You CAN turn on your creativity at will, simply by applying what we know from doctors, researchers, and biofeedback specialists. When the human brain is operating between 8-12 Hz, it is in the Alpha wave range. This frequency range is also called Berger’s waves for the founder of the EEG.

In this frequency, your brain is at it’s best for solving problems and improving creativity. It promotes mental resourcefulness, and is associated with being very relaxed and calm and pleasant and yet alert. It’s the halfway point between total consciousness and sleep.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to deliberately and purposefully put yourself into this state when you need a creative solution to a problem or to brain storm new concepts or products?

Here is a wonderful exercise to get your brain in that wave range. All you need is

• a quiet environment (or a headset to block outside noise),

• be in a comfortable position (not while driving!),

• a passive disregard of any interruptions keeping your mind focused on this process

• and finally, these instructions below. You will be making use of total focus on your sensory awareness to lull your brain into alpha. You will systemically step through using all of your senses.

Use this order:

1. See: Sit in a comfortable position, and notice what you're seeing in front of you. Notice its color, size, clarity, brightness, texture: all the visual details.

2. Hear: Now, while still looking at what's in front of you, let the sounds in the room - even the lack of sounds - become the most interesting thing in your world. The sight is still there, but notice the sounds too.

3. Feel: After ten seconds or so of that, allow your attention to shift to how you feel: the sensations of your body. The feeling of your clothes on your skin, the breath moving through your windpipes, your butt against the seat. Go through your body from head to toe and notice all the different feelings there.

4. Smell and taste: Now notice the smells in the room, and any tastes you may have in your mouth. Notice how different parts of your tongue sense different tastes.

5. Time: Notice your sensation of the passage of time. It's as if you're standing in the river of time, and it's flowing past you. The past is always out there, the future is always out there, but you are always here, completely in the now. This now is the only time that you've ever experienced, the only time there is. The past is gone, and the future doesn't yet exist. It never will, in fact: when its time comes, it'll be the now. Notice your presence in the room now.

6. Space: Inside your head are two sensory organs whose job is to detect gravity, and help you orient yourself relative to it. This, literally, is an often-overlooked sixth sense, and is the vestibular system. Notice your orientation to the rest of the room, and the empty spaces between you and the things around you.

7. Thinking: Thinking usually runs on autopilot, chattering away. Notice how your mind generates thinking. It's that thinking that pulls you away from experiencing now more often. Now, imagine putting all of your thinking into a round sphere and visualize it in front of you. Look at it, listen to it, feel it. Now, put it back in your head.

8. Self-ness: There is within you (most people visualize it in their heart, mind or solar plexus) a place where your sense of who you really are located. All your opinions, fears, dreams, ambitions, likes, dislikes, guilt’s, hopes... all the stuff that makes up you. Move that out from your body in to a sphere in front of you for a few moments and notice it, love it, feel compassion for it. Then return it within you.

Now, cycle through the steps again or at least the first four. The entire process should only take a few minutes, and you can do it virtually anytime, anywhere.

Now mentally address the area that you want to be creative about. Be appreciative of how beautiful your brain is and how it is there to work for you easily and naturally.

Even if you don’t have a particular issue right now, it’s still a good idea to make this exercise a daily part of your life for a few weeks until you can do it any time you want. You may want to attach it to something else, like getting up in the morning. Do it after you wake up, but before you climb out from under the covers. If you practice a daily meditation, you may want to do it in conjunction with that. Or it may be a great part of your cool down after exercise.

This exercise works because it purposefully spikes the alpha-wave brain activity allowing you to experience a peak state whenever you want.