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The pop psychologists capitalizing on the mindfulness trend all talk about meditation for stress reduction. They make a valid point, considering how many Americans take anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication. However, now is the time for something more interesting than stress reduction.

Intriguing meditation news is coming from the Netherlands. The Institute for Psychological Research and the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition at Leiden University are discovering that a meditative mind, free of distracting random thoughts and obsessions, actually has lots of room for an influx of creative problem solving ideas.   Some ideas may appear as flashes of inspiration or maybe the result of focused meditative attention to situational challenges.

The implications for creative genius types like researchers, programmers and code writers, poets and novelists, actors, painters, architects, designers, sculptors and others abound. The Dutch studies show that the observing-without-judging element of mindfulness meditation actually accelerates the output of original creative ideas. Since no ideas are censored in a mindful space, all ideas are entertained for their potential creative value.

The focused attention function of mindfulness also tends to reject too much dwelling on unproductive old ideas, so there are fewer stuck places in the creative process. Meditation also reduces cognitive rigidity. An experiment by Greenberg, Reiner and Meiran showed that non-meditating subjects became highly frustrated and unsuccessful solving problems, because they constantly tried to use the most complex solutions. The meditators in the experiment found simpler, more creative solutions and enjoyed the mental challenges more.

Meditators’ minds appear less conditioned by past experience. In any situation, a meditator will look for a previously untried solution rather than relying on someone else’s former solution, even if that prior solution works. Meditators’ minds are highly intuitive and flexible. They create more and ruminate less.

The implications of meditative creativity in cases of mental illness also intrigues researchers. When both counselors and patients meditate, creative alternatives to anxiety, depression and addiction and may be discovered and help prevent personal catastrophes. Meditation may even lessen symptoms of mental illness before a single pharmaceutical is prescribed.

Mindfulness can also help creative artists who tend to live on the edge of accepted norms of thinking and behavior. They often dislike and abandon mood-stabilizing drugs because of the numbing effect pharmaceuticals have on creative fire and inspiration. All of us have heard sad stories about creative people who cause trouble for themselves and others in this manner. If further research validates the Dutch clinicians’ findings, we may find mindfulness a standard practice for creative geniuses everywhere.

An excellent resource for the latest in mindfulness research is www.mindfulexperience.org, which features the Mindfulness Research Guide (MRG) and the Mindfulness Research Monthly. The site provides a comprehensive electronic resource and publication database of information for researchers, practitioners and the general public.   Each issue includes a database of research publications, measurement tools to assess mindfulness, the evidence base for mindfulness interventions and a list of centers conducting mindfulness research

Resources:
Frontiers of Psychology, April 2012
“Mind the Trap: Mindfulness Practice Reduces Cognitive
Rigidity.” PLOS ONE, 7(5)

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