ready, slowly begin to lower your perspective, continuing to stop and observe your soundings until eventually, you’re back in your mind.
- Take a few deep breaths and slowly open your eyes to the world around you.
Tips
- Get comfortable before closing your eyes.
- Slowly raise your perspective and expand your visualization further away from yourself, your city, the world, and beyond.
- Consider what is in your control and what isn’t?
- How do your problems stand up to the bigger picture?
- Try this in different settings for new perspectives.
- Journal Prompt: Do your problems still seem larger than life and unstoppable after getting a new perspective?
Enso Meditation
Difficulty: Beginner – Time: 5min+
“A circle is a vast space, which does not lack anything, nor does it have too much.”
– Shin Jin Mei, 6th-century zen text
Draw an Enso circle and meditate on what it says about your inner truth. Free the mind to express oneself in one fluid movement.
Ensō (円相) is a Japanese “circle” that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes and used in Zen Buddhism to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create. Zen practitioners relate this to the idea of wabi-sabi, or the beauty of imperfection.
Typically, a zen practitioner will draw an ensō circle once a day in one fluid, expressive stroke as a spiritual practice of expressing themselves. This spiritual practice of drawing ensō for self-realization is called hitsuzendō, which translates to the way of the brush.
Benefits
- Art meditation has a positive effect in reducing anxiety and improving mood.
- Connect the mind and body in one fluid moment of expression.
- Art meditation can assist in training attention and awareness.
- Adding art into a meditation practice can provide a feeling of flow and freedom.
- Art meditation adds self-expression to the mindful practice.
- Forms of art therapy like this meditation are growing in popularity and gaining traction as psychologists and neuroscientists study the many potential benefits for mental and physical well-being.
Steps
- Start with a simple meditation to clear the mind and relax the body.
- Take a few moments to center yourself, and consider what you want to express in your ensō. Is there a question or insight you’re looking to find and understand?
- When you’re ready, draw an ensō circle in one fluid movement of self-expression.
- Many practitioners recommend drawing the circle while standing. So both the body and mind are fully engaged in the movement.
- After you have finished drawing the enso circle, gaze into it and consider what it reveals about yourself or the question you had in mind. Did the movement flow as you kept a thought in mind or break? If drawing with a clear mind, did you notice when distracting thoughts popped up and affected the circle?
- Be sure to not judge your ensō circle or yourself, but be grateful for its practice and what it may reveal.
Tips
- Pair with your morning or daily journal practice and see how the expression changes based on your state of mind.
- Don’t worry about making it artistically attractive.
- Practice patience and discipline. Take your time drawing the circle and try to fully express yourself in one single stroke.
- Practice meditation and self-reflection with your circle. What do you see, feel, etc.?
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
