Top 4 ways to improve your creativity

This week we’re focussing on getting creative, and in particular how you can use sound to get the creative juices flowing. We hope you’ll see how versatile sound can be, and how it can help with relaxation as well as improving the imagination.

Expect top tips from the expert in sound therapy, Lyz Cooper, an ode to Michael Jackson and rhythm vitamins…

Research has shown that the best way to stay creative is to work for 90 mins and then have a 10 min ‘brain break’. This allows the brain to slip naturally into an Alpha brainwave frequency which will keep you at the top of your game.
Sound therapy is one of the easiest ways to encourage these brainwaves. Tap out the ‘lub-dub’ of the heartbeat rhythm to the count of four on your thigh, desk or say it in your head for a few minutes. This will relax your breathing, heart rate and blood pressure as the brainwaves follow this relaxing rhythm sound.

Following the relaxing rhythms, create a playlist of upbeat and inspirational music – start with slower tempo music and end with high tempo music. Dance music, although not to everyone’s taste, is really good to enhance your creativity, then follow that with the 10 minute ‘rhythm vitamin’ exercise above.

In your playlist choose songs that incorporate an ascending major 6th. This may sound like jargon, but musical intervals have been shown to affect our emotions and as sound therapists, we use these to help improve health and wellbeing. A major 6th is uplifting and can be used to create an awakening and inspirational space.
Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepson or Man in the Mirrorby Michael Jackson are examples.

Sirens are a ‘call to action’ for the brain, a great way to wake up and the rise in tone stimulates the brain. You may want to go somewhere quiet for this exercise to avoid strange looks. Start humming a low tone, as low as you can and fairly steadily go up to the highest tone you can without straining your voice and back down to the lowest again. It will sound like a siren. Repeat this four or five times, getting progressively faster but make sure you keep humming as this will avoid straining your voice.