Dr. Richard Davidson

I should just say, this is work that's being done collaboratively with Giulio Tinoni and his group in Wisconsin.

He's a very well-known sleep and consciousness scientist.

Yeah, great lab.

We don't know yet and honestly it's not me being super cautious.

This is a new study that we're just in the middle of.

We have roughly 20 something participants who've completed the protocol, but it's ongoing right now.

Honestly, the data on open monitoring meditation, or for that matter, any meditation and creativity, I would say are very limited.

In part, it's because the measures of creativity that are used by psychologists typically are honestly, I think, pretty crappy measures of creativity.

So we're quite limited by the measurement tools that we have.

Having said all that, I do think that open monitoring meditation can really boost creativity primarily by helping people become more aware of the –

associative thoughts that they have.

And this relates to something we talked about earlier.

I often tell students of mine to spend time inspecting their own mind, just watching their own mind and writing down thoughts that may occur that may be interesting.

And this is a kind of open monitoring meditation.

It's having no specific object and just being open, aware, awake, and not distracted, not getting lost in a train of thought, but simply being aware.

I believe that we probably have much more creative thought occurring than we give ourselves credit for, and it's simply because we forget.

And I think this can really improve that.

But the data are pretty meager.

Yes, I do.

Because this is one of those things where there's essentially no downside to it.