Get A Creative Boost With A Dose Of Meditation

Previous studies have shown that mindful meditation can help to ease anxiety and mental stress. Now, recent findings published in the journal Mindfulness showed that meditating can also help boost creativity.

For the study, researchers examined 40 participants who were asked to meditate for 25 minutes before doing their thinking tasks. This included both experienced meditators and those who had never meditated.

Researchers at Leiden University in the Netherlands found that certain forms of meditation helped to promote creativity. Furthermore, their latest findings revealed that everyone could benefit from meditation to relax, enhance creative thinking and memory, overall.

Yet not all forms of meditation are created equal. For instance, findings revealed that participants performed significantly better in divergent thinking after Open Monitoring mediation-a state of being actively open to accept every thought, sensation and feeling--than Focused Attention meditation, which puts all attention and energy on a specific person, time or object.

In addition to boosting creativity, here are some healthy finds based on active meditators. Meditation helps to decrease heart rate, improve self-confidence and decrease the risk of insomnia. It can also help with PMS symptoms and chronic pain.