What Is The Creative Space

Creative Space in the Mind and Consciousness

Brain Waves

The creative space has been the subject of study and speculation.  Author Carson McCullers  said, “the writer by nature is a dreamer, a conscious dreamer.  Writers often talk about this experience what has been called a threshold state, similar to a meditative state and the state that occurs right before or when we emerge from sleep.  These states of mind are believed to be highly creative.  Thanks to advances in neuroscience, we now have a way to explain the common element to these threshold states of consciousness as the theta brain wave.  The term theta refers to brain wave frequency that correlates to the 4–7 Hz (cycles per second) range.  What is known as beta has a faster frequency that ranges.  They range from 13–30 Hz and is associated with conscious awareness when we are alert.  The slower the frequency, the more relaxed we feel and perhaps the more we access the creative space.

It is interesting that theta rhythms, according to studies, are experienced only by humans were observed by Donald Winnicott in young children and creative people.   Some people believe the theta state is the gateway to the creative state and is also present while we are dreaming.  Young children spend much of their time in this state, but somehow, we lose access to it when we mature.  Even though this state can emerge naturally, as it did when we were children, we can also cultivate the capacity to experience it.

Quiet the Mind, Awaken the Spirit

Some people find it is during our least productive or optimal time of day that we are the most creative.  That is because we are closer to this experience.  The brain-wave pattern when we are most creative is one that leads to the quieting down of an area in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.  Therein lies the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC).  We attribute this to inhibition, the censor to creativity and, interestingly, the executive function.  In this state, it makes sense that we can more easily access the unconscious insights and find the imagination’s inspiration.

To awaken the creative within, we need to quiet down the DLPFC.  This will, in effect, suspend rational thinking until such time that you need it.  That is why it is a good idea to pay attention to our dreams.  We can even ‘program’ the mind to go to work on a creative problem while we sleep.  One can an intention to dream about a particular question.  After we awaken from that dream state, we can learn from what emerges, another possible magical entrée into the creative space.

Can We Access the Special World: The State Before Waking Up and Falling Asleep?

As a trained hypnotherapist and teacher of meditation, I have learned to invoke the unique state between sleep and wakefulness, or hypnagogia, a term first coined by Dr. Andreas Mavromatis.  He also noticed that creativity and creative products of artistic imagination tend to emerge from what he called a ‘psychic twilight’.  We can liken this to a waking dream.  Unlike a sleeping dream, we have the potential to participate in and remember what we experience in this hypnagogic state.  While in it, we are aware, not asleep, and we have more access to the unconscious because we experience a loosening of the ego’s boundaries.

In this threshold state of consciousness, people experience lucid or waking dreams and creative breakthroughs.  Some who are very skilled can bring it on at will with a process of relaxation, but we naturally go through it before we fall asleep and right before we are completely awake.  Writers can learn to take advantage of these moments.  Coleridge described writing his 300-line poem about Kubla Khan in a dreamlike state that he used to create the fantastic world of Xanadu in that half sleep of first waking.  I recommend that you start a journaling practice when you wake up, recording any inspirational breakthroughs and the thoughts you have in that creative state.

An Exercise to Stimulate Creativity

When You Wake

Here is an exercise created by Dorothea Brande,  that builds on free writing upon awakening to train ourselves to access and take advantage of this state.  This is a good habit to get into.  When we focus on a creative project, the unconscious often continues to work while we sleep.  I have often awakened and had ideas pop into my head that were important connections and solutions to something I have been creating.  Brande suggests:

Rise a half or full hour earlier than you customarily rise. Just as soon as you can – and without talking, without reading the morning’s paper, without picking up the book you laid aside the night before – begin to write.  Write anything that comes into your head: last night’s dream, if you can remember it; the activities of the day before; a conversation, real or imaginary; an examination of conscience.  Write any sort of morning reverie, rapidly and uncritically.

Brande explains, “what you are actually doing is training yourself in the twilight zone between sleep and the full waking state simply to write.  It makes no difference the success of this practice…  Write as long as you have free time, or until you feel you have utterly written yourself out.”

Before You Sleep

There is a step I would add to this exercise.  Focus on and thinking about your creative project or problem before you go to sleep.  This gentle focus also helps to go back over what you have been writing about.  You can pay attention to any patterns you notice in terms of what the mind wants to express. What problems do you notice that your mind is trying to solve? Notice if you are feeling stuck and/or what themes seem to be emerging.  What we are seeking is the focus or theme that could lay the groundwork for what we will be writing. I would also advise that we make this a habit and do this daily.

You can also create this space any time of day by doing a fifteen-minute mediation and writing after you emerge from the meditative state.  Focused concentration can be your gateway into the creative space.  I believe one of the ways we can also access the creative space is through focused concentration.  This state can emerge when we are deeply immersed in the project and also when we first awaken in the morning.  If you have had this experience, please share how you access it.