Can You Teach Creativity? - Heather Dyer

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I’m teaching an eight-week course at the moment called Developing Creativity. I’m a little apprehensive since I have yet to find out if the exercises I am planning will really demonstrate the theories I want to share. But I’m looking forward to hearing feedback from my students.

I’m structuring the eight 2 ½ hour sessions around principles of Eastern philosophy. There will be some writing exercises, and some ‘creativity’ games – but this is a course for people who want to be creative in any discipline, not just writing. So this has forced me to look into the heart of the matter and not to just teach writing technique – which, although perfectly useful and necessary, is not about creativity.

I tried out a couple of the exercises on a friend, who said, “this sounds more like a self-help course, not a creativity course.” And in a way she’s right. It was Abraham Maslow who said:

“My feeling is that the concept of creativeness and the concept of the healthy, self- actualizing, fully human person seem to be coming closer and closer together and may perhaps turn out to be the same thing.”

I’m planning the eight week sessions as follows:

1. Not knowing – ‘beginner’s mind’.
2. Close attention to detail and the present moment.
3. Not judging.
4. Authenticity and acting on your intuition.
5. Letting go – being open to outcome, not attached to outcome.
6. Passion and compassion – following your bliss.
7. Discipline without desire.
8. The ego – keeping it out of the way. 

I wonder if anyone else has found this link between creativity and 'zen' practice helpful? Have you read any good books about it? If so, I'd love to hear about them. 

I’ll let you know how I get on in my next post…