72

february/march 2019

yogajournal.com.au

PHOTOS: DALIU; GEORGERUDY; PESHKOVA; FSTOP123; MARIOGUTI/ISTOCKPH

OTO.COM

7

Surprising ways to

spur your innovation

1. Take a Walk
   There’s a reason you come up with your best ideas while
   you’re exercising: going for a casual walk fosters more creative
   thinking than sitting, according to a Stanford University study.
   Experts think it’s because walking makes the heart pump more
   quickly, which circulates more fresh, oxygenated (read:
   energising) blood to all of your organs—including your brain.

5.HittheRoad

Travel can be a wonderful way to enhance your

creativity, according to research by Adam Galinsky, PhD,

a professor at Columbia Business School—especially

when you immerse yourself in the local culture (rather

than, say, opting for the all-inclusive beach resort).

Galinsky has found that foreign travel in particular

boosts the flexibility of your thinking, sparking new ideas.

6. Leave your
   desk messy.
   Finally, a good excuse not to tidy
   up! A study at the University of
   Minnesota found that people forced
   to work in messy offices came up
   with more creative and interesting
   ideas than those in neater spaces.


7. Let Yourself Be Bored
   Turns out that mundane tasks may not be as useless as you might think:
   In one recent study, participants who were assigned to copy numbers
   out of a phone directory for 15 minutes (yawn!) were more creative on
   the next task (coming up with new uses for a pair of Styrofoam cups).
   So next time you’re bored. Be bored. Revel in the doing a boring task,
   especially if it’s repetitive and mind-numbing. Go with the feeling
   knowing that it’s setting your mind for something more challenging and
   creative when the boring task is over.

two

Do a quick body scan.

This style of meditation is

more than simply relaxing; it

can also help you tap your

creativity to solve problems.

One study published in the

Journal Mindfulness found

that a meditation practice

during which participants

were receptive to every thought

and sensation in their body

made them better at divergent

thinking—the creative process

of coming up with numerous

possible solutions to a

problem—than when their

meditation involved focusing

on a single thought, mantra,

or object surprising ways to

spur innovation.

7 Start doodling.

Next time you’re stuck in a

long meeting, pick up your

pen and go to town in the

margins of the paper in front

of you. Doodling improves

your focus and memory,

according to research

published in the journal

Applied Cognitive Psychology,

IVLKIVIT[WÅZM]XaW]Z

creative juices, solidify ideas,

and inspire new notions.

3.Eat more fruit ...

And soy and seeds and

any other food that

contains high levels of

tyrosine, and amino

acid that is assumed to

increase your ability to

think and harder and

more creatively, reports

a study in the journal

Psychological Research.