Have you ever felt like your imagination and creativity have dried up or disappeared? Between drawing from another’s creative work to enlisting the help of muses, artists and creatives have tried countless means and methods for finding inspiration to kickstart their imagination and creativity.
Writer’s block, thinking inside the box, and seeing scant options in your future. All these stem from a limitation in imagination and creativity.
In this post, I’ll discuss how hypnotherapy can help you break through blocks in your creativity and imagination.
Imagination vs Creativity
People often say they don’t have an imagination. True, it may be underdeveloped or stifled. However, everyone has an imagination. Without it, we would be unable to communicate at all.
As an example, when your dining companion says, “Pass the ketchup”, you reach out, grab the ketchup, and hand it to the person. Are you curious about what that has to do with imagination?
Your mind perceived the request, and then drew up a mental picture of something that would represent ketchup out of your memory banks. You looked around and found a duplicate image that matched closely enough to be identifiable, perhaps sitting right in front of you on the table. Then your mind went on to imagine the act of grabbing the bottle and handing it over to your friend. Finally, your body executed the action. There are many more steps that the brain instantaneously goes through in order to achieve such a simple act; however, the point is that we are using our imaginations on a daily basis.
We spend time imagining what our friends or children are doing, and we imagine what our vacation will be like as we book the trip. If you are a worrier, you have a fertile imagination! Worrying is a strong form of imagination – negative imagination!
Imagine simply means to form a mental picture.
The next step is creativity. While imagining is forming a mental picture, which could be something new or something that you have already seen, creating is making something out of nothing. To create is to take your imagination one step further, to produce an image, story, or item that has not existed before.
Imagination and Creativity in Childhood vs. Adulthood
As children, we are highly imaginative and playful. Our subconscious mind is on full throttle. Each moment is eternal, creative, and wondrous because we live in a world of focused fascination—a term that can easily be applied to the hypnotic trance state.
As we mature, we break the spell—learning to follow the rules, handle responsibility, and be more “logical” in approaching situations. By adulthood, the logical mind, along with experiences of rejection and criticism, has trained us to downplay our imagination.
What is a creative block?
Have you ever experienced a mental block? Have you felt like your well of ideas has dried up under a scorching sun? Isn’t it frustrating to realize that at any moment during a big project, with a looming deadline, your mind has suddenly shut off and you can’t access that poignant phrase or brilliant idea?
You know it’s in there—the creativity and flow. But where is it when you need it?
Call it writer’s block, a senior moment, or even a brain fart! It is frustrating, embarrassing, and sometimes alarming when you can’t perform at your peak creative level, or perhaps can’t perform at all.
It’s an accepted fact that even the most talented musician, the savviest entrepreneur, or the most creative writer will reach an impasse in their performance. Yet accomplished creatives possess a remarkable ability to recover from mental blocks and prolong their episodes of creative brilliance—a feat that puts the rest of us in awe.
Little do we know that deep inside we can tap into this well of creativity, too. It is not exclusive to the chosen few. But how can we do it? How can we improve our creativity and tap into it at any given time?
How to Enhance Your Imagination and Creativity
Like any skill, talent, or muscle, there are wonderful benefits when imagination and creativity are strengthened and maintained.
Here are a few tricks that you can do to tap into the wonderful energy of imagination and creativity.
Practice creative visualization
Begin by listening to guided visualization audios. Rather than being passive in the process, encourage your mind to really embellish the journey, adding details, images, emotions, curiosity, and surprises.
Visualization audios are widely available online and from your favorite music sources. Some libraries have them available at no charge. Here is one of mine that you can try.
Link to guided visualizations.
Create stories
Next, you can practice writing fictional stories with outlandish characters and environments. Allow the story to go beyond all possibility of reason or reality. The wilder it is, the better. Remember, there are no limitations and no judgments concerning the style in this exercise.
Volunteer to tell stories to your children, nieces, and nephews, or grandchildren. You may even have to borrow a child from one of your friends! It can be great fun, and you may become the children’s hero for delighting them with your flights of fancy. Naturally, you will keep your stories age-appropriate.
Read fantasy fiction
Reading science fiction stories requires a fertile imagination. This genre of tales involves descriptions of characters, landscapes, vehicles, machinery, and adventures that have rarely, if ever, been seen or experienced in this world.
Some people consider reading science fiction a waste of time. In reality, it is a valuable tool in expanding the imagination.
Hypnosis for Creativity and Imagination
Imagination and creativity are greatly enhanced through the use of hypnotherapy.
In a client-centered hypnotherapy session, the unique root cause of an individual’s mental block can be revealed through a number of techniques, with additional means of resolving the issue and restoring childlike wonder and creativity.
During the session, the left analytical brain gives over to the dreamier right brain. Beyond enhancing the natural ability to visualize, the session can target the development of the imagination and expand creative perspectives and images.
Client case study
Some years ago, I had the pleasure of working with an author. I was able to help my client overcome writer’s block by facilitating access to her childlike imaginative subconscious mind. She was working on a fictional vampire story. Every week she would come in for about an hour. I would put her into a trance and she would describe the scene where her book had gotten stuck.
She put herself into the scene, and it came alive in her imagination. She gave detailed descriptions of the action and dialogue that was unfolding in her mind while I took notes. At the end of each session, she would go home and complete a chapter based on what she had just experienced in our session together. Her novel moved along very quickly, and she wrote about 19 of the 35 chapters of her novel based on the flow achieved in her hypnotherapy sessions. It was fascinating for me, and extremely productive for her.
It is all within you—all the creativity, ideas, words, phrases, concepts, solutions, and inventions. They already exist in the recesses of your mind. You simply have to relax and tap into that fertile well of imagination and wonder.
Ending thoughts
During my guided hypnotherapy sessions, I have had the honor of helping guitarists, pianists, painters, and others to expand the limits of their imagination to bring forth new levels of their creativity.
In a similar fashion, enhancing imagination and creativity has helped entrepreneurs to build a unique approach to marketing, parents to interact with their children differently, and couples to develop their relationships on their own terms and not the way it has been done before.
If you have any questions about how hypnotherapy can help ignite your imagination and unlock your creativity, share them below!
