Harness Creativity At Will

By Rudra Shivananda

woman in brown scoop neck long sleeved blouse painting

Whether you are a creative in the traditional sense of being an artist, musician and writer, or need to apply creativity into solving your problems such as a programmer or marketer, we can learn to harness our powers of creativity better with yogic techniques.

One of the easiest ways is to change the active brain lobe at will using breathing techniques. The right brain is correlated with higher inspiration and creativity and the right brain is connected with activity of the left nostril. It has been well known for thousands of years that our nostrils are not always both opened fully at the same time – one nostril is usually more open than the other and this changes every few hours. It has been discovered that when the left nostril is more opened, there is more activity on the right brain. Therefore, if you find that your right nostril is more opened and you need to harness your creativity rather than your rational, analytical powers, you should change the dominant nostril to the left side – close your right nostril with the right index finger and breathe only through the left nostril for about 15 minutes. This forced left nostril breathing will activate the right brain activity.

Another method is to utilize the harmonic vibration from one of the creativity mantras of Saraswati, who is the cosmic creative power and can be accessed for our microcosmic activities. The following is a Saraswati stotra which is chanted aloud:

Ya kundendu tushaar haara dhavalaa, ya shubra vastraavrutaa
Ya veenavara danda manditakaraa, ya shweta padmaasana
Ya brahamaachyuta shankara prabhrutibhi: Devyai sadaa vanditaa
Saamaan paatu Saraswati bhagawati, ni:shesha jaadyaa pahaa.

O goddess Saraswati, pure and radiant as the full moon and the frost, wearing a garland of jasmine flowers in the your white robes, seated on your lotus throne; with the veena on your lap; O one from whom has originated the three, Brahma, Vishnu and Shankara, O one, who is surrounded and respected by all gods, may you bless and protect me and remove every vestige of laziness and sloth from inside me.

This mantra should be chanted at least 27 times before undertaking any creative efforts. Those who undertake creative work at all times, usually chant this mantra 108 times every morning.