Muse Juice

Getting Places

The role our subconscious plays in our creative endeavors can't be overstated, and resists being understood.

It fishes up new ideas out of nothing but raw chaos. How does it do that? How can we HELP it do that? Because sometimes no amount of contemplating a problem brings you the name of that one song you heard and swore you'd remember, only to have the answer smack you in the face seemingly out of nowhere 30 minutes later.

Indulge me when I say our thinking minds are like a bus - regulated, scheduled, capable of efficiently and consistently taking us along our most frequent routes.

We can get new routes to start up by increasing demand, while out of use ones get shut down or are merged with other related ones. Its a consistent if slightly cumbersome system whose utility is primarily decided by where the network (our thought patterns) have access to.

Our subconscious is a nut-job riding a motorcycle without a license.

They are in it for the love of the game, and though they can appreciate finding somewhere new and interesting, they are most happy simply moving forward.

They have no need to follow rules, they don't need to ask your permission to go, and most importantly, they can go wherever the fuck they want.

And if you ask really nicely, they might let you ride double.

But what does this have to do with weight lifting? Well unfortunately this is where both the motorcycle, and metaphor, break down. So lets make some gains, lets get fuckin' huge brah. Lets push some real weight.

What does this have to do with weight lifting?

First of all thank you for letting me put words in your mouth.

Secondly it doesn't, not directly at least. The real question we should be asking is "How do I get my subconscious to where I want it to go?"

What does a cavemen staring into a fire, your Tumblr witches shadow work, Salvidor Dali holding a key, and putting a funny square of cardboard containing 150μg of LSD on your tongue have in common?

The answer is in Ritual.

Since the dawn of time humanity has continued to develop new and interesting ways of getting our thinking minds to shut off, clearing the roads for our subconscious while placing signs along the way to try influence where it ends up.

None of these has ever really worked well for me. No amount of Ritual has ever been able to get my mind to shut up once it starts yapping. No amount of white-noise seems to soothe it. So I do the only thing I can.

I threaten to drop a metal bar on my head if it wont stop.

There are plenty of smarter people with a lot better credentials than I have who can no doubt explain the myriad mental benefits regular exercise has on your mind. But regular exercise is not enough. Something incredible happens when we truly struggling to lift something heavy.

Our brains can't think. It's as if enough raw exertion has the power to physically push conscious thought from our brains, wherein a momentary ascension to nirvana is achieved; In that moment we live to lift the weight.

But that's only half of it. The true magic is what happens when we put the weight back down and we feel thought come flowing back to us.

I find that the thoughts that return first are NOT what I have spent the most time stressing over recently, but other thoughts that have been bubbling below the surface that I wasn't even aware of - an event I'd forgotten about, an idea for a session, an interesting NPC concept, a new perspective to view a problem from.

Before the buses of my conscious mind are even able to leave the depot, my subconscious has taken me somewhere new, interesting, and unforeseen.

More often than not it brings me to a particularly flat piece of roadkill it thought was fun. Occasionally though, it brings me to a new idyllic locale I've never seen before and would never have even thought (nor been able) to visit myself.

I write it down in my notes; maybe I can get them to install a bus-stop here.

This is why Ritual or, for me the gym, is important. It doesn't care what our opinions and personal feelings are, it will take us where we ourselves fear to tread if we simply get out of it's way and let it.

Defeating the Taboo of Adult Creativity

I want to preface this by saying that I am not an expert on any of the scientific matters I'm about to talk about, and that I will be talking entirely from the perspective of my own personal observations and research on the topics I discuss.

UPDATE: I have since spoken to a specialist in the field. You can a read their information on the topic below the main article

So we've observed what happens when we pick heavy things up and put them back down. But why does this work? What is going on in our brain to make this happen? I believe that the answer lies in how our brain deals with stressful situations.

When we physically exert ourselves to the extent that we are literally harming our bodies, we release chemicals called adrenaline and noradrenaline that are designed to boost our senses, lower our inhibitions, and switch off internal systems viewed as unnecessary for immediate survival.

It puts us in a mode designed for us to decisively make instinctive decisions and act on them, without concerning ourselves with the long term consequences.

They are the same chemicals released when we are tryna fuck.

Ask any ACE person you know, and they can very succinctly describe how gross sex is as a concept. Its sweaty, its exhausting, it involves the meeting of orifices and body parts that are known for harboring bacteria. Yet many of us still find great pleasure in doing it.

There is a reason why workplaces with high stress environments such as restaurants and hospitals are also known for their sexual promiscuity. Our body weaponises both adrenaline and noradrenaline to transmute situations and activities we should normally be apprehensive of, such as being in public, being spat on, being with a coworker in the cool-room, "no no really baby let me just do that one thing one time it'll be good I swear", into pleasure.

But these chemicals do their work even if we aren't in a sexual context. So what, if any, taboo are they overcoming when I am at the gym, post set, and find myself deciding what the main export of a settlement in my homebrew world is?

The great taboo of creating things as an adult.

We live in a world that stomps art down into neat, saleable discs for people to consume (though not Sony anymore apparently). Where creativity, imagination, and expression are realms allowed to be inhabited only by children, and the Gifted Few society has, through some inscrutable means, deemed worthy of creating art as a product.

Despite what most publishing companies would have you believe, money is not why art is important. For all but the briefest sliver of modern time, art has been the domain of all humanity, a method to convey meaning and build bridges of understanding that language and our limited oral apparatus are incapable of.

Unfortunately, simply being cognisant of a taboo and it's effect on us is not enough to overcome it. We know that discussing ones wages in a workplace should be something that is acceptable, and may work to prevent unjustified pay disparities, but nonetheless we feel the social pressure to not do it.

So how do we overcome these taboo's that prevent us from pursuing the life we want to live? Well the best way is in fact to force ourselves to break it, and survive.

But saying that feels like I'm saying "If you're feeling uncreative, just start being creative", which it turn feels like asking someone who's been stabbed if they've tried not getting stabbed. This is why Ritual or, for me the gym, is important.

It doesn't care what our opinions and personal feelings are, it will take us where we ourselves fear to tread if we simply get out of it's way and let it.

The Prescription

I am not someone to explicitly prescribe a course of action about something so personal, but it must be said that your ability to hear and comprehend what your subconscious is trying to tell you is a skill that requires training.

If you're someone like me who has a problem with hearing their subconscious through the cacophony of the post-modern world, and the idea of visiting the gym to get in touch with it resonated with you, here are some steps I'd suggest you take

• Gym membership. Non-negotiable, no doing weights at home. Our brain has an interesting relationship with doorways. Teaching your brain to associate a particular door with a certain pattern of thought (such as being creative) will help form a strong basis for future growth. Being in a new environment away from home will also help you decouple from any problems you are facing there, helping clear your mind
• Find a workout routine. There is a lot of information out there about fitness, and the industry is rife with grifters looking to cash in on peoples insecurity. If you're new, this is a good place to start. If you're not new, you don't need me to tell you what to do. Lift heavy, lift safely, lift consistently
• Strength training. Non-negotiable. You must place yourself under enough stress that your mind involuntarily empties itself. If you're someone who is not used to strength training this may take some time to build up to, accept that it is part of the process and do it safely. Suffering a leg-press induced compound fracture is going to prevent you from going to the gym, weakening the bond between you and your subconscious. Also it will be painful.
• Pre-Gym. On the way to the gym, think consciously about something you're looking for resolution on - a problem you're facing, an encounter you're planning, a plot hole you're filling.
• After each set take a deep breath and sit. Avoid the modern urge to immediately touch your phone. Observe the first thought that comes to your mind. If it is something useful, only then may you touch your phone to write it in your notes. If the thought isn't useful, discard it
• Think again. About the issues you're looking for resolution on during your breaks between sets.
• On the way home. No touch phone. Only listen. Let your mind wander and enjoy the cocktail of chemicals flooding your system. If something seems interesting, you may touch phone to write it down.
• Get enough protein. You don't have to maintain a body-building diet, but get enough protein to not be in constant DOMS pain.

Oh- ah, also exercise is like, healthy for your body and mind and stuff in other ways, I guess. Anyway I've got to go, I've got a session to run

Next week. Herding Cats - The red circle, and building connection between strangers

Update on the Science

Since the release of this article, I got in touch with a friend of mine who happens to study and indeed has specialty knowledge in the area of "Why working out helps you be creative". Say internet-hello to Emalie.

Emalie has a Bachelor of Health Science (Sports & Exercise Science) from Western Sydney Uni, and is soon to receive a Bachelor of Science double majoring in 'Genetics and Genomics' and Medical Science.

I asked Emalie about some of the information I provided above, specifically about the science behind adrenaline and noradrenaline. She said that while I had hit on the gist of why it works, that the central mechanism behind it is not those two chemicals, but something called Arousal.

The arousal curve is basically a bell curve of performance vs ‘arousal’...

...All activities have an optimal level of arousal, and the curve will shift to the left or right depending on what you’re doing (e.g. football has a high level required compared to say throwing darts, but they both still have an optimal level).

She even put it into D&D terms that my RPG addled brain can understand.

For a D&D comparison, I would say being under aroused would be like a straight D20 roll. Being too aroused would be rolling with disadvantage, and being in the optimal zone would be rolling w/ advantage

But coming up with creative ideas is decidedly NOT the same activity as moving a heavy object with our body. So why does it provoke that free sense of chaotic ideation within us? Emalie continued.

"Effectively, what happens when you lift weights (and can happen during sex/as a result of sex), is that you’re burning off extra stress and anxiety (mostly cortisol), and allowing your body to get back into the optimal arousal zone to both exist in general, and access your brain for any kind of creative endeavours"

I then compared it to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's model of the flow channel, which shows that challenge and skill must increase in concert in order to maintain that feeling of flow, rather than there being a singular static experience that maintains it.

In the same way ones access to flow is ever changing from moment to moment, our access to optimal arousal changes from activity to activity.

"There is no 'The Sweet Spot', but every activity has its own 'sweet spot'?"

Yeah exactly

(Big thank you to Emalie for lending me her time and expertise on a complicated topic)

Further Reading

• Salvidor Dali's Creative Secret is Backed by Science - Christopher Intagliata
• Come As You Are - Revised and Updated - Emily Nagoski
• Yerkes-Dodson Law of Arousal and Performance - Charlotte Nickerson