Radical Bliss

innovative ideas through meditation…

The Unexpected Source That Inspired Whole Foods, Apple’s Sleek Design and The White Album

excerpted from the Huff Post “The Third Metric,” Nov 20, 2013:

Mindfulness and meditation are some of the most popular practices among leaders in fields as disparate as business and the arts. But even before meditation entered the mainstream, a few public figures quietly credited the practice with their greatest ideas and successes.

Research has demonstrated that meditation can in fact boost focus and creativity. A2011 study found meditation to boost both divergent thinking, which helps new ideas to be generated, and convergent thinking, which is linked with effective problem-solving. With more and more research proving meditation’s extensive cognitive benefits, increasing numbers of artists, writers, musicians, athletes and business innovators are turning to the practice to tap into their deepest creative potential.

“Ideas are like fish,” the filmmaker David Lynch wrote in “Catching the Big Fish,” a book on meditation and creativity. “If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”

Here are six brilliant ideas and institutions that came about as a result of meditation. (more…)