Unlock your core creativity

Dr Ronald Alexander is a pioneer in the field of holistic health, psychology and behavioural medicine since 1976 and was of the original founders of the very first holistic health and medicine at the Cedar Sinai medical office towers in 1978. He has been teaching and writing books on mindfulness, positive psychology and creativity since 1976.

When he was a teenager he lived in Boston and often spent much of his spare time at the weekends at the Harvard book store reading about philosophy and Zen Buddhism. In the evenings he would go to different music venues initially to listen to folk music but then to the bands that made up the ‘British invasion’ including The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Who and Jethro Tull. He also started playing in a group at high school and became fascinated by the creative process in both his own group and through sitting, listening to and being mesmerized by high profile bands.

When artists describe their creative process, they inevitably talk about being in an open mind state where the download of core creativity can happen. Musicians such as The Band’s Robbie Robertson’s description that “Creativity comes from the womb of emptiness” to James Taylor’s observation about “waiting to hear it” and having “to be in a place where you can receive the song” reveal that creativity isn’t a rational, calculated activity. It’s about allowing oneself to become receptive. 

Whether its creating from scratch, interpreting music and adapting music, Ronald feels the processes are similar or are derivations of each other. There is a similarity between all creative processes in music and other forms of art in that the thread is in innovation, invention and a development of a particular musical or artistic theme. Then there is core creativity and that's something that is very unique and special. For example Paul McCartney wrote the song ‘Yesterday’ after dreaming it. When he woke up and wrote it down and played in on the piano. For a month or so he took the song round London asking people if they had heard it before realising it was his and that it had come from a creative unconscious.

Pure originality is core creativity and arises whether its Mozart or Beethoven. When they are composing they actually hear simultaneously the various parts of the symphony and its as if it’s coming from some sort of mystical other. If we want to de-mythify the thing Ronald calls the mystical other, we could say it comes from ones pure core collective unconscious. From all cultures, all histories all times, for example the Greeks organised and articulated creativity through the metifor of the nine goddesses, the sense of the muse.

Most of the creatives Ronald has interviewed, whether they have a formal meditation or prayer practice or something more informal such as sitting outside of their studio on their front deck have a cup of coffee or tea, smoke a cigarette and look at the sky, what they are really doing is creating their own meditative state to access or tap into their creativity. Mindfulness meditation takes us out of overthinking and into the mind state of receptivity. The stillness and focus involved in meditation alters our brainwaves, and therefore, our mind state. Distraction-free time leads us to an open mind. Both core creativity and intuitive wisdom and knowledge can be accessed in an open mind state — not because we have an open mind, or are trying to be open minded, but because we’re in a state of pure receptivity after giving ourselves over to emptiness.

You can find out more at www.CoreCreativity.com or at https://ronaldalexander.com Dr Alexander is also the author of the highly acclaimed book, Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change (2008), and the new book, Core Creativity: The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
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Create a different story

Kevin Roth is a Life Coach but started his career as a dulcimer player and musician in 1974. By 2015 he had worked on around 50 albums, sung the theme to a children’s hit TV show Shining Time Station that was based on the stories of Thomas the Tank Engine and developed a children’s music career.

Everything was going well when in 2015 he was diagnosed with Stage 3 Melanoma and given around 2 years to live. It was a sentence he didn't agree with so he decided to change the story and moved from Kansas to California to live a bohemian lifestyle in a beautiful place. After a couple of turbulent years dealing with the diagnosis, someone suggested to him that he should become a life coach, something he didn't know anything about. Initially it didn’t appeal to him, but he found a way to teach the dulcimer in a meditative style and become a life coach in his own way using spirituality and science to talk to people about understanding life, dropping stress and creating a life that they really love.

As a child Kevin was very musical and played piano by ear. At 13 he heard the Appalachian Mountain dulcimer and fell in love with the sound of it and learned to play it. In some places it is still seen as a traditional folk instrument but because Kevin didn’t know about its history he played it like a guitar or piano and came to be seen as a very innovative player. Being seen as doing something different helped in him getting his first record deal with Folkway Records.

Kevin feels that music teaches resilience. Its hard to make a living as a musician and in a business sense music teaches us how to create something out of nothing. It also helps us recover from making mistakes – how do you come back from a bad gig when people don't applaud?  In jazz there are no mistakes just improvisation and often what we class as mistakes are just someone else’s judgement. Kevin also feels that music should be taught in schools like maths and science, the more people who are artistic or musical the better. Everyone can be artistic and the more artistic skills you teach, the better people will be able to do their jobs.

When he got his cancer diagnosis Kevin thought he was in in good health. He now feels that it was the stress in was under the three years prior to the diagnosis that caused it. Stress and inflammation can have a really damaging effect and we have to know how to handle stress and what to eat in balance.  When he was diagnosed Kevin had to think about what was really important  – I only have two years to live so what do I want to do? The fame and fortune didn’t matter anymore what he wanted to do was make music, spend time with his dogs and move to California. He rejected the diagnosis. They removed a lymph node to see if the cancer had spread and then waited a year to see if it had come back and it never did.

Kevin never thought he was going to die, he changed the story. When you realise that nothing lasts or matters and everything passes, you get out of the story of ‘I hate my job or partner and don’t like this or that’ and then when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change. When he had the diagnosis Kevin said he was going to go and watch surfers in California, and wasn’t going to live the rest of his life in a cancer ward. We create stories every day. When we wake up it can be a good day or a bad day. If you’re in a really bad mood and the phone rings and it's a friend you haven’t heard from a while then suddenly you’re in a whole other dimension. All the drama that was ruining your life is gone. When you look at mindful awareness and take the time to contemplate it you realise you that you really shouldn't get upset about very much. The story is the story. Learn to live in balance.

Every day we create a different story. When Kevin wakes up he says this is what I want to do and feel today.  Of course there is a need to eat the right things, to rest and exercise and do some sort of meditation but we need to get out of the illusion that money buys happiness. We also need to recreate our life on a daily basis. We need to retune ourselves through the day. Many people don't know how to sit in silence or be comfortable with themselves any more.  They have lost who they are and are addicted to stress.  We need to drop a lot of the things going on in our heads, be nice to ourselves and give ourselves a break. We have an inner voice that will talk to us if we are quiet enough to listen so we can replace what doesn't work with what does.

There is a balance between planning for the future and learning to live your life now. When you figure out what matters and why, everything else falls into place.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more at Kevinroth.org